Pickleball Kingdom’s hand-designed surface ensures that all franchises offer the best, consistent user experience.
Pickleball Kingdom
The pickleball craze in the United States continues to grow, with participation numbers rising and demand for courts increasing nationwide. Opportunistic operators are taking over abandoned shopping malls and spaces once occupied by big-box stores due to hard times.
Founder Steve Kuhn, from Major League Pickleball, is leading the trend of pickleball in malls with his appropriately named “Pickle mall” concept. There are already nationwide plans for construction, and other indoor facilities are opening around the country as well.
As more indoor facilities stake their claim, the industry is seeing a wide variety of approaches to construction, configuration, and operations. I had the opportunity to speak representatives from these indoor pickleball companies:
- GameChangers in southwest Chicagoland
- Dill Dinkers, a Washington, D.C. area chain now franchising nationally with more than 120 signed affiliates
- Pickle Haus in Algonquin, Illinois in the Chicago northern suburbs.
- Pickleball Kingdom, the largest existing franchisor of pickleball clubs
- Dan Jenkins, a Pickleball Kingdom – North Texas franchisee building an indoor facility in Plano, with others planned
- Performance Pickleball RVA (aka PPBRVA), which opened in January in Richmond, Virginia’s West End
- Chicken N Pickle, the famous restaurant and pickleball chain with locations from Indiana to Las Vegas
- The Picklr, the Utah based chain that’s now franchising nationally and making a huge splash
- Pickleballerz, an indoor facility in Chantilly, Virginia that was in operation pre-Covid, well before the pickleball boom started
- Bangers & Dinks, an indoor facility in Richmond, Virginia’s Midlothian suburb
- Crush Yard, a fantastic space now open in Mount Pleasant, S.C., part of the greater Charleston area
- Ace Pickleball Club, a franchise model that has just opened its first two locations in Roswell, Georgia and Fort Wayne, Indiana
- Pickle and Social, which just opened a massive space in Gwinnett, Georgia.
Their experiences and approaches are sprinkled throughout the article. Interviewing these operators has led to some fascinating discussions about the direction and choices their businesses have made.