North Bay bowling businesses are rebounding from pandemic shutdowns

North Bay bowling centers are making a comeback from pandemic shutdowns as people find a need to recreate and even to return to regular nights at the lanes.

“With new people coming to bowl, we have all-new league people. We had leagues last year, but regular bowlers were not ready to come back,” said Jim Decker of the 50-lane Double Decker Lanes in Rohnert Park, the area’s largest bowling alley about the pandemic shutdowns.

California public health officers ordered “nonessential” businesses to close starting in mid-March 2020, and for recreation businesses that stretched, with a few periods of reopening, until April 2021.

Now Decker said his facility’s league bowling revenue is 20% ahead of pre-pandemic levels, after being 10% below 2019 just after reopening. He took over the business 30 years ago after the death of his father, who started the operation in 1975.

“Since we reopened, revenues are ahead of what they were before the pandemic,” Decker said. “People were looking for places where they could get together with their family and friends, have a beer but not be in a bar atmosphere, and feel like they're doing something constructive.”

Like Decker operators of Napa Bowling Center, Windsor Bowl and Poppy Bank Epicenter in Santa Rosa report a flood of more business.

For Decker, the return of bowlers comes as he makes his own transition. In late October, a deal was announced to sell the family-owned Double Decker to Richmond, Virginia-based Bowlero Corp.  The deal for North Bay location is set to close Dec. 12. The sale price wasn’t disclosed.

“The timing is right for my family,” Decker told the North Bay Business Journal late last month after the deal was announced. His longtime general manager is planning to retire, and Decker’s two sons aren’t interested in running it.

“There is no one to pass the ball to,” he said.

That was a similar motivation behind the sale, also to Bowlero, of Stars Recreation Center in Vacaville, the North Bay’s second-largest bowling center. That’s according to Dan Sousa, part of a family business that opened multiple alleys in Solano and Napa counties.

In 1998, serial entrepreneur Ernie Sousa and his son, Ken, opened the 40-lane Stars, a 73,000-square-foot facility at 155 Browns Valley Parkway. After the father died early last year, Ken Sousa operated it until the Stars purchase deal closed nearly a year ago.

“He didn’t have any sons to pass it on to,” said Dan Sousa, his cousin and owner of Napa Bowling Center.

Before opening bowling alleys in Fairfield and Vacaville, later merged into the Stars location, Ernie Sousa had opened the Napa facility in 1946. A year later, what was at the time called Napa Bowl was relocated from downtown to its current location at 494 Soscol Ave. From five lanes initially, the facility was expanded in the 1960s to accommodate another 27 lanes, bringing the total count to 32.

Dan Sousa said during the repeated, months-long closures of Napa Bowling Center and other recreational facilities in California under state pandemic restrictions, he received numerous offers to sell the 2-acre property. It’s located just blocks from downtown and along the Soscol commercial corridor that is being pursued for redevelopment for a new Kohl’s department store and other ventures.

“A lot of (bowling centers) and a lot of restaurants closed, and we were balancing on the end of the rope ourselves,” said Dan Sousa, 69. He is looking to his son to continue the business.

One complementary revenue stream at bowling centers is food. Though the Lane 33 Café at Napa Bowling Center isn’t any longer operated by chef Alex Soto, who earned a Michelin star for his take on Mexican food, the restaurant is back. Michael “Spicy Mike” Villalow, formerly of Olive Tree restaurant on Silverado Trail in Napa Valley, has come in to run Spicy Mike’s Lane 33, focusing on expected alley fare: hamburgers, hot dogs and French fries.

At Napa Bowling Center, Sousa has seen a business uptick after reopening, but that has ebbed a bit since early October. He’s hoping that the historical pattern of peak bowling business in November, December and January recurs.

“Rain always increases bowling,” Sousa said. “It’s the No. 1 indoor sport in the U.S. for families.”

Two key revenue streams for a bowling-anchored centers — before considering expanded attractions such as gaming and foodservice — are leagues and events.

At Napa Bowling Center, the events business has picked up, with the last weeks of this year getting booked up for large parties for wineries and restaurants.

And in northern Sonoma County, Windsor Bowl is gearing up to host a number of events in the next couple of months, and booking requests are coming in at a rate of a half-dozen a day.

James and Molly Pattison run the 30-employee, 24-lane center, which will be the last independently owned bowling center in the county after Double Decker sells.

“Things have gotten back to normal-plus,” James Pattison said.

But normal seems not to be returning to Country Club Bowl in San Rafael. The city red-tagged the facility during the pandemic closure, and a proposal was submitted late last year to convert the property to 70 condominiums.

But at the multifaceted west Santa Rosa entertainment venue Poppy Bank Epicenter, bowling activity has picked up with more party and organizational team-building event bookings across the facility since the reopening, according to Andrew Kilsheimer, assistant general manager.

The name for the 16-lane section recently was changed from Seven10 Social to Chuck’s Bowling Bar after remodeling that pulled out the carpet and put in a dart board and pool tables.

“Now it’s one area, instead of a couple of different areas,” Kilsheimer said.

Bowlero’s financial reports tell a similar tale of a rebounding industry. Revenue last fiscal year, ended July 3, was nearly $911.7 million, up 130.7% from a year before and 31.4% from fiscal 2019, before the pandemic. Revenue from bowling centers open before the pandemic was up 19.4%.

Average revenue for U.S. bowling centers pre-pandemic was $2.5 million annually, according to estimates by the special-purpose acquisition company, or SPAC, that took Bowlero public at the end of last year. By comparison, Double Decker Lanes most recently grossed $3.2 million in revenue, but that center at 50 lanes has about twice the number as the national average.

Bowlero has been interested in Double Decker Lanes for about five years, and this deal has been in the works throughout the summer, Decker said.

Last fiscal year, it acquired 27 centers and built two. In fiscal 2021, Bowlero acquired 22 centers nationwide and built four, according to company financial reports. In the past four months, it has entered nine definitive agreements and closed on seven of those so far.

The company owns over 300 bowling centers, mostly in the U.S. but with some in Canada and Mexico. It has the largest share of centers — roughly 8% — of the estimated 3,400 independently owned facilities in the U.S. It owns nearly one-quarter of the California centers.

Bowlero also owns the Bowlmor and AMF brands, the latter of which is what the Petaluma bowling center operates under. In 2019, the company acquired the Professional Bowlers Association.

Jeff Quackenbush covers wine, construction and real estate. Before coming to the Business Journal in 1999, he wrote for Bay City News Service in San Francisco. Reach him at jquackenbush@busjrnl.com or 707-521-4256.