The ultimate guide to opening an escape room business

 Opening your own escape room can be a daunting task. 

Lucardo is the #1 escape room in Manchester and the #1 escape room in Lancashire. We have recently been rated the #1 escape room in the UK and #6 in the world for customer satisfaction by the independent company Escape the Roomz. Lucardo is now expanding and looking for franchisees.

We conducted an interview with Ian Pownall, one of the owners of Lucardo escape rooms. We asked him for some advice on how to set up an escape room and he gave us five top tips on how to do so:

Q. So, what exactly do you need to do to set up an escape room? 

First step – I’d say before you look at buying a building make sure you have funding, either via private means or a loan from the bank. I’d suggest never borrowing more than you can afford to repay, just in case things go wrong. I’d say if you’re opening your own independent escape room business with no help, assuming you have a good background in building you should expect to pay around £80,000-£90,000 to set up a centre, as a lot of time and money is spent on developing puzzles. If you’re opening a franchise, then expect to loan around £30,000-£40,000. This would allow you to make a living from the business while it’s setting itself up; after all, the main priority is ensuring that your mortgage or rent is paid.

Second step – Find a building: an escape room needs about 400-500 sq. ft. per game, plus a hosting area, staff room and toilets. Ideally you should look for a building that is already accessible for disabilities, rather than attempting to adapt a building yourself as this can become very expensive.

Third step – Once you’ve found a building and your offer has been accepted, get a contract in principle subject to planning permission. Typically speaking, planning permission is done via a sui generis application. Planning (depending on your council) generally takes around 6-8 weeks and it’s a bit of a painful process – it’s possible to do it yourself, but to save lots of stress this job is usually best left to a town planner. I’d also recommend not putting a deposit down other than a small holding deposit until you have planning permission. It’s possible to rent a building on your own, but if you’ve never rented a building before, despite it taking a bit longer it’s usually best to seek the advice of a solicitor. Expect to pay about £1,500 for the solicitor (plus disbursements) and around £2,000-£3,000 for assistance with planning.

I’d suggest planning your cash flow for some failure within this process, as not every planning application is successful and it’s very common to find expensive problems with buildings. I’ve put two offers and submitted two planning applications personally in the last 18 months, with one failing on the basis of planning permission and the second property upon inspection having serious problems with the roof, which caused damp problems. The landlord had attempted to conceal the problems and we ended up pulling out of the process. Be prepared to be a bit frustrated by this process – allow for some extra cash in case it goes wrong and be patient. A good building and good location is worth the wait!

Fourth step – Now it’s time for the game planning, setting up the website, choosing the right puzzles and getting your marketing plan together. It’s important to consider that playing an escape room is completely different from designing and building one – players are often very destructive and it can be very frustrating when you have spent ages making something look good only for it to be ripped apart in the space of 10 minutes. Anything you build must be very robust and you need to be prepared for it to be roughed up – it’s amazing how many times I’ve had to redesign a puzzle because someone has come up with a creative way of breaking it. I remember once having a huge marine bolt (the type used to hold ships together) and a player somehow managed to use that much force that we couldn’t undo the bolt with normal tools. We ended up having to buy a strong arm wrench at a cost of £135 just to get it out. So if you’re serious about creating an escape room, planning for step four is always very helpful – test and trial the puzzles in your garage before allowing them to go live!

Fifth step – Test, test and test again before opening. Just because you understand a puzzle or part of the game doesn’t mean that your players will. When I built my first game (“Contamination”), it took experienced escapees 3 hours and 50 hints to escape from a 60 minute game because I had unknowingly made everything extremely difficult. Throughout the past five years, we’ve managed to refine the testing process so it takes around 2-3 weeks to get a test perfect. 

There are many more things to consider once you’ve set up, like marketing, staffing, HR, Health & Safety, day-to-day management, accountancy, intellectual property, and the list goes on… 

Lucardo offers franchising opportunities for escape rooms: this is a cost effective method of setting up your own business. You can be your own boss and save around half the cost of setting the business up, so when you’re running the business it’s much more efficient. If you want to find out more about how you can set up your own Lucardo franchise – or just want a prospectus on franchising – feel free to drop me an email at [email protected]. 

Thanks!

Ian Pownall

Director

Lucardo Ltd.