Conifox Adventure Park was founded in 2017 as an outdoor attractions venue offering go-karting, swings, jumping pillows, and ride-on tractors. Since its inception, the park has evolved into a bustling community hub with over 250,000 annual visitors, now offering indoor soft play, seasonal events, birthday parties, and more.
Business Manager Jim Cran oversees the park's financial and strategic management alongside the owner, James Gammell. The limitations of their previous system drove their decision to switch to ROLLER’s modern, cloud-based adventure park management software. “Our previous system was fairly archaic. It was old school; it was run off in-house servers. Administrative tasks were quite a nightmare,” says Jim. Conifox chose ROLLER because of its reputation within the industry, cloud-based infrastructure, and easy-to-use online bookings.
312 hours of party admin time saved
One of the standout improvements since adopting ROLLER has been managing the Park's busy party schedule, which includes 24 parties each weekend across three party rooms. Previously burdened by manual and paper-based party bookings, Conifox has more than halved the administrative time required for organizing each party. "Party admin time has decreased from about 30-45 minutes to 15 minutes for the majority of parties,” Jim explains, underscoring the efficiency gains that have allowed staff to focus more on the party guest experience rather than paperwork. With a minimum of 15 minutes saved per party, that amounts to 312 hours of party admin time saved over a year!
Party admin time has decreased from about 30-45 minutes to 15 minutes for the majority of parties.
Jim Cran
Business Manager
Enhancing food and beverage operations
Choosing a venue management platform that could facilitate food and beverage (F&B) operations was critical for Conifox. “You'd be surprised how many ticketing and POS systems don't do food and beverage,” Jim notes. Conifox leverages ROLLER’s intuitive point of sale software to manage their multiple cafes and bars around the venue. This has streamlined operational efficiency, especially given the high proportion of casual staff members who need to get up and running quickly and easily move between the various POS devices around the venue. Conifox can easily edit its POS layouts in ROLLER to suit the different menu items available at each F&B outlet. "The POS layout is nice and modern. The staff get to grips with it pretty quickly,” says Jim.
You'd be surprised how many ticketing and POS systems don't do food and beverage.
Jim Cran
Business Manager
Jim and his staff have peace of mind knowing that orders will reach the kitchen, regardless of where the order is placed in the venue. Kitchen staff receive a production docket from their receipt printer in the kitchen once an order is placed through POS.
Efficiency in F&B operations is vital to maintaining this valuable revenue stream. At Conifox, most guests will purchase something from the menu during their visit, significantly increasing revenue per head. “We more or less double our revenue with food and beverage,” says Jim.
Setting capacity limits for different venue areas
For venues like Conifox, with a multitude of attractions with different space and time limits, having a platform that automates capacity management is critical. Conifox offers timed sessions for its experiences and attractions, and each area, from the indoor Activity Center to the outdoor Adventure Park, is configured in ROLLER with set capacity limits. When tickets are sold, ROLLER automatically caps ticket sales at this limit, eliminating the stress of over-booking while still ensuring Conifox can sell as many tickets as possible.
It also means that Conifox always has a view of how they’re tracking to capacity limits and can allocate staff across venue areas accordingly. “It allows us to see what demand is like so we can staff up accordingly,“ says Jim.
Jim elaborates on the importance of having precise capacity management measures in place, especially during peak events like their Christmas Experience, where they ran three ‘Santa Claus visits’ sessions simultaneously, each with a capacity of 25 people every 15 minutes. This precise scheduling ensured a frictionless and memorable experience for visitors, avoided overcrowding, and maximized revenue.
Year-round revenue
ROLLER also helps Conifox manage seasonal peaks and troughs in demand. They can easily configure different price points in ROLLER to increase admissions even during quieter periods. “We do off-peak and on-peak ticket prices for the Activity Centre and Adventure Park,” says Jim. Conifox sees a surge in sales around Christmas time, especially with its events program, so adjusting pricing accordingly is essential. “For events, we do variable pricing. The first weekend will be cheapest, the next weekend will be slightly more expensive, and then Christmas Eve will be the highest price,” adds Jim.
Weather is also a significant consideration for the outdoor Adventure Park. This was a big challenge before expanding their offering to include indoor play. “The business was highly dependent on good weather, which in Scotland you don’t get that much of,” comments Jim. Now, they can easily offset the impact of bad weather by encouraging guests to visit the indoor Activity Center instead, or if it’s nice weather, they can quickly scale up their staffing so they have enough people working outside. Plus, if they need to cancel an event due to bad weather, ROLLER helps them manage that. “You can download all the customer details quite easily and then bulk email them directly,” says Jim. This flexibility ensures that Conifox maintains high service levels and revenue year-round.
From halving party booking times to refining F&B operations, the benefits of ROLLER to Conifox are clear. Looking ahead, Conifox is planning to appeal to a broader audience, as well as scale up its existing spaces to increase capacity further.
Talk to us about how ROLLER can help you increase revenue, streamline operations, and deliver exceptional guest experiences.
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