How Lone Star Rage Built a $600K Rage Room Business on Donated Junk and Got No Deal

Alright. Justin Sorensen, ninety one seventy. You commented and asked for an escape room. I'm gonna do you three better. We've got a rage room, a paint splatter room, ax throwing, and an escape room all in one here in Austin, Texas at Lone Star Rage and Entertainment.

You can come break some things. You get to let out all your anger, your frustration, your stress. I had a bad day at work. Come and see us.

Family business launched right around COVID. Their early revenue shocked me.

The year after COVID, And people were let out of their house and everybody was really fired up. We did right around 600 ks.

But it's gotten tougher since then.

The economy right now, it's it's tough out there for everybody, right? Like inflation has been so bad. Gas prices are so high. It's like, how do we get that extra dollar from you?

Then if their ideas plus my cash can help turn growth around, offer to invest on the spot. How do you guys go from 500,000 a year in revenue to 1,000,000 a year in revenue?

Hey, how are you? Hey, good. How are you? I'm Nathan.

I'm Jason. Jason, good to meet you.

Nice to meet you. This is your creation,

I think so. Yes, it is. Lone Star Rage and Entertainment. You can come break some things. You get to let out all your anger, your frustration, your stress. Had a bad day at work. Come and see us. That's what we're here for.

I see just like this pile of old TVs and printers over here when I walk in. Is literally people drop off their old stuff and then you break it?

Yeah. Exactly.

Give me a sense of your customers. Is this like a school group or who pays for this kind of thing?

Everybody. Believe it or not. Our base clientele is actually women, believe it or not. Okay. And that's because they're better planners than men. But yeah, it's probably 60% women. The guys, they'll tag along with their wives for a date night. That's one of our packages, is date night.

Really? Yeah. What's your most popular? I saw when I was walking in, like divorce parties and date night and like corporate building, like team building stuff. What's your most popular client?

We do a lot of date nights, you know, and then the divorce parties that started as like a little sarcastic jab. But yeah, it's absolutely a thing. They get to come and get rid of some of those bad memories.

It's the anti bachelorette Yeah, absolutely. How does pricing work? What do you charge for this kind of thing?

So the rage room's either $40 $50 per person, and that's just dependent on the package that they choose. So for example, our rough day package, it's $40 a person. They get 24 breakables. They go in there, we set it up, we put them in some jumpsuits, some safety gear, and then we let them go. If they do our date night package, they get an electronic. It could be a printer. It could be a computer monitor, things

like that. The TVs are add ons, so if they want to add television, they go in and they do their thing with that.

Where did you come up with this idea? When did it launch?

I'm originally from Tucson, Arizona. Sitting at intersection one day, looked over at a building that had been vacant for probably about ten years. It was yellow and black. I was like, the breaking point, weird. What is that? The power over your cell phone. Literally, while I was at the stoplight looked and I was like, that looks like a lot of fun. I booked it for my wife and I. We went in, we had a good time.

It was like a little anniversary thing for us. Then my boys were away at school and they were both mad that we did something like that when they weren't around. And so when they came back, we did that with them a few times, got to know the guys that owned it. We talked a little bit, got into the nuts and bolts of everything. I was like, Man, this is kind of a viable business. You get some free stuff and you can really like, because your margins are going be high and it doesn't sit long, right? Because it comes in and goes out.

So you don't pay for any of it?

We do pay for a lot of the glass. We do, but mostly electronics are donation based because it's people trying to offload their broken electronics. On our website, have a donation tab and they can click it and it gives a list of all the things that we take or don't take.

So how does this go from Tucson to your first location in Austin?

Well, we decided to move as a family and we looked around the country at places that, didn't have them and Austin did not have one at the time.

You said you had some co founders. This is maybe Co Founder One?

Yeah. This is my older son, Tyler. He was kind of the ringleader of this whole thing, actually. He was playing professional baseball at the time and was like, hey, you know, we should do something as a family. And well, here we are. So him, my other son, and myself, the three of us usually here day to day running the thing.

