Why Every Escape Room Should Sell Products
The core value of an escape room is undoubtably it’s ability to deliver an entertaining, immersive experience for its customers. So why then should escape room owners also be considering their product offering? Products offer an opportunity for increased revenue, clearer customer communication, and increased customer satisfaction - here’s why.
Traditional products and increased per-person spend
There are only really four ways to make more money as an escape room business. One of these ways is to increase the average spend of every customer that comes through your door.
Because your venue’s earning capacity will be bottlenecked by the number of rooms you have and the number of session times in a day, and because the price you can reasonably charge for a room is dictated by the market, you’ll need to think of other ways to increase this spend.
Let’s discuss some of the obvious “physical” products that you could sell in your lobby.
Drinks and Refreshments: Offering drinks, non-alcoholic (or alcoholic - where appropriate), can be a great way to increase revenue. Players often enjoy a beverage after their escape room experience, (particularly if your venue is less central, and they have a long drive home). It’s a simple addition that enhances the overall player experience and only has the minimal space requirements of a bar fridge.
Souvenirs: T-shirts, mugs, or jewellery that are on theme with your rooms can serve as excellent souvenirs and give players a tangible memory of the fun time they had with their friends. If these items can be sweet merch - branded with your logo or brand colours - they can also help to market your business.
Other Puzzle products: For the majority of your players, the concept of “puzzles” doesn’t extend far past jigsaws and sudoku. However, if they’ve enjoyed your room(s), then why not take them further down the rabbit hole? As their trusted local authority in all things puzzles, you can recommend to them a tabletop experience to take home and keep the magic going. If you don’t have the production capacity to create your own games, find a local puzzle creator.
Puzzle Cards: Nothing sells quite as well in an escape room lobby as a puzzle card. Birthday (or Christmas) cards with puzzle experiences inside. Perfect for gifting along with one of your vouchers, or to help your players spread the joy of puzzles and get others intrigued by non-traditional puzzle experiences. If you don’t have the production capacity to create your own cards, we recommend (of course) Mystery Unfolds as a puzzle card wholesaler.
Gift Vouchers: The most obvious sellable product to increase repeat business or gain new players. You don’t need to sell physical cards in your lobby, but consider if a player has just finished a room, and wants to buy a voucher, how you might direct them.
Actionable takeaways
Take these steps right now to increase per-person spending in your escape room:
Complete the wholesale application form to receive product and pricing information and some sample puzzle cards
Consider: If a player leaves a room and wants to buy a gift voucher on the spot, do you or your staff have an option for them to do so?
Start a conversation with a local puzzle creator.
Productisation of offerings and the joy of bundles
Turning your services into tangible products can be highly effective. Bundling simplifies your value proposition and can communicate an end-to-end service or result that you can offer. This builds confidence in your potential customers that you can achieve exactly what it is they are after.
Corporate Bundles: Offer a half-day session for corporate teams, which can include escape room sessions, debrief assessments, and even team-building workshops.
Special Pricing for Multiple Rooms: Some enthusiasts will want to play all your games, all at once, back-to-back. Create an option in your system so that this is easy find and book. Adding a small discount here can be a good incentive.
Gift Vouchers: The perfect, contained, giftable product for your business. For added convenience, offer both physical and digital vouchers if possible.
Actionable takeaways
What you can do right now to productise the offerings of your escape room:
Create a corporate package for team-building events and promote them on your LinkedIn page (see why you need a presence on LinkedIn)
Create a landing page on your website that says, “Want to play all our games back-to-back? Contact our team”, and start gauging interest.
Introduce gift vouchers if you haven’t already. If you only offer digital vouchers, consider physical ones. Make sure it’s clear on your website how these work.
Full-service delivery and how products fill the gaps
As aforementioned, the room itself will be the core experience that your players enjoy. However, understanding and anticipating your customers' needs can lead to a more comprehensive service offering that starts before they’ve made their booking, and ends long after they’ve left.
Here are three very different examples of experiences that incorporate products and are packaged into bundles to meet a customer’s need:
Example #1: Corporate: A local accounting firm has heard of the wonderful team-building potential that is escape rooms and wants an experience that will help their team work better together. You develop a half-day experience to run within office hours. The team completes one of your rooms alongside an organisational psychologist. Chairs are brought into the end, and they sit down for a debrief session with the psychologist to discuss the roles they each played, observed patterns of behaviour, and how they could have communicated better. Afterwards, lunch is served and the team walks away with a breakdown of their performance and insights into their communication styles, as well as a memorable shared experience. Later, profile sheets of each team member’s communication style are printed and delivered to the office. They are kept on the employees’ desks and help them engage with each other in their preferred style.
Example #2: Family Day Out: A mother is looking for a fun activity for her family to do together where her adolescent children won’t be glued to their screens. You develop a mid-week 3:30 pm session bundle where after the game, smoothies are delivered from the store around the corner, and the family is given an at-home escape game to enjoy in their own time. A week before the game, the family is mailed a puzzle card, that they must first solve as a family, to receive the invite to the room.
Actionable takeaways
What you can do right now to develop a full service to your escape room customers:
Send follow-up surveys to your customers after they have played your games. Ask them what they hoped to get out of their booking
From these answers, identify different groups of players that book your rooms, and create bundles for a few of them.
Once players have played the bundles experiences, adapt the feedback form to ask what they thought of the particular bundle and how it met their needs.
Iterate and refine as necessary.
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