$2 Million of Fun: Big Margins in Play Centers

The business that today's guest bought is not the typical searcher target, but when you hear the numbers, you may wonder if it should be Daniel Batista bought an indoor play center for kids. Imagine 10,000 square feet, a giant mazy play structure, a ball pit, an arcade and a cafe for the parents.

This business boasts 50% net margins5.0, which was frankly hard for me to believe, and Daniel and I spent time on the characteristics that make this single location business so profitable. It is an outlier. Daniel believes most place centers are not nearly so successful, but it still makes you wonder if this category is a hidden gem.

This is also fundamentally a retail business, which means that there is a ceiling on the amount of revenue a single location can generate, and so uncapped growth needs to come from a multi unit strategy. We talk about how Daniel envisions building second and third locations de novo finally, listen for Daniel's philosophical point about buying a business.

After looking at boring businesses for months, the sweaty tradesy stuff, he just couldn't get excited about the prospect of buying one. So he decided to narrow his target industries to those that did excite him, which meant his deal flow would slow dramatically. But happily for Daniel, the right one did show up.

Here he is Daniel Batista, owner of Candyland Downey Fall conference season is upon us. Kicking things off next weekend, September 5th and 6th is the Southeast Entrepreneurship through Acquisition Conference, aka CETA, this year hosted at Darden Uva's Business School. CETA is in partnership with Georgetown, Duke and unc, so it actually draws people from all over the south and Mid Atlantic region.

Also, yours truly will be giving the keynote. I'm so flattered by the opportunity. Thank you to the CETA organizers.

I have many personal connections to uva. So I'm just thrilled at this honor. Then later next month in St.

Louis, September 24 through 26 is the buy Then Build Summit, the inaugural conference hosted by Acquisition Lab. The Lab is of course a longtime sponsor and friend of this podcast, and the event will be filled with people from inside and outside the Lab, both current searchers and those already in the ownership seat.

Walker Deibel will be there, as will his co founder Chelsea Wood, who you've seen host many valuable webinars with Acquiring Minds. I'm looking forward to finally meeting Chelsea. Ann Walker in person.

Then the McGuire Woods Independent Sponsor Conference is October 14 and 15 in Dallas. This is by far the biggest conference for independent sponsors in the capital providers that serve them like our fund MINDS Capital. If this path of independent sponsorship interests you, maybe you've been listening to our sister pod, the Mind's Capital podcast.

Then McGuire woods is ground zero. Mindz Capital will be there. We'll be meeting sponsors we've invested in already and those we hope to invest in.

And we'll be hosting a special off site for our LPs. You know who you are finally. M&A Launchpad's fall show is October 25th in Chicago.