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After years of working closely with play café and indoor playground owners across the country, I’ve had a front-row seat to how these businesses operate at every stage—from early planning to full maturity.
And what I’ve observed repeatedly is this: the factors that hold play cafés back are rarely obvious.
Most owners understand the importance of location, square footage, and financial planning. Those are visible va...
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When most people picture opening an indoor playground or play café, they imagine starting from scratch.
A custom buildout. A brand-new layout. Fresh branding. A carefully planned launch.
But that is not how Kaylinn’s story began.
In my recent conversation with Kaylinn — known online as Kay’s Play Days, but the former owner of Monkey Around Indoor Playground — we talked about a path that many aspiring owners quietly consider: buying an existing play space instead of building one from ...
 There’s a trend going around right now where people are throwing it all the way back to 2016 and reflecting on what life looked like then versus now.
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And the second I saw it, I knew I had to do it—because 2016 was my first full calendar year owning a play café (we opened in 2015), and I was going through it.
I hadn’t figured everything out yet. I was hitting roadblock after roadblock, failure after failure, and I didn’t have a real community of other owners I could lean on. Not the “...
Every year since 2019, I’ve released an annual trends forecast for the indoor playground and play café industry. And every year, those episodes consistently become some of the most watched and listened-to content I put out.
That isn’t because people love predictions.
It’s because this industry is expensive, nuanced, and wildly unforgiving when you build the wrong thing—or build the right thing but run it in a way that s
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 Every year since 2019, I’ve released a trends episode for the indoor playground and play café industry—and it consistently becomes some of the most watched and listened-to content I put out. That’s not an accident.
These episodes are built from real experience, real conversations, real numbers, and real decisions owners are making right now—inside my group coaching program, Play Maker Society, at my live events for play space owners, and in 1:1 sessions.
I opened my first indoor playgro...
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 After spending the past year in sustained conversation with indoor playground and play café owners across the country—across different states, business sizes, and stages of growth—one pattern became impossible to ignore. While the businesses themselves varied widely, the challenges behind the scenes were strikingly consistent.
The same stress points surfaced again and again. The same operational bottlenecks appeared across ...
Most indoor playground and play café owners don’t struggle because they lack ideas.
They struggle because everything lives in their head.
They know they should review their numbers.
They know they should clean up systems.
They know they should simplify before adding more.
But when you’re managing staff, parties, customer messages, cleaning, marketing, programming, and your own life, that work gets pushed to “later.”
A few years ago, I published my Indoor Playground Year-End Checklist and ...
Michele Caruana
Play Cafe Academy Founder & Blog Author
I have over a decade of hands-on local business experience and tough lessons under my belt, and I am passionate about helping current and prospective play based business owners AVOID the same mistakes myself and SO many other business owner's make. Even though I have a Master's Degree in Economics and Years of Business and Marketing experience, it took me YEARS to "crack the code" and turn my Indoor Playground from an expensive hobby into a business-- and I want to get YOUR business get there in less time and with much less stress.
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I asked 11 Play Cafe Academy and Play Maker Society members what is working RIGHT NOW in their businesses to attract customers and grow sales. I want to send you their answers in my FREE newly updated 2024 "What's Working" Guide!
