“I don’t have a target group”: Ruben Ramspeck on the first year of Club Birdies

Ask Ruben Ramspeck whether the first year of Club Birdies went the way he had drawn it up, and the answer arrives without much hesitation.

“Honestly, everything turned out differently, looking back. Because what we really have is three businesses in one location, and bringing those together comes with a lot of challenges.”

That is the sentence the rest of the year hangs off. Club Birdies is not a golf venue with a kitchen attached. It is a restaurant, a bar and an indoor golf venue sharing one address, one team and one set of opening hours, and most of what Ruben describes about year one comes back to that.

A few weeks open, and completely full

Twelve months produces a lot of moments. One of them he can date exactly.

“The 25th of September. We had been open a few weeks and we were completely full for the first time. In my enthusiasm I had just accepted every single reservation that came in. That day we sold 32 kilos of côte de boeuf. That day was unreal.”

It is a good story precisely because it is not a clean one. A fully booked venue a few weeks after opening is the outcome every operator wants, and it arrived before anyone had worked out what the building could actually absorb.

Would he do things differently if he started again?

“Not that much, because you can’t prepare for everything. What we built with Birdies didn’t exist in the Netherlands yet. There was no existing concept to copy.”

Twelve bays, and a fight for the space

Twelve simulators is a lot by Dutch standards. It was not the original plan.

“For the first version of the concept we were at eight bays. By the time we moved to this location I knew it had to be twelve. We needed an extra section of the building for that. I fought hard for it, and in the end we got it. And with that we immediately had the largest indoor venue in the Benelux.”

“Who is your target audience?”

The question came up early, and repeatedly, from investors.

“Investors asked me that a lot in the beginning. Who is your target audience? And I would always say, quite stubbornly, I don’t have one.”

He means it as a description rather than a provocation. With three businesses under one roof, the room fills up with people who have very little in common.

“You get corporate outings, large groups who come for the golf and the restaurant equally. And you get three generations of one family standing in a bay together. That diversity is remarkable. It’s what makes it beautiful and challenging at the same time.”

Not a seasonal sport

Seasonality is the structural question hanging over every indoor venue in Northern Europe. Ruben rejects the framing, while acknowledging the market has not caught up with him yet.

“I don’t see indoor golf as a seasonal sport. But that is something that still has to grow. Look at a gym. You go there all year round, don’t you? You go there to move. You come here to golf.”

The relationship with outdoor golf, in his telling, is additive rather than competitive.

“We can offer facilities that are often harder for an outdoor club to provide. It complements each other.” Club Birdies has a partnership with Golfclub Amsterdam.

Visitors from further away than you would expect

Amsterdam is the obvious catchment. It is not the whole picture.

“Definitely from outside the city too. Towards Castricum and Alkmaar, but also from Belgium, partly because there is no venue there that can host a hundred people.”

Then there is a category most venue owners would not have forecast: golf tourists.

“People who are in the Netherlands for a few days on business and want to play. On the outdoor courses that can be difficult, because you need a handicap card. At an indoor venue anyone can walk in. We regularly see Americans coming here for exactly that reason.”

The first indoor PGA Academy in the Netherlands

Club Birdies was the first venue in the country to carry the certification. Ruben’s reasoning is less about the badge than about what sits behind it.

“If you’re going to do something like that, you want to do it properly. A certificate proves that you have the knowledge in house and that you’re offering a certain level of quality. And it adds to the enjoyment of the sport. Nobody enjoys losing.”

Is it still a good moment to open an indoor golf venue?

The market is growing quickly enough that the question is worth asking directly.

“Yes, I think so, provided you have a good concept. If you look at Asia, eighty percent of golf there is played indoors. We still have that development ahead of us here.”

He reaches for gaming as the comparison. “Look at how big EA Sports is, or World of Warcraft, where an entire arena sells out. And alongside that, working together with outdoor courses matters.”

His advice to anyone weighing it up is noticeably less enthusiastic than his description of the market, which is probably the point.

“Patience, I think. You have to be in it for the long haul. And you have to genuinely believe in your own concept. From the outside it all looks wonderful, and people assume that the moment you open your doors you’re full. That’s a romanticisation of reality.”

On ambition

Asked where Club Birdies wants to be in a few years, he offers a single sentence.

“What I can say about that is that every commercial business has the ambition to grow, and so do we.”

Then he stops talking and smiles.

What the market is still missing

The last question produced the most immediate answer of the conversation.

“Competition. Much more competition, both within venues and between them. The way you have the Eredivisie in football, or the outdoor golf leagues. Playing against a team from another centre. That would be brilliant, and there is demand for it.”

It is a fair diagnosis. Indoor golf in the Netherlands has spent its first phase building venues. Almost nothing yet connects them to each other.

At Findoori we are already working on that: golfers can find the indoor golf venues of the Netherlands and Germany in one place. Soon we take the next step.

Club Birdies is listed on Findoori. You can find opening hours, pricing and booking details on the Club Birdies venue page.