How to Make Your Family Entertainment Center Feel Brand New in 2025

We’ve discussed ways to set new goals and refocus your family entertainment business before, but sometimes, it’s not just about the goals—it’s about re-energizing the entire operation. By taking a fresh approach to your team, market, and leadership, you can give your business a much-needed reset and create excitement for everyone involved.

To help you do that, we compiled this list of steps to make your family entertainment center feel brand new again.

Give your family entertainment business a fresh start in 2025 with simple steps to energize your team, excite your market, and refocus your leadership

With Your Leaders

Likely, you’ve already worked to develop your 2025 goals as they pertain to revenue or cost savings. If you’re just starting or want to give your business a running a bit behind the curve, no worries. Jump into this process wherever you need to make a s strong plan that aligns with your mission.

Step 1: Revisit your mission.

Hold a strategy session day (or two) to realign your leadership team with the business’s goals. Reflect on your business purpose and ensure it still resonates. Carefully consider whether the attractions and offerings, staff (including all the leaders in the room), and even business tools and offerings align (or not) with your company’s mission. As you work through each area, note issues preventing your business from peak performance and plan to discuss and tackle them.

Step 2: Set meaningful goals.

Once you have clarity about who you are and how your business presents itself to your community, it’s time to set practical goals and corresponding action plans to help your business thrive. Set thoughtful, clear goals in core business areas. What results do you wish to see in revenue, safety measures, cost management, and so on? Define specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound (SMART) goals for the year. For example, aim to increase average per capita spending by 15%.

From there, you can build initiatives, marketing promotions, sales competitions, and new offerings that will help you achieve higher ticket averages and increased guest loyalty.  Beware of writing too many goals. Consider which goals and actions you and your team can reasonably implement and achieve so you don’t set yourselves up for failure.

Step 3: Make space for innovation.

When you lead a busy team, it’s easy for innovation and creativity to stay on the “Important But Not Urgent” list, never quite making it into action. But when you make space for them, you set yourself up to make significant strides for your business.

Aim to create opportunities for leaders to propose and pilot new initiatives. This could be rethinking guest flow, experimenting with new attractions, or improving operational efficiencies. Consider a monthly or quarterly brainstorming session to discuss new ideas and then choose one to see through to completion. Regularly tapping into your creativity can do wonders to make roles feel exciting and rewarding while also providing essential growth opportunities.

With Your Team

Step 1: Celebrate 2024’s wins and learning outcomes. 

When you want your business to feel new for your team, many of the previously discussed steps also apply. And while it’s always a good idea to recognize your leaders, too, don’t skimp on recognizing your team members’ specific achievements from the previous year to get the team excited and feeling great about the difference they make in their day-to-day.

While you’re celebrating, be sure to discuss things you learned in 2024 and the actions you and the team took to improve issues or experiences in the previous year. This discussion helps the team feel heard and understand that their ideas can make a difference.

If you don’t have a regular recognition process, consider implementing one and rolling it out during this year’s kick-off meeting. You could also consider a monthly “Team MVP” award or shoutouts during staff meetings for exceptional effort or bright ideas.

Step 2: Solicit their feedback. 

Once you’ve shared how important their feedback and ideas were to the success of 2024, you’ve helped the team understand the tremendous impact their contributions have on the overall organization. This approach also helps prime the pump for more idea generation. Host a fun, creative workshop to uncover areas that need improvement. From there, solicit possible solutions and discuss implementing the best ones. Consider how you might reward teams when new solution ideas are implemented and continue to keep everyone excited and looking for new ways to make improvements.

Step 3: Invest in their overall skill development. 

Develop an ongoing training plan with content to help your team excel in guest service, technical skills, leadership development, or something that can help them as they grow, such as training in personal finance, applying for scholarships, and even tax preparation. Enhanced skills translate into happier, more confident team members and better guest experiences.

With Your Market

It should come as no surprise that helping your business feel brand new again starts with changing how you and the team think and talk about the organization. These efforts help everyone demonstrate their excitement when working with guests, which goes a long way to improving your guest experiences.

In addition to the indirect improvements in guest experiences, consider direct ways to create buzz and interest among your audience. Of all the improvement opportunities you’ve uncovered throughout this process, consider what to share and how you might best leverage their impact.

Step 1. Reignite your social media strategy.

Revisit your current social media strategy and consider what you want to start, keep, and stop doing. Are certain types of content stale and outdated? Are you spending time on the right platforms? Post fresh, engaging content on platforms where your audience spends time. Highlight behind-the-scenes moments, guest testimonials, or “insider tips” to make the most of their visit. PRun polls or contests to boost engagement.

Step 2: Reimagine your special offers and seasonal promotions.

You likely already offer promotions and seasonal specials. But are you operating on auto-pilot? Draw from your recent memorable buying experiences to help you identify exciting new offerings or activities. If you usually have the same person or small group ideating new offers, consider bringing in others to gain fresh perspectives. And, no matter what you do, make sure to include planning for how you’ll sell and track the effectiveness of any sales promotions.

Step 3: Ready, set launch. 

With every new attraction, offering, or promotion, be sure to factor in time for training and marketing so you can capitalize on all the potential benefits. Consider the “newsworthiness” of what you’re launching and decide if it warrants a social media or email campaign, a special event, a re-grand opening, or what will deliver the most impact. Special events and fresh marketing campaigns can help your business look and feel brand new.  

Revitalizing your family entertainment business doesn’t have to mean starting over—it’s about finding new ways to connect with your team, excite your guests, and lead with purpose. Take these steps today, and make 2025 your most exciting and successful year yet!