The Golf Fang takeover

What inspired the launch of the Ghetto Golf and Golf Fang brands?

Dan, our co-founder, and I came from a traditional food and beverage background. In 2015, having worked in the industry for a collective 30 plus years, we noticed that the industry was beginning to change. Guests wanted experiences and visual backdrops, both alongside and outside of traditional dining and vertical drinking.

Our aim was to find a colossal space and let our minds run wild with imagination, themes and set design.Crazy golf hadn’t even crossed our minds. All we knew is that we didn’t want to stick to one theme, we wanted to provide a literal journey and a feast for people’s senses, which would include humour, horror and nostalgia, amongst authentic street art and trippy backdrops.

Creating the brand was as much about showcasing our own creative nature as it was our close friends and local artists. Creativity and artistry have always been a driving force in our previous venues, but we always felt restricted by size and space. We decided to place faith in ourselves and our very small team (and smaller budget) and, frankly, bite off more than we could chew.

We now just needed a mechanism for our guests to embark on a journey around our 15,000 sq/ft adult wonderland. We wanted to take something that was timeless and make it trend. After much consideration and the rise of competitive socialisation, we decided on crazy golf.

The concept would be designed to allow restaurant-style service around the course. This was achieved by servers on the course and custom-designed bars built into the various designs.

Our heritage as traditional food and beverage operators meant that the same dedication to cocktails, menu development and service standards would have to be maintained despite the change in guest activity within the venue. We now had a clear vision: we would combine competitive socialisation with the experience of a journey through 18 individually themed courses whilst providing high quality cocktails, food, and service.

Along this journey, we would provide as many photo opportunities as possible to appeal to as many different people’s tastes as possible. We also wanted to create suspense where people didn’t know what they were going to discover next.

What will be different at the new Golf Fang site in Leeds?

Golf Fang Leeds will feature some of our firm guest-favourite sets from across all of our locations over the years, but we pride ourselves on creativity and have an impulse to push boundaries to get bigger, bolder and more outrageous with each venue we create. This means that we’re going to keep it a surprise, but just know….it’ll be our best yet.

Another aspect of this is street art and graffiti. Whilst we have built a small army of artists from all over the world, we always work with artists local to the city and we already have 10 writers on board from Leeds. Collectively, we’ve now had over 500 writers bless the walls of our venues.

One thing we can tell you is that we always create site-specific concepts that are unique to each city. We like to embrace and research our locations to offer something meaningful to the local community. In Birmingham, for example, we created a replica of The Old Crown, which is the city’s oldest pub, or in Sheffield we created an ode to Gatecrasher, complete with video walls, lasers and its own club classic playlist. 

What F&B offerings does the new site provide, and why were these selected?

We offer a large range of cocktails that are all created in-house by our teams and are crafted to bring the party to Leeds. There will be a fantastic range of craft beer wines and spirits. Our street food will channel the inner naughtiness in everybody, with delicious options to fill the void after working up an appetite playing golf.

How will these F&B offerings differ from other sites under the brand?

Every site has a ‘Golf Classics’ cocktail list that are our greatest hits on offer across all our venues nationwide. However, we encourage local and regional creativity across all the venues within menu development, and Leeds will have its own house-created ‘Leeds Signatures’ with inspiration taken from the city and its culture. 

What inspired the company to introduce F&B offerings at a golf venue?

We see our entire venue as an experience for our guests to which food and drinks are essential.

What are the Big Fang Collective’s expansion plans, and where does the company hope to expand within the next two years?

We started this company in a derelict warehouse six years ago on a shoestring budget. We were self-funded up until a few months ago when we received investment from hospitality investor Imbiba. We now have the capability to put the pedal to the metal on expansion and we’re raring to go. We now have a strong pipeline in place across the UK and we can’t wait to develop our new concepts and experiences. There’s also a strong chance you’ll be seeing us on the other side of the Atlantic very soon, too.

What is next for the Big Fang Collective? 

Our mission is to create multiple experiences and concepts in large industrious units that bring new life to disused areas and spaces. This means that we are going to be about much more than golf. We want to create destinations where a short taxi ride to one of our Big Fang Collective destinations provides a choice of new and reimagined concepts. We want people to identify Big Fang Collective sites as a universe of individual concepts where each planet in its orbit is an experience, be it Golf, Food Markets, Birdies Bar, Bowling, or our brand-new concepts that are currently being kept under strict wraps.

We also wish to create partners and relationships within the industry to strengthen our offerings to our guests. In short, we want The Big Fang Collective to be a destination that is synonymous with a wealth of experiences in hospitality settings.