Top Golf Expansions

[Guest 239]

I remember hearing rumours about possible expansions of Top Golf in the early days to locations in NSW but it never got off the ground. Does anybody know whether the Top Golf brand intends to expand further in Australia? Unfortunately I feel the huge price of building the facility on the top of a swamp in the Gold Coast really turned Village off constructing anymore.

Outside of the businesses intentions, what would you like to see done with the brand or where would you place the second facility? I genuinely think in Newcastle and Sydney it would sell like hot cakes, especially considering that Newcastle almost has nothing like it and is itching for more entertainment into the night. 

[New display name]

I remember reading somewhere Village gave up on the idea after the poor performance of Top Golf on the GC. 

Edited December 21, 2021 by New display name

[Guest 239]

18 minutes ago, New display name said:

I remember reading somewhere Village gave up on the idea after the poor performance of Top Golf on the GC. 

Honestly I feel a lot of their problems have been their own making. I absolutely love Top Golf and I always have a great time but it desperately doesn't want you to love it.

• The Oxenford location is awfully placed. The theme parks siphon attendance during the day and there is nothing else around that is open at night to entice you to hang out around the area. Chuck a couple themed bars and restaurants nearby and it'd be fine but at the moment it's really baren outside of the experience. 
• The inability to make a booking in the early days sucked. I'm not going out to Oxenford to maybe play Top Golf especially as a tourist with limited transport options.
• The service has always been pretty lackluster. It's party golf, but they really play down the party aspect. Waitstaff and servers would take ages to clear plates and drinks without even asking if we want anything else. I'm not sure whether this has changed but it's been consistent from the four times I've gone since it's opened each spanning about 9 months between each visit. They could turn a pretty penny if they just asked people if they wanted more food or drink more often. It's bartending 101. Pick up a glass once it's empty and ask whether they want another.
• We ALWAYS get kicked out early. I have never been to Top Golf where they have honoured our time allocation or their closing time. They start blaring closing time surprisingly early on weekend nights. There was even a time where we had a 2 hour booking and they came up and told us that although we had 45 minutes left on our two bays that they were closing and we needed to start packing up. 

[rappa]

5 minutes ago, Dom said:

• The service has always been pretty lackluster. It's party golf, but they really play down the party aspect. Waitstaff and servers would take ages to clear plates and drinks without even asking if we want anything else. I'm not sure whether this has changed but it's been consistent from the four times I've gone since it's opened each spanning about 9 months between each visit. They could turn a pretty penny if they just asked people if they wanted more food or drink more often. It's bartending 101. Pick up a glass once it's empty and ask whether they want another.
• We ALWAYS get kicked out early. I have never been to Top Golf where they have honoured our time allocation or their closing time. They start blaring closing time surprisingly early on weekend nights. There was even a time where we had a 2 hour booking and they came up and told us that although we had 45 minutes left on our two bays that they were closing and we needed to start packing up. 

100% the reasons why it’s not been a huge hit. Top Golf is meant to be a hospitality venue that also happens to have golf. That’s why it’s so successful in America. 

But they put a theme park operations person in charge of the thing and it never really found it’s feet. Should have had a top notch hospitality operator as GN from day one. 

Remember when it was going to be open till 1 or 3am?

[Guest 239]

Definitely agree that it never found it's feet in the early days. The lack of focus on hospitality ruined the experience because most of the time I'm there for the venue, not the golf. Reflecting on it you can tell that it was managed by somebody with experience in theme park operations in Australia. Young and cheap staff, a focus on the experience instead of the package, the promotion of upcharges (you could only book if you paid directly through them and it needed to be a certain size), etc. 

There's still an excellent opportunity to expand the brand and NSW is ripe to make a new first impression on the public down south. As you said, chuck somebody with hospitality experience and you'll be golden. Dream situation but if they co-operated with Pacific Concepts (the folks behind Winghaus, Bavarian, and Beerhaus) I reckon they'd make an absolute killing. 

