The Royal Palms Shuffleboard Club.  Your home for biscuits, tangs and all-around fun with your troop.   [00:00:00] We always say that if we understood how much risk we were taking when we started, probably never would have done it. It was truly hubris and naiveté that got this place going because anybody who knew what they were doing would not have. [00:01:45] Hi, I am Suzanne Lynn and this is the Brooklyn made show, and today we are going to talk with Ashley Albert of Royal Palms shuffleboard. It started out in Brooklyn and it's expanded into Chicago, but if you think the game of shuffleboard is only for old people, well hold tight because Ashley is going to make you think again. Royal Palms it's a cool combination of gaming and a bar and a hangout, it's all fun all wrapped up together. Ashley and her partner are trailblazers, and I cannot wait to jump in and get chatting with her. So grab your virtual shuffleboard stick because Ashley is on deck, tell us about yourself. [00:02:26] Yes, so I am the co-owner of the Royal Palms shuffleboard club, and that is a giant vintage Florida's gamed shuffleboard bar. I have one in New York and I have one in Chicago, and I'm working on building a couple more. And it is like the very first nightclub shuffleboard bar, so it sort of looks like a bowling alley but it's vintage deck shuffleboard, like cruise ship style shuffleboard. [00:02:57] That is fascinating, that's cool. How did you come up with this idea? [00:03:01] So my business partner, he's one of my best friends and my holiday gift to him in 2011 was to become certified barbecue judges. So I flew us down to Florida to get our meet certification, it happens all over the world but it just so happened that the one that we picked was in Florida and I'm from Miami, I grew up there. So we went to the middle of nowhere Central Florida, and while we were there he said I won Florida we've got to play shuffleboard, he remembered playing with his grandparents at century village in Palm Beach when he was a kid. And so we did some research and we found the world's largest shuffleboard club in St. Petersburg Florida, and on a lark, we rented a convertible and we drove the three hours to go to St. Petersburg and play this a city-owned Municipal Park. And it turned out that once a month, like a handful of St. Petersburg hipsters would get together and play on these yawns courts, and they happen to be there the day that we were there. And they shared their beer with us, and they taught us how to play, and they were playing music and we were like this is the coolest thing ever and this was still in Brooklyn. But we both had great jobs, we weren't looking for a new job I was doing voiceover living my life of leisure, and we came back up to New York just for fun, mostly pretending because we didn't think we were going to find a space big enough and affordable enough and then a good enough location in New York to do this. We were just on the weekend go look at real estate, you know just pretending that we were interested in opening a shuffleboard Club and we walked into our space and I turned to Jonathan my business partner and I said okay, if we're serious about this we have to take this space, that if we don't take this space then we know we're not serious about this. Like this is how we know whether we're kidding or not, because this space at this price in this location is just not going to be here if in three months. And we go you know what maybe we should open a shuffleboard Club, and we didn't have a business plan or any money raised or anything, and we just plunked our life savings down on the deposit for the lease, and then we scrambled about raising many millions of dollars, it's a 20,000 square foot space. So we only said that if we understood how much risk we were taking when we started, we probably never would have done. It was truly hubris and naiveté that got this place going because anybody who knew what they were doing would not have done it this way. [00:05:37] What a story, I mean you make people dream like this can happen. [00:05:42] Yes. [00:05:43] I mean shuffleboard in New York, so how popular is it? [00:05:46] It's wildly popular, it's crazy you know I think we know it was a good idea, you know I get invited on the panels and stuff to talk about risk and I think I am good at taking risks, but I'm also super cautious. I think I'm only taking risks that in my mind are not risky, and so I think we thought it was a good idea, and we people would like it, but I don't think we would never be in the hospitality before, I don't think we realized how hard of an industry it was and how lucky. And we do understand how lucky we've got, it's a different club on different nights so on Monday and Tuesday's we have leagues, and we have a hundred and twenty teams in our league in both cities, so about a thousand people playing between Monday and Tuesday night in each place. And then Wednesdays and Thursdays we do a lot of