Unexpected, ridiculous joy: the Flight Club story

Unexpected, ridiculous joy might be the Flight Club tagline, but the mantra that underpins everything they do is even simpler than that: by friends, for friends.

It all began when a game of darts at a Devon pub caught the attention of co-founders and friends Steve Moore and Paul Barham. The game was loud, exciting, and hard to ignore, inspiring them to create a place where groups of friends could get together.   

“We spent years developing the product, the brand, the games,” says Juliette Keyte, marketing director at Red Engine, the team behind the social darts concept and its sister brand, Electric Shuffle.

“We wanted to make sure we were building something for our customers that they really wanted.”

With venues across 10 cities and three countries, Red Engine has delivered traditional pastimes reinvigorated with 21^st century technology - supported by a solid food and drinks offering.

Flight Club took home the Best Concept Award at MCA’s Retailers’ Retailer Awards this year, beating out contenders including Dishoom and Franco Manca. According to Keyte, it’s because the core company values of innovation and togetherness run through everything the brand does.

“It blew us away to be named alongside the likes of those brands. We have a lot of respect for those operators,” she says.

“It’s not just about going from launch to launch. Whilst entering new cities and communities is important to us, we want to do it in the right way and give just as much love and care to every site.

“I think one of our business goals internally is to ensure the customer experience remains spectacular.

“Flight Club and Electric Shuffle are very much our focus; there’s no third sneaky concept in the pipeline.”

Flight Club has sites in London, Birmingham, Manchester, Cheltenham, Leeds, and Bristol, with Cardiff set to launch this autumn. It has also secured a site in Glasgow while adding Dublin, operated by franchised partner Loyola Group, as well as Atlanta, Vegas, and Denver - operated by State of Play Hospitality - to their portfolio of international locations. Each site features a design and tech created and curated in-house.

Every site has little details and curiosities that pay homage to its location, but every site will ensure the customers knows they’re in a Flight Club. As Keyte explains, the brand spends “a lot of money” on its venues, with its central team overseeing international venues as well as UK ones.

Just as important is revisiting and reinvesting in older sites to keep refining the experience. The team invested in renovating parts of its Manchester venue this year because “we felt we could make it better,” Keyte says.

“We changed where the DJ was, where the reception area was… a customer wouldn’t notice these things, but it’s important to us.

“You’ll know you’re in a Flight Club because of the look and feel, but they’re never exactly the same… we don’t do cookie-cutter venues.”

The design is a unique harmony between a fairground and an old-school pub, with hidden nooks and crannies waiting to be discovered. Every element is carefully chosen, from the wallpaper to the chairs, but of utmost importance is the bar.

“First and foremost, we’re a bar. And we’re a pretty good bar,” Keyte asserts.

“But people think, it’s just a darts bar. We’re so much more than that.”

With venues modelled after playgrounds, customers can walk in for anything from brunch to a game of darts, or just for a pint. And the target customer, as Keyte emphasises, could be just about anybody.

“Everything we do is focused on targeting women, whether it’s making sure we’ve got seats, coat hooks, and great cocktails,” she explains.

“However, we see generations of families coming in. We’ve had great-grandfathers coming in with their families, and that’s a beautiful thing to see.”

The brand has been a hit for team-building activities, too. As Keyte says, it’s a “great leveller”.

“Drinks after work are great, but sometimes you’ve got a big cross-section of ages, interests, backgrounds…it can get a bit dry.

“If you’ve got a game to play, it’s a great leveller. Everyone gets completely immersed in it.

“Nobody’s on their phones when they’re with us, and we’re really proud of that.”

That’s why the brand launched Flight Club Stories in 2019, which captures and packages highlights and emails them to the customer the day after their booking. Stories was a way to get more people talking about the brand on social, something customers often forgot to do while they were immersed in the game – which Keyte acknowledges is a good problem to have.

Flight Club also introduced a new game last year and revamped their food and drinks menu, which still includes sharing platters rather than individual entrées because “it’s all about sharing and bringing people together”.

“One of our biggest learnings is that people are going out less often, but when they do, they’re looking for something that is meaningful to them,” she says.

“They’re more considerate with their time and we’re respectful of that. We want to give them that spectacular experience and offer something different each time.”

The brand made its way through the pandemic with a similar philosophy, with the Red Engine team relooking at its games and negotiating deals with landlords. While customers kept coming in, post-lockdown rules that restricted socialising to groups of six and fewer households drove the average group size down to four.

“We doubled down on our development and innovation and regrouped to make sure our central team is set up in the best way to support all of our venues,” Keyte says.

“All our landlords appreciate us being there. In Victoria, we added to the overall footfall of the neighbourhood, so strong relationships absolutely helped us.

“Fortunately our sites were ironically built for social distancing…the playing areas provided that two-metre distancing in a comfortable way.”

With the first quarter of this financial year outperforming 2019 and new sites trading ahead of expectations, Keyte reports Flight Club is ready to take on current pressures facing the industry, whether it’s staffing shortages, rising food costs, or the cost of living crisis.

The price for a game of darts is £10 per person and has remained that way for years, with no plans to raise it anytime soon, she says. While offering ’fizz hour’ prices and a diverse menu for all price points remains crucial, the focus is to keep giving customers a quality experience and value for their money.

“It’s pretty tough out there, with the cost of living. We want to be a place where people can escape and have a good time,” Keyte says.

Red Engine’s growth strategy relies on maintaining that value. The brand looks to take Electric Shuffle to every city with a Flight Club, and is eyeing major cities like Liverpool and Newcastle, alongside further expansion in Scotland.

“It’s our ambition to open around 12 sites globally including our franchised partners, with about four to five of those being in the UK and split across Flight Club and Electric Shuffle,” Keyte says.

“Certainly we lead with Flight Club and follow with Electric Shuffle…but there’s no favourite child there.”

Currently in the process of refining its future portfolio, the brand is also on the lookout for expansion in smaller cities – following the success of its Cheltenham site – and more neighbourhood locations such as Wimbledon or Clapham, following Flight Club Islington’s success.

The concept will also expand further in the US, with competitive socialising only just taking off in the country. Launching in the US was both an opportunity and a challenge because of an audience with little knowledge of darts, but with six sites and counting, Keyte is confident the brand can capitalise on the untapped potential.

“Vegas will be a huge moment for us globally; the brand recognition there will be a major turning point for us,” she says.

“To do well in London is great, but you can’t get too much of an ego. You can’t get too much of an ego in hospitality.”

The central team works closely with its franchised partners, including State of Play Hospitality in the US, to ensure learnings from each individual location and city are applied globally. Furthermore, every site globally is curated by the in-house design team based in London.

“It’s about making sure for every single site that whether it’s owned by us or a franchised partner, just as much care and love goes into it.”

“Our central team should also be able to support it…there’s no point in us signing up for Hong Kong or Dubai if we can’t deliver the same spectacular experience.”

As the brand expands, it looks to competitors both in terms of experiential concepts and overall experience. Keyte points to Puttshack, Swingers, Dishoom, and Hawksmoor as “feel-good operators” and inspirations.

Despite those competitors and plenty more, she’s certain Flight Club has hit the bull’s eye. The slogan ‘unexpected, ridiculous joy’ came from customer reviews.

“If you walk into our venues any time of the day, you’ll hear people screaming with joy – or frustration.

“It’s this joy you can’t really capture anywhere else. That’s what we try to deliver each day.”