[Gazza]

Minor nitpick, but I always reckoned the overseas ones looked cooler with exposed ceilings, more of an industrial look, fitted a younger vibe:

 

 

 

The GC one feels a bit like an ALH venue from a few years ago.

[Guest 239]

Agreed @Gazza. The GC bar gives me sushi restaurant in a food court vibes. Also the spot for live music in the top image is *chefs kiss*

I know they have a bunch of function spaces on the bottom level. It'd be great to retrofit that into another bar/eating space that's opened a little later than the golf. You could send home like 70% of your staff but still get revenue from the bar being open that way. 

[joz]

They're publicly talking about building more Top Golfs again, so I don't think it's quite the failure that people are suggesting it is. The location is what it is, until there's a critical mass of bars and nightclubs in the area then it won't quite hit the full heights that it could, but it's not done too badly considering.

 

The closing time thing is really irritating, like just have set closing times. Top Golf overseas have set closing times (Generally 11 or midnight), so there's no reason you couldn't just say 'closing time is 10pm on weekdays and 11pm on weekends' (or whatever) and just leave it at that. This is part of the reason I have trust issues around places that don't advertise a closing time and just say 'Late'. I also agree with the general comments about having a theme park manager as opposed to a hospo manager. 

 

As a total aside, which I don't know where else to put, I've made a discovery about Top Golf; it is best enjoyed if you spend an hour drinking BEFORE you start playing. Otherwise the first half an hour is this weird sober energy trying to get into the spirit of it. If you're already 2 or 3 beers in when you start it's so much more relaxed and you can just enjoying the game straight away. Thank you for listening to my Ted Talk.

[Guest 239]

We once did this by accident. They didn't have place in the booths but said we could wait for one to open in the upstairs bar. It took about an hour and a half to get a booth but by that point we had one too many jugs of CC & Dry. The games were absolutely cooked but the chaotic energy of the place is what keeps us going back. There is something about laughing at friends who can barely smack a ball whilst you've got another fellow who can barely sink a shot when sober but somehow becomes Tiger Woods with a couple drinks under their belt. 

Though my favourite experience was when they did the super cheap weekday morning special. We went there before Movie World and it was just myself and one other person. We got to try all the games, have some coffees and breakfast and just vibe whilst the place was mostly empty. The games are good fun but I'm not really going for the golf on a Friday/Saturday night. 

Glad to hear that expansions are back on the table. I may be biased but I really want them to expand down south before they add any more to the Brisbane/GC area. 

[New display name]

40 minutes ago, joz said:

They're publicly talking about building more Top Golfs again,

This would be interesting how this would work because from what I understand Topgolf reduced it's stake in the partnership from 33.3% down to 3.7%.

[Slick]

The service sucks, that's the whole issue in one.

US service is great because staff are incentivised to - when you're working on tips, you need to be "great" and give booths attention in order for both the employee and the business to succeed.

In Australia, we give staff (mostly) good wages, and with no tip culture, staff aren't incentivised to ensure everyone is buying drinks, they're instead incentivised to do what their managers tell them to do. The net result of a US style hospitality business operating in Australia is that there's virtually zero attention given to patrons and it makes less money.

At this point i've had dozens upon dozens of visits at Top Golf where it took more then five minutes to grab someone to serve our bay, let alone order a beer. And when your only option is to walk to the bar, you've effectively put enough barriers in place for people not to bother and just settle on having a sub-par experience. That in turn means they're spending less and they're less likely to return. In the past i've also had wait staff give us Movie World style operation spiels that felt antagonistic at best and hostile at worst, i've had extremely long bar wait times, i've had extended family find it impossible to book a bay... all of which culminates in a feeling that makes me feel like i'm a nuisance and not a valued customer and subsequently makes me want to not bother.

