10
- June 2017
NEW ARCADE
Bel Mateo Bowl Turns 60 Years
Old; Wins Small Business Of The
Year Award!
One of the oldest members of BPAA turned 60 years
old on May 17, 2017. Not only have they withstood the
test of time, but this year they were awarded the Small
Business of the Year for San Mateo and Santa Clara
Counties.
Bel Mateo has gone through a comprehensive re-
model in the last 4 years. Starting with Qubica‘s BESX
scoring and 47‖ monitors in 2014. The women‘s rest
room was next to be remodeled and upgraded.
In 2015, new masking units from US Bowling with
invisible drop-down screens were added along with
6000 lumen projectors for HD video viewing. The
game room was gutted and filled with new pieces in-
cluding several popular arcade games.
Over 300 fluorescent light bulbs were replaced with
LED lights to give a cleaner, cooler look and bring
down the energy by 40%.
We then added Scent Air to give the Center a distinc-
tive scent for every change of the season. 2016
brought on new Qubica soft seating, side walls from
Murrey and new carpeting for the entire center as well
as new floor tile and paint for both meeting/birthday
party rooms.
The Men‘s room was then remodeled and upgraded
with new stalls, waterless urinals, touchless faucets
and touchless paper towel dispensers. The Bar went
through a major transformation eliminating old booth
seating replacing it with more modern furniture and
stools, refloating and replacing the floor, repainted the
ceiling and walls, redecorated the area to include a
pool table, electronic dart boards and an internet juke-
box as well as added an additional 3 HDTV‘s to make it
a total of 9 Big Screen HDTV‘s in the bar.
The roof was then redone along with significant re-
placements of the HVAC system. The front desk was
refaced with black quartz countertops and a new lami-
nate to match. In 2017, we updated our old AMF
82/70‘s to the new XL1 update that includes the new
Center punch deck lighting. And although the entire
building had been redone, policy changes and retooling
of the staff are just as responsible for the current suc-
cess and accolades.
When I first bought the business in 2013, I immedi-
ately put a form on our website to enable customers the
ability to request a company or birthday party online.
As requests began to come in, I began to feel like Ama-
zon.com. Getting business anytime of the day or night
without actually having to go ―outside‖ to get it. This
became a very popular form of communication as the
―online‖ customers continued to increase.
I also changed our reservation policy to online only.
No reservations for open play were to be taken over the
phone. Being only 24 lanes, our inventory is extremely
valuable. Therefore, we could not afford to take reser-
vations over the phone and simply let the customer not
show up. Now, not only are all of our open play reser-
vations online but we‘ve added a $10 to $15 service
charge (marked as a ―Fast Lane‖ fee) to make that
online reservation to ―guarantee‖ that your lane will be
available when you arrive. This has raised our open
play revenue an additional 20% without actually raising
the price of bowling. The customer still has the option
to walk in and wait for a lane if desired. For years I
would ask people why they don‘t bowl more often. The
answer was always the same. ―You don‘t ever have
any lanes available.‖ The online reservation system
eliminates this problem by guaranteeing a lane when
you walk in. Of course our system is in real time to
avoid any over booking and we always know our avail-
ability based on current reservations.
For several years now, I believed that a person was
needed to help market to the general public through
social media. This would include: email marketing,
database, website, Facebook, Instagram, text messag-
ing, digital in house signage, yelp, etc. I was lucky
enough to have a young person employed that was
doing database work and some flyer designs. I contin-
ued to mentor this person towards the position of Direc-
tor of Social Media.
She was not a league bowler, which made her perfect
for what I wanted to attract. 18 to 25 year old‘s (which
by the way is 90% of our open play) that enjoy bowling
socially. I listened to her ideas of what the millennial
generation wanted. It paid off big time. Although her
ideas were different from mine, (a 60 something year
old lifetime league/scratch bowler) I realized very
quickly that she was my target customer and that her
ideas and likes were more likely to improve business
than the traditional old school ideas.
We began to remodel the Center with vibrant colors
and more progressive furniture and fixtures and open
play began to go through the roof. I have now added
Marketing Director to her title as well.
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