Coming out of playing professional baseball, you don't necessarily always know where the hell you're gonna go in life. You know? It's kind of a tough transition for a lot of guys. For me, I was obviously blessed. It takes a lot to move four people, four adults essentially, a thousand miles from home and open a business in a city you have no idea where the hell you're at. My mom and I kind of footed this business. He actually took a job to kind of have some steady income still coming in.

You guys didn't know Austin. How did you decide on this location and how much did it cost to get going?

We knew we didn't want to be in Tucson, Arizona anymore. So it was a matter of, okay, where do we want to move? And this was 2021 when we moved here, '21.

So Austin was in the news all over the fastest growing city, tech money coming Crazy.

A lot of companies have moved here, and there wasn't a ton of entertainment. So at the same time, was a good opportunity to bring an entertainment business in the city with rapid growth.

Your dad mentioned breaking point early on. Did you guys did you license his model here or for you franchise to start?

We licensed the name originally.

So was that a big commercial arrangement or not really?

No, not really. It was just a little private licensing agreement.

So you're not having to pay him back 5% of revenues or anything like that?

Not anymore.

Not anymore.

Yeah. Is this expensive to launch?

Depends. It honestly is. It's I mean, real estate is not cheap anymore, especially commercial.

If you look at our parking lot, we have like a highly rated barbecue restaurant in here. We have our business. We just had a wing place open. There's a brewery. So there's a lot more fun foot traffic and families and stuff like that coming to eat and coming to have some fun. Barbecue provides a huge line. Sometimes it's out past our door. So that has people literally standing in front of our big decal windows. Perfect. So, yeah, we kind of feed off of each other

for sure.

So can you share like all in what were total startup expenses? Are we talking like $10.20 ks or, you know, a million bucks?

When we got it all said and done, build out, you know, the signage and everything, was, it was probably close to 50 ks.

Okay. So that's not too bad. No. Yeah. When you guys put your, when you said it was a family and said how fast do you think we can make our money What was your original thinking? Three months, ten months?

We were hoping in a year, a year to year and a half, we could at least get that back because we really didn't know what it was gonna do because the rage room concept was so new still. A lot of people didn't even know what it is. And even today, you know, five years later, people still don't know what a rage room is.

Yeah.

We were fortunate enough to get there six months and...

Wow. So you broke 50,000 of sales in the first six months. Yeah. First year sales were just double that, about a 100 k or...

It was probably about 300 k.

That's incredible.

Yeah. So they did good. And then year two was great because that was the year after COVID, right? And people were let out of their house and everybody was really fired We did right around 600.

Okay. So double.

Yeah. And then, so we've held pretty steady, you know, right around that 500 to 600 every Who's year

the marketing genius? Who I brought in the

actually had a guy, he goes to a local church here in Austin. He came walking in the door one day and he's like, Hey, we do SEO marketing, so on and so forth. Are you guys doing anything like that? We started working with that marketing company to basically just build our SEO and maximize that online because most of our transactions happen online.

Do you know what SEO keywords they were optimizing for

the It first was kind of tough because Rage Room was not like a massively searched word, so what they were doing was like things to do, entertainment, escape rooms, things of that nature. Now a lot of people will come in for the rage room because it's more of a well known business This

is set up as if I just purchased a $50 an hour ticket? Is that what it costs?

About 40. Yeah. 40 or 50.

40 or $50 and it's half hour sessions. But a shoot up in it?

Yeah. Yeah. Why not? This is what happens if you don't pay me back on time.

I want to go run through a wall now. Yeah. This is your highest revenue room, right? Totally, by far. So if you say you do about 500,600 thousand dollars a year in revenue Right. How much of that would come from this room?

I would say probably 70%. Oh, 6070%. This is the moneymaker of this business for sure.

