Relish Food Hall and Pickleball: How One Colorado Venue Turned Recreation Into a Growth Engine

OVERVIEW: Food halls are on the rise, but Relish Food Hall // Pickleball is not following the standard playbook. The Louisville, Colorado, venue combines competitive pickleball and multi-vendor dining under one roof, creating a hospitality model designed to keep guests moving seamlessly between recreation and dining. 

Built inside a former Sam’s Club that sat mostly vacant for 15 years, Relish now operates as a 78,000-square-foot destination with 19 indoor pickleball courts, two outdoor pickleball courts, an outdoor bocce ball court, eight food stalls, conference rooms, and event space for up to 800 guests.

That makes Relish more than a creative adaptive reuse story. It's a live case study in traffic generation, guest conversion, and revenue layering. Pickleball brings people in. The food hall gives them a reason to stay. Events, memberships, and community programming stack additional revenue on top.

Getting there wasn't fast. Owners Jeff and Amy Youngstrom purchased roughly 60% of the former Sam's Club from a local church, then spent years navigating rezoning before construction could begin.

“It took almost five years of navigating regulations, zoning and construction hurdles before the building really started to finally come together,” said Tanner Cady, Relish Food Hall Director. 

The owners initially considered a basketball facility, but a friend who was an avid pickleball player urged them to look at the sport's momentum. The pitch landed. 

“They had a dream to create a community gathering area in town,” Cady explained. 

When Relish opened in June 2025, the technology complexity became clear. The venue was not operating as a traditional restaurant, food hall or sports facility. It was running all three simultaneously. GoTab was built for exactly this.

HOW GOTAB POWERS RELISH FOOD HALL // PICKLEBALL

• Open tab functionality across the food hall, bar and event business.
• Unified food and beverage tabs for private events and corporate groups.
• Multi-vendor ordering workflows that allow vendors to locate and add to guest tabs, plus shared service infrastructure across independent stalls and house-operated concepts.
• Event ordering that lets guests break out from meetings or court rentals and order from multiple locations.
• Future use of RFID cards for group tabs, event access and guest spending controls.
• Integration work around 7Shifts for labor and tip pool management.
• Planned connection points around Court Reserve for court bookings and membership activity.
• Responsive support and product feedback loops for a venue that is still refining its operating model.

Cady said when Relish recently encountered a technical issue before opening, GoTab support responded almost immediately.

“I sent a message to Support. I called Support. They texted me back 30 seconds later,” he explained. “Within three minutes, they told me how to fix it. And within seven minutes, I had the whole setup running again.”

For an operator managing multiple stalls, shared services and event traffic, that kind of response time is not just support. It’s operational protection.

HOW THE RELISH MODEL WORKS

Relish is built around a simple but powerful operating idea: create multiple reasons for guests to enter the building, then give them easy ways to spend once they are there.

That hospitality mix gives the venue an advantage many food halls are still trying to build. Instead of relying only on lunch, dinner or weekend foot traffic, Relish draws recurring users through memberships, leagues, tournaments, lessons, camps, open play and court rentals.

“Pickleball really helped us at the beginning because there was so much interest within the community,” Cady shared. “There were so many people that wanted to play that it was busy pretty quick.”

The challenge now is converting that traffic into food hall awareness and spend.

“What we’re seeing is that we’re overcoming that initial confusion of, what is that place?” Cady said. “Is it just a pickleball facility or is it a food hall too?”

Relish is answering that question operationally. The team is building membership benefits that include monthly food credits, to give pickleball club members a built-in reason to cross over into the food hall.

“We’re going to give them a Food Hall voucher that they’re able to use every month with their pickleball membership,” Cady said. “So that’ll draw them over to the food hall side.”

For operators, that is where the model becomes especially interesting. Relish is using recreation to drive frequency, then using food and beverage to increase check potential and dwell time.

THE FOOD HALL OPERATION

The food hall side includes eight total stalls – seven independent local vendor stalls, while Relish operates the eighth concept itself. It features an in-house bar, coffee shop, and an ice cream and smoothie stall.

Cady oversees food and beverage, vendor relations, day-to-day operations, shared services, support staff, inspections and repairs. The food hall has to function as both a landlord model and an operator-led hospitality experience.

That vendor mix is intentionally local. Some vendors came from food trucks. Others had existing restaurant or catering experience. One vendor launched his first food business inside Relish with his parents.

“They’re all local people who were looking for an opportunity to be in the group and try something new,” Cady said. “They’ve been good partners for us.”

The guest experience depends on making those separate businesses feel easy to navigate. That is where GoTab helps reduce friction. Guests do not have to think about the complexity behind the stalls. For events and group ordering, they can walk up to participating locations, order what they want and have it added to the correct tab.

“They can either have a bar tab and a food tab or just one unified tab across the whole business,” Cady said. “It is really easy for the vendors to find that tab and add a person’s order to it.”

That matters most during high-volume moments.

