Wonderplay & Coffee Launch

Focus: Market research, audience segmentation, offering and pricing design, POS selection, channel strategy, web presence

Challenge: Wonderplay & Coffee, a new indoor play space and coffee shop in Chicago, needed to open fast. When we started there were no event packages defined, no clear picture of who the primary audiences were, no way to take bookings or payments, and nothing public about the business at all.

Discovery and Scoping

Audience Definition: Researched and defined Wonderplay's primary audiences, separating drop-in play visitors from event and party bookings. A parent booking a birthday three weeks out is nothing like a parent looking for somewhere to go this afternoon. Everything after this was built around that difference.

Offering Design: Worked with the owners to define the event packages: what was included at each tier, how they'd be priced, and how they'd be presented so a parent planning a birthday could decide quickly.

Path to Purchase: Mapped how people would actually get through the door. How they'd find Wonderplay, how they'd book, and what the site needed to do so that booking didn't require a phone call.

Systems Research: Evaluated point-of-sale options against how the business would really run, with drop-in admissions and scheduled event bookings moving through one system. Recommended the platform they launched on.

Strategy

Competitive Analysis: Researched comparable play spaces and event venues in the area to find where Wonderplay had room of its own. That shaped how the packages were positioned and priced.

Pre-Launch Capture: Built a pre-launch landing page before the full site existed, so email collection could start while the space was still under construction. By opening day there was a list to announce to.

Channel Architecture: Proposed a five-channel plan covering social, email, paid, community partnerships, and the POS itself, with each channel designed to feed the others. Mapped the local parenting groups, kid-focused businesses, and neighborhood events where Wonderplay's audience already gathers into an outreach strategy for the owners to run.

Results

Wonderplay recouped 100% of its startup costs within three months of opening. The pre-launch landing page had built an email list before the doors opened, so opening day went out to people who were already waiting rather than to nobody. Packages and admissions were bookable from the first day.