This is a splatter room and it's organized chaos, if you will. Customers come in, they get some paint, get some sponges, some paintbrushes, they get a couple of canvases, and then away they go. We pull that door shut and whatever happens in here is totally up to them.

Do people like splattering thing, or do they splatter each other?

All of the above.

If I want to come in here for two hours and go crazy, what would this cost me?

It would be $35 per person.

If I spend $35, how much paint will I consume? What's

the You're going to get 11, 16 ounce canisters. These? Okay.

So what does that cost you on average?

It's right around $10 per person.

Okay. So you can profit basically about $25 per person, just margin before your headcount costs and marketing. Correct. So Jason, you got a loop in the other brother here. Yeah. So here from day one or no?

In spirit, absolutely. In in physical, he was off and on for the first year and a half or so. He was finishing up school in Pennsylvania.

Did you study breaking shit or what were you majoring in?

Business administration. Did you guys

know from day one you always wanted to have the ax throwing room? Was this an add on based off demand?

We did this as a family for Tyler's birthday and then we went back for my birthday in Tucson where we're from. And so they had all four of these options. When we were thinking about moving here and opening something like this, yes, it was kind of always like, okay, we're going do all four of these rooms.

You want to show us how this is done? I can.

Tomahawks, super cool. These are my favorite because they're like giant ninja stars just with a handle. Fan favorites are the two ninja stars right there, the big ones and the medium ones. They stick like 90% of the time or more. It's like throwing a baseball or football. Everything's one handed over the top.

So what do you charge for an hour in this room?

It's $30 a person for anybody 12 and up. Then from ages eight to 12, that's our limit. You have to be eight or older back here. Eight to 12 is $25 in that youth range. We can play tic tac toe against Let's it.

Let's do it.

There we go. That was fun. That was fun. You give me the easy ones to throw though, you know? How do you guys divide up labor today?

We all share time in the rage room, and then it's like Evan does axe throwing, Tyler's got the escape room most of time, and Jason will take care of the spider paint room. So we're just constantly moving.

And are you guys all in on the business? Everyone's full time or do you have side gigs?

Everybody's full time. Yeah.

I love that.

Yeah. High risk. Started with just my my mom and I here, then it got to be so busy that I was like, alright, you gotta leave that job that you took. It's time.

That's awesome.

So then he came on and then he finished college. And by that time we were doing really well.

And there's one more room. What's the last room?

The escape room, which if you open that red door right behind him, that's where you're going.

Right now it's like a clown fun house theme. This is your first room that you would begin in. And then this door would normally be locked and you have to figure out how to unlock it and get into the second room.

I see.

And then get out of that one. Basically, have a series of eight locks that you have to open. This escape room, we designed this one to be a little bit harder because our last two are on on the easier side of things.

Was gonna say, what what drives more customers? When you make them feel good because they solve it quickly or when it's so difficult they get

stuck?

It's a little bit of both. Definitely about. If you pay to come and do it and you don't escape in your one hour, I'll show you the answers to help you figure out what you might have been missing to get out.

It sounds like these are expense. You can't actually change this escape room frequently to get repeat traffic.

You gotta give it a chance. Yeah. You give it a chance. It takes us probably about five five full days to, like, come in because we just... We do it ourselves. First, come up with a theme, then get the props, build it all out.

How many individual people would you say come through at least one of the four experiences, your four rooms monthly?

30 to 50 people would be a solid weekday. Okay. Then on the weekends, we're looking at, like, a 150 people probably. Oh, wow. Because on Saturdays, we're open from eleven to nine. We actually have two extra business hours, so that gives us four extra rage room slots, and that's full all the time.

Maybe 2,000 people a month coming through. Does that feel...

It feels about right. Would say that's probably right.

So are you building any kind of email list or text message marketing list to get them to come back a second, third of Yes.

I mean, don't do a lot of blast emails cause everybody's inundated with the email thing. But we do do like a couple of like gift card specials throughout the year. Yeah. And then that email list is compiled through our software, booking software. So we get all that data and then we just, you can blast it out.