The easy solution is to just have a Korean BBQ/ me&u system in place, the latter of which they've actually tried, and on my last visit "was unable to be used at this time." 😟

It just seems so easy. Accept that staff cost more in Australia and that Aussie expectations on service are different to the US. We don't need someone checking in every three minutes, we just need a way to order a beer when we need one. So give staff and customers systems (like me&u) that allow people to pay as they go. The couple of dollars that Village would forfeit to that company instead of their own back-pocket would be instantly negated by the increased revenue they'd receive by not being so hostile to the customer at every turn.

Edited December 21, 2021 by Slick

[New display name]

I would be happy with a beer vending machine. 

[Gazza]

Why cant they use Village E-Serve to order?

Personally re US style service I feel uncomfortable with it.

You’ve got people that have to grit their teeth to an unreasonable extent because if they don’t simp for the customer they get no tips and starve, so then the overriding attitude over there is coming and interrupting your meal to “check if everything is ok”.

Plus its pretty problematic how you have massive hospo businesses that literally make it the customers problem to pay their staff?

[joz]

I wouldn't advocate for that model in Australia, but you can't deny the resulting level of service is crazy high. Not just because of the 'grin and bear it' thing, but also places can put way more staff on than they might otherwise be able to.

 

Also as an aside, it's quite common to make a really well paying career out of hospo in the states that's really rare over here. Again not saying that's what I'd like to see here, but I think phrases like simping for the customer, and massive hospo businesses oversimplifies it.

[New display name]

Tipping gives no business an advantage over another business with customer satisfaction in the States, as all business do it.

Where in Australia a business can give themselves a great advantage because they offer great service over their competitors.  You just need good management that can get the best out of their staff.

[DaptoFunlandGuy]

I took a corporate group to TopGolf last week.

we anticipated crazy busy times and wanted to book, but it was a “pay your own share” kind of thing, not the corporate card.

we needed two bays minimum, were prepared to play for two hours, and everyone would be ordering lunch, and likely drinks.

couldn’t book single bays. Events team told us they could take us if we booked a package but it required prepaid food and bev - basically $1000, with $500 food and bev credit, making it nigh on impossible for everyone to only pay their  “share”.

We got bays allocated very quickly on the bottom floor as we arrived at 11:30. Despite it not being packed half our group’s food hadn’t arrived at the 45 minute mark (the point where the game stops to ask if you want to extend).

so our group decided to end the game at an hour and go elsewhere.

they could have easily made their $1000 off us if they’d let us book and pay our way but they’re just so Inflexible.

 

what I WILL say though is the catering / finding a server issue is fixed: QR code in every bay, order whatever you like, pay on phone, brought direct to your bay in minutes. Need a refill? Delivered in two minutes flat. Amazing system and I’m quite happy to use it over the servers.

I will say though that Evie and Will were awesome service team for our group - it was the kitchen and events team that convinced us not to stay longer.

[Brad2912]

They have certainly had their management and logistical issues (especially kitchen related) since opening.

My company used to run a weekly entertainment program at the venue, it was making them an absolute shit tonne of revenue and profit every week at a generally off-peak time. It ended up growing beyond what they could accommodate with their kitchen, so instead of making it a ticketed style event or limiting numbers on a first come first served basis, they just said "well thats all too difficult to manage and we dont want to disappoint people" so they axed it all together - thus disappointing everyone rather than just some people, and costing themselves a weekly cash cow.

[rappa]

It’s a bit like removing the warm and inviting couches and fire pits and replacing with Westfield food court style zero atmosphere tables. 

[ShakeShack]

Circling back slightly, but I believe there is still some contractual requirements that VRTP need to meet, to continue to use the Top Golf brand.

Although I'm unsure of the timelines, I know that they were meant to provide a certain amount of investment and expansion. That is one of the reasons why we have seen a few of the little hole in the wall experiences launched.

When first opened, Melbourne was slated as the next "major" location, to a point where they had already started taking EOI's for Gold Coast team members to fly to Victoria to train and on-board management.

I'd say VRTP will still be contractually obliged to fulfil these requirements in the near future.

Edited December 21, 2021 by Luke Beazley
Spelling