Star Pins opened in Coventry in early December 2024, bringing legendary lanes and gaming to Coventry West Orchards shopping centre, just in time for Christmas.
Star Pins in the latest brand from Professionals at Play, the competitive socialising pioneers behind Roxy Ball Room, Roxy Lanes and King Pins. Star Pins puts tenpin bowling at the heart of the community whilst offering a broad range of fun and immersive gaming experiences.
Guests to Star Pins will be instantly struck by the playful and joyful vibe. This venue has been carefully crafted to allow all guests to enter into the fun and unleash their inner child. With a strong emphasis on suitability for families of all ages, Star Pins offers affordable gaming experiences.
As well as an amazing range of gaming activity, the quality food and drink selection means Star Pins can appeal to corporate guests, groups of friends and date nights too.
Impressive Choice
Although the 13 lanes of gorgeous Brunswick bowling lanes are the centre piece of Star Pins, guests also get to enjoy a huge range of other activities. Including:
- Ice-free curling
- American Pool
- Shuffleboard
- Bumper cars
- Tech Darts
- Mini Golf
- Virtual Shooting
- Ping Pong
- Arcade
To reflect the commitment to appeal to families the choice of activities has been carefully selected to optimise accessibility and create the family friendly vibe. For example, the full-length bowling lanes come with automatic bumpers and ramps. The mini golf is brightly coloured with kid-friendly theming. The bumper cars are thrilling for the whole family, with their colourful lighting and anticipated adrenaline rush. The arcade games are carefully curated to appeal to a broad audience, including games specifically designed for younger children.
Customer First
Star Pins put the needs of their customers front and centre when planning the launch of their West Orchards venue. Extensive research was conducted with the local community to ascertain what facilities residents most needed from their city centre. Tenpin bowling was top of the list.
Furthermore, Star Pins have worked diligently in partnership with the shopping centre to ensure guests can make use of the parking facilities, even after the main shopping centre has closed. With entry points from the shopping centre (for use during the day) and a main external entrance on Smithford Way guests can easily access the venue throughout the day and into the evening.
To ensure guests have everything they need for a memorable outing with friends and family Star Pins have developed a quality food offering. Tasty pizza, loaded tater tots, nacho sharers and incredible hot dogs with seasoned fries are just some of the moreish items on the menu. To ensure guests are well hydrated Star Pins has a bar stacked with a broad selection of beverages. Everything from draught beers and cocktails to slushies and Cappuccinos. They even do a selection of kids mocktails.
Bowling Vision Partnership
The building of any FEC or entertainment venue hinges on the partnership of many stakeholders. Star Pins chose Bowling Vision as their bowling equipment partner. This was the first time Professionals at Play and Bowling Vision have worked together.
Partnering with Bowling Vision gave the Star Pins access to our experienced team. Our work on building layout and lane configuration enabled Star Pins to maximise their footprint increasing their number of lanes from 12 to 13. The positioning of the site made for a challenging unload requiring the use of crane lifts. Thankfully, our team have considerable experience of tricky installations and our engaged oversight of the project ensured the unload and installation went smoothly.
For this project we installed 13 lanes of striking Brunswick, ColorFull lanes, Boost ST pinsetters, Centre Stage surface ball returns and a SYNC scoring and management system. Star Pins opted to deploy our MultiGrip Star houseballs, which beautifully complement the venue’s branding as well as reducing the number of balls and storage needed. The decision to change from traditional balls to MultiGrip occurred in the week before opening. This wasn’t a problem for our UK based team who were able to swap out the balls ahead of launch.
Partnership is a core value of Bowling Vision. This ensures that our customers not only get market leading equipment, but they get advice and support from project inception, through installation, staff training, launch and onwards. Our teams are invested in the success of our customers, a value demonstrated through our going-the-extra-mile approach.
Head of Design & Development for Professionals at Play, Chris Kennerk, had this to say about working with Bowling Vision, “As a company we are always striving to the be best experiential leisure experience, by looking to for the latest emerging leisure activities. From the moment we first were introduced to Bowling Vision, we knew it would fit our business and the new brand we had been working on. With the engaging & vibrant graphics to the state of the art equipment and game play, it’s been a pleasure to work alongside Bowling Vision. From day one of the install to going live, we felt supported throughout. Thanks to all the team at Bowling Vision!”
A Winning Formula
The family friendly, customer first approach of Star Pins will undoubtedly be a winning formula. Offering a broad range of activities to suit the local community, serving up great food and drink and providing a fun and vibrant atmosphere will certainly have the Coventry locals coming back time and again.
With Star Pins trading exceptionally well throughout December we look forward to seeing Star Pins Coventry continue to innovate and flex to the requirements of their guests. Star Pins are yet to announce the location of their next Star Pins venture, but we look forward to working with them on many more.
This blog post was developed following an interview with Star Pins’ Brand Manager, James Travis, after the launch of Star Pins Coventry. Thank you James for your time, it’s always a joy to speak to someone so enthusiastic about their brand and the community.