After one recent event, roughly 200 people walked into the food hall at the same time. Instead of one line getting crushed, guests spread across vendors.

“They all came in and within 20 minutes, everyone was eating something,” Cady said. “They kind of pick who doesn’t have a big line. It spreads the business out really well.”

That is the operator value of a food hall when the service model works. Volume gets distributed and guests keep moving. Vendors capture demand. The experience feels easier than the back end really is.

“The thing people like the most is just being able to walk up and pick something that appeals to them and order,” Cady said.

HOW PICKLEBALL DRIVES THE BUSINESS

Relish was intentional about making the pickleball side feel like an elevated sports facility, not a bar with courts added as an afterthought.

The team dedicated roughly 50,000 square feet to pickleball and invested in sound separation, lighting and layout so the sports side and food hall side could operate as connected but distinct environments.

“The idea was to make it feel like an upscale exercise facility and not just like you’re going to a bar and you happen to be playing pickleball,” Cady said.

The pickleball side has its own operating rhythm, with monthly members, founding members, open play, court reservations, leagues, tournaments, lessons, kids camps and a dedicated pickleball director. “As much as we’re one unit, we have a whole pickleball facility and then a food hall,” Cady said.

The model also works for events. A corporate group can rent courts for several hours, then move naturally into food and beverage without leaving the property.

“They have all the pickleball courts rented,” Cady said of one event. “They are there for five hours, and in that five hours, they can just walk out and order food wherever they like to and just stop and take a break.”

That is the larger opportunity. Relish is not just selling court time or meals. It is selling a full experience.

AN INVESTED PART OF THE COMMUNITY 

Relish is still early in its operating life, but the next phase is already taking shape: stronger event execution, tighter food hall conversion and more connected membership benefits.

As the venue approaches its first anniversary, the team is hopeful about what is ahead. Relish has already started to become a community centerpiece, not only through pickleball and food, but through the relationships it’s building across Louisville and the surrounding area.

Cady said Relish has hosted gatherings connected to the Marshall Fire, bringing together people impacted by the disaster along with first responders, law enforcement and firefighters. They came for coffee, breakfast and a place to reconnect. For a venue built around hospitality, those moments show what the model can become when it is used well.

The community connection also extends to the next generation. 

“We have a really cool student ambassador program,” Cady said. “Teens from local schools learn how to use social media and real social connections to promote and drive business in a professional setting. They get to experience our employee benefits and be a part of the team. It’s a great way to connect with the local youth.”

Relish also prioritizes hiring local teens, giving young people early exposure to the workforce while helping them build professional skills.

“We feel a real responsibility to help local teens learn those important life lessons,” Cady explained. “They have a large presence in the community and we want to give them a place to gain work experience and build confidence.” 

The venue has also been working closely with two local chambers of commerce, providing space for community and business events while growing relationships with local leaders, entrepreneurs and developing communities looking to promote their amenities and commerce.

“We’ve been doing a lot with the community,” Cady said. “That’s been our focus now that pickleball is going strong, how do we make the food hall a part of the community?”

The next step is continuing to connect those experiences operationally, using food credits to move members into the food hall, improving group tab workflows, expanding RFID card usage and refining how guests move through the venue.

For Cady, the bigger picture is simple. Relish is becoming the kind of place people use in different ways at different times, whether they are playing a match, attending a corporate event, meeting friends for lunch, joining a morning yoga group, playing in a Mahjong tournament or spending time with family. 

“Since we opened, it’s been a driving force of the business to be community-focused and create a place where people feel safe coming together,” Cady said. “It’s become a really nice gathering place.” 

KEY TAKEAWAYS

Venue: Relish Food Hall // Pickleball, Louisville, Colorado
Concept: Hybrid pickleball facility, food hall, bar, coffee shop, ice cream shop, bocce ball court and event venue
Opened: June 2025
Footprint: 78,000 square feet inside a former Sam’s Club

Sports Component: 19 indoor pickleball courts, two outdoor courts, an outdoor bocce ball court, memberships, leagues, tournaments, lessons, kids camps and open play.

Food Hall Component: Seven independent local vendors operating across eight stalls, with Relish operating the eighth concept in-house, including a bar, coffee shop, and ice cream and smoothie shop.

Technology Stack: GoTab POS, open tabs, multi-vendor ordering, event tabs, Tripleseat for event bookings, planned RFID card use, 7Shifts integration work, Court Reserve for court bookings and membership management.

GoTab Value: GoTab helps Relish connect multiple revenue centers, including courts, vendors, bar, events and memberships, without forcing guests into a fragmented ordering experience.

Why It Works: Relish uses pickleball to drive recurring traffic, the food hall to capture spend and events to increase utilization. GoTab provides the flexible entertainment commerce layer that helps the model operate as one connected experience.

Interested in building a hospitality experience like this? Now is the time. Learn how GoTab supports multi-vendor, multi-experience concepts. Request a demo or contact our team to see how GoTab can support your vision. 

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