Indoor Kart Track ideas

Your best customers are racers and race fans.

Go to the local AutoCross, dirt track, road course, or drag strip and give away track passes. Free or steeply discounted track time is your best promo tool. Passes would be valid for off-peak hours only. Raffle or Toss a tee shirt into the stands with a pass rolled up in it. Invite local track favorites for meet and greet and a chance to bang wheels with them.

Group discounts.

Offer free pickup and delivery to local transit?

Food truck (you don't pay them they rent the spot from you) Or buy a food truck and run it as a separate entity? It would not have to make money just be self supporting and can also be advertising for your business. Place it at all local car events. Sell discounted passes as well as food.

How is it that a renter is responsible for property taxes? Or are they looking at the karts as an asset and taxing that?

bentwrench said:

How is it that a renter is responsible for property taxes? Or are they looking at the karts as an asset and taxing that?

With commercial, the lease agreement indicates what percentage of the property taxes are the responsibility of the tenant. Whereas in residential it is traditional for the landlord to pay 100% of the property taxes.

Where do you put your advertising dollars?  We have a very successful outfit here that now has two locations, serves only snack type bar food (mozzarella sticks, pretzels, etc) and just recently added alcohol and axe throwing.  Check out www.gofullthrottle.com.  As far as advertising, they have a display kart they take to car shows and more recently they have been sponsoring F1, IMSA and such on cable.

loosecannon said:

In reply to Flynlow :

We run pretty efficiently and when it's busy, we can get 10 races of 10 people through an hour. People who get 2 hour race passes typically get 17 races in that 2 hours. We actually were doing really good business until 2017 but we started to lose a lot of business to the Winnipeg Jets NHL team. Any time they play, we are slow and even that we could absorb 

Here is a list of things that I hate now that I have owned my own foot-traffic-dependent business for a while:

OSU Buckeye games

the county fair

the Circleville Pumpkin Show

Halloween

hunting season

Election Day

The weeklong local arts festival

harvest time

the prom

school starting

graduation week

Mother's Day

The Super Bowl

Note that most of these things take place in October/November and May. When they all pile on you at the same time you are dead.

loosecannon said:

In reply to Flynlow :

We run pretty efficiently and when it's busy, we can get 10 races of 10 people through an hour. People who get 2 hour race passes typically get 17 races in that 2 hours. We actually were doing really good business until 2017 but we started to lose a lot of business to the Winnipeg Jets NHL team. Any time they play, we are slow and even that we could absorb but the City raised our property taxes $14,000 per year and our insurance has quadrupled to 6 figures in the last 3 years. Add it all up and we need to generate more business and we can't spend a ton of dough to do it. 

Maybe run a counter-programming deal? Like, anyone who comes in wearing a NHL jersey other than the Jets gets X number of free races or something? Just throwing ideas at the wall here.

In reply to slowbird :

Might I suggest that giving away free races isn’t the best idea to make money?  How about discounted (but still profitable) races instead of giving away the farm for free :p.  

Two suggestions overlooked...

You said you are the least expensive track around.  Fastest way to profit is to raise your prices.  Cheap prices sometimes communicate poor value. 

Have you considered franchising, or partnering with someone else interested in having a kart business?  I’ll bet you could find several decent partners or franchisees right on this forum. 

If you want to give it a try, I’ll be first. 

loosecannon said:

In reply to Stefan :

Our insurance company is not cool with us taking our karts off site where the ignition kill system no longer works, the tire and plastic barriers are not in place and the track design has not been tested. 

Makes sense.  Maybe there is a compromise?

Could you dedicate a couple karts to offsite usage, put them in a trailer, and set it up as a separate business?  Call it a promotional business, and get separate insurance. 

If you can take a few karts on the road for promotional purposes, you might find an ancillary business opportunity with endurance karting, etc.

In reply to GCrites80s :

I do not hate the pumpkin show. My sister was little miss pumpkin in 1975 or 76. If I am ever in the area I stop in at Lindsey's Bakery for some cookies and pumpkin doughnuts. I haven't been to the pumpkin show since 1977 though, so it's just a distant memory. Lived in Circleville for the first 7 years of my life.

No specific ideas, but our local place must be doing pretty well financially, as they are about to build a second location with a new 2 level electric cart track closer in to the city core.  We've done some corporate team building events there, they have a tavern, full conference facilities, etc.   Full track rental is something like a $1,000 per hour I think.  The demographics may be different here, as there are too many high tech companies to count in the immediate area, where dropping decent money on a corporate outing is just another business expense.  https://rushhourkarting.com

T.J. said:

In reply to GCrites80s :

I do not hate the pumpkin show. My sister was little miss pumpkin in 1975 or 76. If I am ever in the area I stop in at Lindsey's Bakery for some cookies and pumpkin doughnuts. I haven't been to the pumpkin show since 1977 though, so it's just a distant memory. Lived in Circleville for the first 7 years of my life.

I'd like everything on the list still if they didn't affect my wallet so much!

First, I didn't read through the whole thread.  Sorry if I am repeating previous ideas. 

The track local to me seems to be growing the past few years, but not because of karting.  They expanded into arcade, virtual reality rooms, and Nerf battles.  I see a lot more families/kids in there compared to when it was just karts.

The other thing they do is offer a black Friday promotion each year of something like 10 races for $100.  I suppose the idea is that you'll buy it and then bring friends who will pay full price.

Finally, they have a pair of two person karts so that you can give you kid a ride (over age 5) for a $5 premium over the regular karts.  My daughter loved passing everyone and keeps asking to go back.

I know of a track that used to have a pocket bike racing league on Tuesday nights.  You brought your own bike to this.  I have no idea how many people participated.

What I have not seen at a track is gopro/action camera rental.  Could you sell videos of the session for a few dollars?  Could you find a budget way to do something like this?  

Finally, I have a friend who is making decent side money renting racing simulators.  The customers are typically corporations who want the simulators at a promotional event they are doing.  This likely wouldn't drive more karting business, but it could compliment what you are already doing.

Lots of people giving ideas in what they would love to see at a track, but is that really the problem?

You need some analytics. What is your customer base? Are you kind of market saturated with a core group, or do most people only come a few times?

If you have a presence at the local shows, you may be just about saturated with them and need to look at new audiences. 

What are your age requirements? Can you consider marketing to local teens? Perhaps a camp, or lessons deal that gets them in and over the initial learning curve (frustration being beaten while learning). 

Don't obsess on making the regulars you have happier, focus on making new regulars. 

On an average day what percentage are first timers? How many times a year does the average customer come?