You guys on YouTube, you've got four options. You can only pick one. Leave a comment below. You got rage room, paint and splatter, ax throwing, or escape room. Which one are you coming in here with your friends? Let me know below. What's the growth plan? How do you guys go from 500,000 a year in revenue to 1,000,000 a year in revenue?

Keeping these rooms full. The one thing we do pride ourselves on is our service. Our customer service, our reviews will tell you that. I spent twenty plus years in the retail world, and I came out of the customer, customer, customer. So that's how we approach it.

How much of the growth has to do with branding? I think you guys changed names.

So in 2025, we changed from the Breaking Point to Lone Star Rage and Entertainment. One of the biggest things for us was making sure that we kept our presence online. So Google reviews and things of that nature, those carried over.

So reviews are a big deal. Is SEO still a big deal? Are you still using the same marketing firms?

Yeah. Yeah. So they kind of keep it updated and make sure the keywords are still, operating properly. Okay. Things of that nature.

So the stuff you're doing, can you throw money at it to grow faster or no, it requires creativity?

Both. You can do some Facebook ads, you can do some targeted ads, which helps, you know, because it puts it into the people's hands that are looking for you. And then it just comes down to, you know, like the economy right now. It's tough out there for everybody, right? Inflation has been so bad, gas prices are so high. It's like, how do we get that extra dollar from you? That's where we come in. Like, we just want to be, we want you have a good time. Like, and that's the one thing people ask us all the time. Like, do we ever have a bad day? I'm like, how are gonna have a bad day doing this?

You get to see people leave with a smile.

And that was... That's huge.

The reason I do this show, though, is to try and find a way where I can put in capital to help you guys grow faster. Great. Great. You guys have foot traffic coming in. We heard the customer ring a doorbell. Evan jumps immediately. That's that customer service. Right?

That's right. Yeah.

Yeah. Absolutely. Very cool. Okay. So I guess back to growth plans. Again, I know we just met literally. People don't believe this. I walked in fifty five minutes ago. Yeah. Something like that. Right? So is there... Do you have some sort of ask? You know, could you say, Nathan, if we had $30,000 to invest in why it would drive Z revenue?

Honestly, it would probably be into some online marketing, like a full... Like if you go with a full campaign.

Have you spent money on ads and they've worked in the past?

Yeah, we don't spend a lot of money on it, and that's mostly because we, knock on wood, we haven't had to, which is great, but we will spend a few $100 a week here and there and do some targeted ads and it seems to get a quick hit.

We also get asked by a lot of local businesses, some big ones, like UT, hey, do you want to sponsor? They have these sponsorships for the football and books and things. It costs $20 to be in something like that.

And do that work, right? It's hard. It's a big It's

a huge risk, And how do you know if it's working or not? We've toyed with like memberships, if you will, like, whatever it is monthly come in once a month.

Have you sold any of those?

No, we've had some requests on it and it's kind of like a We program that

haven't done it yet. Yeah, I understand that. It sounds like we have some happy customers next door, That's a good sound. That might

as well sound as ching, ching, ching.

Yeah. Well, cool. Well, don't look, I love the company you guys have built, but I feel like I am pulling a little bit in terms of is there a way I can cut a check and help you guys grow faster?

For me, I don't know if it's necessarily one of those things where it's like, hey, this dollar amount will help us take this thing to the moon. Know, it's not a cryptocurrency. So I think there's only so much you can do. Obviously, the whole asses and seats is thing, right? Yeah.

I get the sense there's not an opportunity today, but Evan, Tyler, Jason, crazy business to you, Bill. I love their journey as a family and most importantly, you're helping other people come and experience like what people they love and care about, really unique experiences. Thanks for letting coming today.

Oh, absolutely. Love having you guys. Appreciate it. Really good to meet Yeah. Congratulations.

Thank you.

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