How to open an escape room

The answer in three lines

An escape room opens with a space, a story written before the drawings, and a budget that plans for renewal from the first year. Floor area decides everything else, and rent decides the floor area.

The order to work in

1. The space, before the concept. Counter-intuitive, and yet it is the order that works. A concept can be rewritten; a nine-year lease cannot. Look first for a floor area, a location and a rent compatible with a turnover you can estimate.

2. The story, before the drawings. A venue whose story arrives after the drawings is recognisable at a glance: the decoration is a skin laid over a layout that never asked for it.

3. The drawings, before the quotes. Without dimensioned drawings, contractors' quotes are not comparable. That is where budget overruns come from, never from a technical surprise.

4. Renewal, in the initial budget. An escape room lives off its local audience, who play a room once. Plan the renewal of one room inside the funding plan, not two years later under pressure.

The three costliest mistakes

Taking a unit that is too big. Rent is a fixed cost, every month, twelve months a year. Surplus floor area produces nothing and is paid for indefinitely.

Opening with a single room. A group that enjoyed it comes back. If there is nothing else to do, they come back somewhere else. Two rooms minimum, or one room and a second activity.

Underestimating operations. Reset time between two games decides how many sessions you sell per day. A magnificent story with a forty-minute reset costs you one slot every day.

What we do not publish

No payback period. It depends on your rent, your location, your average price and your fill rate: four variables, three of which are specific to you. Any sector average advertised by a supplier is an average of other people.