I had a warehouse in Costa Mesa sitting underused, and axe throwing was catching on in other cities with nothing like it in Southern California yet. The city's code did not even have a category for it, so there was no permit to apply for. The only way to prove the concept was to throw a few parties, get real people in there throwing axes, and build the brand and the market before I built the company around it. Trading started in October 2018. Then I went before the city myself, took a lot of pushback at the meeting, and Costa Mesa approved the reconsideration packet: a first of its kind use permit.
The first months brought in real money from a standing start. By March 2020 a buyer out of Riverside had agreed, on a handshake, to take the whole thing, the brand, the concept, the units, the equipment, the website. That was a Friday. COVID hit that Monday.
I did not build Axe Haus to run it forever. I built it to prove an idle asset could become something people wanted to visit, and to be small enough to sell once that was proven. Sentiment about keeping something open just because you built it is how good operators turn into bad ones.