corporate events things like that, and then Fridays and Saturdays it is a big bump and night club, it's like five hour way to entertain and there I never I bat fully out of the building too old and not cool enough to be at my club on the weekend. And then Sunday's all of our league members get to play for free all week, and they know better than to come on the weekends. So usually on Sundays a lot of regulars who are there practicing and a lot of locals you know drinking Bloody Mary’s and listening to reggae, and that's probably I love going to leak nights and Sunday nights are also pretty fantastic. [00:07:17] So you've intrigued me, I want to know more about Friday and Saturday nights, I mean this is a bar where you can play shuffleboard. Actually, it's a good question, is it a bar where you can play shuffleboard or is it shuffleboard where you can get a drink? [00:07:29] That's funny, so that's why we needed such a big building because we were like we don't want to be a bar that has shuffleboard, we want to be a shuffleboard club that has a bar and shuffleboard courts are six feet by 60 feet, it is a ludicrous waste of real estate. So we have ten regulation-sized courts in New York and Chicago, and Chicago I also have one on the roof and you know what's great about it is it's this giant space, and someone told me once well you built a bar for introverts. I'm not much of a drinker and I never got to hang up going to bar, so it's ridiculous that I own this giant you know crowded nightclub. But because there's all this space in the middle of it that's not used, it never feels crazy packed and uncomfortable in there. And because it's so big there's like little things to do in every area, you know we have board games and there could be someone in the corner playing Settlers of Cathan for three hours, while somebody's on the other side dancing to the DJ, well somebody's getting food from the food truck like you can kind of choose your own adventure there which I think is really cool. [00:08:46] How do you get a business plan from going from Florida to this humongous conglomerate that you've got running now, I mean you must have an amazing team. [00:08:56] So the business plan itself it's a funny thing because obviously we didn't know anything about any of this and it was like okay well we have to raise money, we don't know how much money to raise, you know really we were smart enough at that point to ask anyone who would make eye contact with us to go to coffee, and we would just sit down with anybody from you know a restaurant owner to the person who was a napkin distributor, to someone who made whiskey to anybody who would talk to us we would talk to them. And so we really kind of collated a bunch of information that way, and then we borrowed someone else's business plan from a totally different industry, I don't even remember whose it was. But we just took what the subjects were, like what goes into a business I'm like okay so in one section we need to talk about the neighborhood, and then in one section we need to talk about our competition, and in once section we needed to talk about the problem we're solving and so we just figured out what went into a business plan and then we wrote it. But we wrote it very flowery and transported and we had colored pictures and images and funny things, and you know it wasn't this staid, professional business plan but as a result it really imparted and evoke the sort of transported feeling we were trying to explain about what we were hoping to do with the club. And the mayor's office in New York City told me that it was the second-best business plan they had ever read, and I was like huh really wat was the first business plan? [00:10:37] We talked about where you are on personality, I'm pretty sure you're an achiever just by that statement, I'm going to go with achiever, yes. [00:10:46] I think that yes you're probably right, I think I mentioned that I have under lead singer this children stand and we met with great success but it was never quite enough. Someone said to me what why is it that unless you become the Beatles you will not experience this as being successful, and people ask me all the time you know with the club like oh my gosh are you just so happy, I mean it's just crazy and I'm like no I'm not happy, I'm Jewish. Like are you kidding, I'm waiting for it to be over I will be happy when we turn the keys back in and we walk away and nobody died, and we lived through it and it didn't run down, and we didn't get sued, once it's over I can go huh that went okay. [00:11:36] But you were planning to expand, because you're fearless, so whatever you say I believe it's going to be done plus. [00:11:44] Yes, you know I'm single, I'm in my forties, I spend all my money on my dog and he's got everything he needs, the kids got everything they need, they do not need any more toys or food or anything. So at some point you're like what is it that's moving me to do this