Mixing business with pleasure iPlay America founder aims to lure parents' companies to its corporate event space

Andrew Sheldon//July 4, 2016//

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A few years after turning a large property he couldn’t sell into iPlay America, a successful indoor theme park for children, Bob McDaid had a second good idea.

Market the Freehold property to the parents of the kids who were coming to the 160,000-square-foot location for fun.

McDaid realized just catering to families was leaving the park underutilized for large portions of the week. So, he began catering to businesses.

“Everything we do and the packages we offer appeal to more than just those 5- to 13-year-olds,” he said. “It’s important to find business that hits the other times of the week, when the kids are in school.”

So, he began advertising the park as a place to host corporate events.

So far, it’s working.

Corporate events make up just under 10 percent of iPlay’s business (by way of comparison, birthday parties make up approximately 15 percent). But McDaid believes he can grow the corporate event portion of the business to double the revenue generated by birthday parties.

“With the amount of available days that we don’t have general public here, that corporate business model can double what birthdays do only because, not counting the summer where we have camps in here every day, we don’t open until 3 p.m. Monday through Friday,” he said.

McDaid’s goal was to grow this corporate clientele organically out of iPlay’s existing customers.

“One of the ways we’ve been able to attract businesses for business here is really by cultivating the guests who already come here that own businesses, work for companies or in HR that may have had an experience here with a birthday party,” he said. “We’ll pitch to them that this is really a great place to host a company or team-building event.”

To that end, the very thing that drives the younger demographic to iPlay is also a big draw for those hosting corporate events.

“Roughly 75 percent of the corporate business we do want to incorporate some aspect of the park experience, whether it’s just some game cards or laser tag,” he said. “It’s something that’s out of the box and not the traditional hotel with meeting rooms, and we want to add a little fun in everything we do.

A happy accident
IPlay America was founded almost by accident. Or, perhaps, desperation.
In 2007, Bob McDaid was a developer with a property in Freehold he couldn’t seem to sell. Then he recognized an open market in an unexpected industry and began to see the building as an opportunity.
“It was an old, ugly shopping center in a really good town and location, but — in 2008, when the commercial real estate world came to a loud crash — we had to make a decision of what to do with this 160,000-square-foot building,” McDaid said. “Then I started thinking about family amusement (because) there was never a place, when my kids were young, to go that was clean, safe and different.”
By 2011, McDaid had turned the shopping center into iPlay America, an indoor theme park complete with rides and hundreds of arcade games.
“I thought, ‘What if we could put a family theme park in a box?’ ” he said. “We could have it all indoors and create an experience where parents and kids want to come.”

“It’s something to break the ice and blow off some steam before going back to their meetings.”

The park’s offerings can be coupled with event spaces that range in size and can accommodate groups ranging from 15 to 3,000 people while providing full food and beverage services.

“There are not many places in our area that have 30,000 feet of contiguous space where we could seat, comfortably, over a thousand people in a banquet and have a cocktail reception that’s set up comfortably,” he said.

As iPlay expands its corporate clientele, McDaid also is hoping to grow his business with another coveted demographic: millennials.

“We have a lot of things for millennials, and are looking to have at least one night a week that’s going to be 21-and-over only in the building, and we may do some ‘Monday Night Football’ nights,” McDaid said.

Another offering McDaid has found to draw millennials to iPlay is mixed martial arts, or MMA, events.

“Our televised MMA fights are really busy, but we started doing live MMA in the event center, and that brought 1,000 people the first time we did it,” he said. “We’ve got three more events booked for this year, as well as some kickboxing events.”

After establishing iPlay as a family-friendly destination, McDaid’s continuing to work and make sure the park is known for many things.

“We try to be diverse and bring different entertainment here so it’s not just a place for mom and dad to bring the kids,” he said. “It’s a place where mom and dad can leave the kids (in the park) and go see a show, or mom and dad my even come without the kids.”

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