If you’ve ever written off birthday parties as utter chaos in your gym, think again. At my gym, we’ve hosted up to 250 parties a year, and they’ve become one of our highest-margin, lowest-stress revenue streams.

Birthday parties fill weekend space, create extra hours for our staff, and bring in tons of new leads. If you’re thinking, “well how will that help us win Summit this year?” I’ve even got an answer for you. 

When you have more programs in your gym, you’re essentially sharing the overhead costs with each of them – making your cheer program responsible for less and less of the total cost of operations. This allows you to either have a healthy profit margin, keep your program affordable for your families – or both!

Will that actually help you win Summit? Well, not directly. But having an affordable program will probably retain your athletes longer, and more experienced athletes are more likely to help you get that W. (Phew, that was a hard connection, but see how I made that work?)

And the best part? You don’t need inflatables, balloon arches, or a full-time party planner. You just need a system.

Why Birthday Parties Work

As soon as the weather gets unpredictable (too hot, too cold, too rainy, too hurricane season-y), parents start looking for indoor birthday options that are easy, fun, and clean. Your gym is already perfect for this—you’ve got safe equipment and a trained staff. 

Cheerleading is fun. Why wouldn’t kids want to spend their birthdays in a cheer gym?

The Offer: Keep It Simple

A great party package should take under 30 seconds to explain. You don’t have to offer people the world. My recommendations: 

  • Don’t give them plates, utensils and cups. As a mom, this is the fun part to shop for. We used to go through the aisles at Walmart and my kids spent way too much time deciding between Barbie and Dora. Also, that stuff is cheap. I’m not paying an extra $75 to get your plain blue plates.
  • Only offer food if you can guarantee it with your life. Well, maybe I’ve gone too far. But, there is nothing worse than having someone mad at you for something that wasn’t your fault at all. Pizza doesn’t arrive on time because the pizza place made a mistake? You’ll find your coaches spending more time trying to solve the problem than it’s worth for the extra $5 you may have just made on pizzas. Keep a list of what pizza places deliver to your gym and provide it to the party host when they book with you.

So what do you offer them? 

  • With four kids, I’ve hosted dozens of birthday parties. Here are the parts that suck:
    • Calling a bunch of places and having employees pick up the phone who didn’t know the answers
    • Entertaining other people’s kids for 2 hours
    • Cleaning up
    • Spending the whole time doing the two things above and missing your kid open presents because Johnny spilled blue Kool-aid on my carpet
  • Parents want to show up, do a little bit of decoration, enjoy themselves and leave. Once we opened the gym, my kids hosted almost all their birthday parties there. Heck, I even staffed it, because even though I own the gym – I didn’t want to do any of this. I wanted to hang with my mom friends and have an enjoyable time myself.
  • Your staff should be helping haul in the coolers, helping mom tape the banners, cutting the cake, cleaning up the mess and taking all the stress off the parents. That’s how you get people coming back to your gym year after year. (One family hosted their kids’ birthday parties with my gym SIX years in a row. Now they kids in high school, but I know we are doing things right because of things like that.)

You Don’t Need Bounce Houses — You Need Energy

I have worked with tons of gym through Next Gen who don’t have bounce houses—and most of them still crush the birthday party game. Why? Because they hired party hosts who knew how to engage kids and run fun.

Plug-and-play activities:

  • Limbo

  • Floor is lava

  • Obstacle courses

  • Parachute games

  • Scooter relays

  • Themed rotations every 8–10 minutes. Ummm, you’re a cheer gym. Teach them some stunts or a mini-routine. If they love it, talk to their mom and hand her a flyer before they leave. Win-win-win.

💡 Pro Tip: A high-energy coach > any amount of equipment.

Staffing the Right Way

Not every all star coach wants to work parties—and that’s okay. Build a “Party Host Team” from front desk staff, rec and preschool coaches who love working with kids, can project their voices, and are willing to hustle.

Birthday parties are easy money for coaches. They need to show up, be helpful, have good energy, and literally just play with the kids. My ninja coach is AMAZING at birthday parties, because he’s a big kid. He works a bunch of them, and people go out of their way to tell us how great he is. And no…he’s happy in Missouri. He’s not available for recruitment.

Train them. Incentivize them. Reward great reviews. You can even make sure parents know your party hosts can accept tips so there is an even greater incentive to please.

Automate and Systemize

Here’s what you need to make parties run like clockwork:

  • Front desk script with pricing + booking info

  • Party checklist (lighter for candles, trash bags, cleaning spray, knife to cut the cake)

  • Post-party email with a thank you + review link

  • 48-hour follow-up with a free trial or class offer to the kids who attended the party and aren’t members of your gym

  • Birthday outreach: Send an automated message 6–8 weeks before every child’s birthday to see if they already have a plan for parties and get them info so they book at your gym!

Every party should add new contacts to your marketing list.

How to Market Without Feeling Salesy

You don’t have to shout “BOOK NOW!” every week (I mean, I do, but you don’t have to if you don’t want to). Just build consistent visibility.

Inside your gym:

  • Birthday posters

  • Monthly member birthday shoutouts

  • Photo wall of past parties

Outside your gym:

  • Always-on FB/IG ad with a clear offer

  • Email list from events + open gyms (tag kids by age)

  • Monthly newsletter reminders

Bottom Line for Gym Owners

  • You already have the space on the weekends.

  • You already have the staff, and if they don’t like working parties, you can find new staff who do. Cut throat? Maybe, but it’s true.

  • You just need the system. (We have basically all of them in the NG Academy)

We’ve seen gym owners add $40K+ in annual revenue within just a few months using our marketing and implementation systems. Why not you?

Want the Full System?

We’ve built templates, automation maps, party flows, and training plans—and we give them all to you inside NextGen Academy.

🎯 Apply here: nextgenowners.com/book-a-call  

📺 Watch the full episode: YouTube link

🎧 Listen on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/4F1ieyuZQRIyzfbNSZjj9o?si=lprJzhJxTaOKyhT7UfxNbw 

Or 🍏 Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-fullout-cheer-podcast/id1763244914?i=10007250025