Pickleball and dining: Why courts are the new food destinations

Betting on the experienceInvestors, however, are more bullish on the eatertainment model than they are on traditional restaurants, Camillo says.“A padel [another racket sport rising in popularity] court or a bowling lane is a much more durable, less trend-driven revenue stream than a dining room seat, and it comes with better real estate economics. It’s not competing purely on per-seat turns. F&B just juices the model on top of that.”Private equity isn’t just investing in dine-in pickleball concepts because the sport is popular among Americans. Landlords are eager to lease to pickleball concepts for multiple reasons. Large indoor pickleball facilities can absorb anywhere from 30,000sq ft (2,800sq metres) to 70,000sq ft (6,500sq metres), giving new leases of life to former sites of shuttered big-box retail stores, department stores and grocery stores. Look at where many of these pickleball venues are located on a map, and you’ll see that they frequently correlate with suburban developments needing traffic.Pickleball is “a draw for strip centres and malls as well as it brings in traffic where people will shop and eat after they are finished”, says Jeff Lichtenstein, CEO and broke...