What should I check before buying an indoor playground?

An indoor playground can look busy on a Saturday and quiet the rest of the week. What you are buying is the pattern behind that day: who comes, when, how often and what they pay for. Ask the seller to walk you through a full year of operation, and ask for the records that show it. The checks below are where most of the useful answers sit.

Traffic through the week and the year

Ask for attendance or sales by day, and compare weekdays with weekends and school holidays with ordinary weeks. Many venues lean hard on winter weather and school breaks. Find out what the quiet periods look like and what the owner does to fill them. Ask whether a new competitor, a road change or a neighbouring tenant has altered foot traffic recently.

Party bookings, deposits and memberships

Birthday parties often make up a large part of the income. Ask for the booking calendar, the deposits already taken for dates after closing and the terms customers agreed to. Ask the same about memberships and prepaid passes. Those customers expect service after the sale, so your lawyer and accountant should say how these obligations are handled in the purchase agreement.

Staff, supervision and cleaning

Ask who opens, supervises, cleans and closes, and how many hours the owner works in each role. Request staffing schedules, training records and any written procedures for incidents. A venue that depends on the owner being present is a different business from one that runs on a trained team. Ask which employees are likely to stay.

The lease and the claims history

Read the lease for term, renewal rights and whether the landlord must agree to a transfer. The premises lease checklist for a daycare covers similar ground. Ask for the insurance history and any incident reports from the past several years, and let your insurer and lawyer advise on what they mean.