Tech in Action, Profits in Motion: How Greenacres Bowl Transformed Its Business

IBI (International Bowling Industry) magazine featured Greenacres Bowl in its August 2025 issue, in a Success Story by Stephanie Davis. Here's a look at the story.

Greenacres Bowl in Greenacres, Florida, is a crowd magnet—60 lanes, a buzzing arcade, laser bowling, billiards, and a full-service lounge, earning "Best Bowling Center in Palm Beach County" honors year after year. But even the busiest centers face a common challenge: keeping operations smooth when demand is unpredictable.

"Our old food and beverage ordering process wasn't built for scale," says Chris Arbour, Greenacres' operating partner since 2007. "I'm a numbers guy. I track everything, and the data told me we were leaving money on the table and needed to streamline without sacrificing the guest experience."

That led to a full rollout of Brunswick's Sync system—starting with self-service kiosks for food and drinks, then kiosks for selling and reloading game cards, then OrderNow tablets at every lane, and finally Sync Pay to streamline transactions center-wide. Today, guests have 66 different access points to order food and drinks.

Key takeaways from the article:

• Six figures in digital gratuities. Over the past year, the team brought in over $100,000 in gratuities through digital orders, boosting staff wages by an average of $3.50 per hour. "It's helped us retain great people and makes hiring easier, too," Arbour says.
• Sales held up in a slow season. During a seasonal dip in May, with open play down about 5% and league play down 15%, food and beverage sales still rose 4.5%, thanks to a 4.7% increase in kiosk and OrderNow usage.
• Tech encourages tipping. 86% of kiosk orders include gratuity—and at the lanes it's even higher at 96%, which Arbour credits to the social nature of group ordering and a frictionless checkout.
• Bigger checks at the lanes. Guest check averages through OrderNow run 28% higher than kiosk orders. And none of these numbers include alcohol yet: "If the numbers look this good without alcohol, just imagine what happens when we turn that switch on."
• Back-of-house wins too. Orders print immediately at the correct station, so refunds, comps, and chargebacks have all gone down, and add-ons like sauces and extra cheese are now consistently tracked and charged.

Arbour's advice to fellow operators: step back from the daily grind and analyze your data before you start shopping. "If you don't know your data, you can't properly evaluate how you invest in your business, and you're flying blind."

Read the full Success Story from IBI magazine here.