Escaping reality: how this duo built an escape room business from scratch
During a rough patch of his life, Brett Muller was drawn to the fantasy of escape rooms.
“I went through a hard time and I found it a really cool escape away from everything. You forget about life for 60 minutes,” he says.
He and his childhood best friend, James Gidding, road tripped from Brisbane to the Sunshine Coast, to Toowoomba and as far north as Townsville to visit escape rooms.
“I ended up playing 80 or 90 rooms throughout Queensland. Anywhere we could play a new room, we would go.”
An escape room is a game in which a team of players must discover clues, accomplish tasks and solve puzzles in a limited amount of time. The industry has boomed over the past five years, with venues sprouting all over the country.
Muller and Gidding, now both 31, saw the potential and decided to go into business together, creating their own escape room venue, Lost Locks, on the Gold Coast.
“I quit my high paying job,” Muller says. “I was 100 per cent in. My business partner basically remortgaged his house.”
During the pandemic, the pair began scouting for locations in Surfers Paradise, the tourist mecca of southern Queensland. At the time, there was only one other escape room venue there – and they wanted to capitalise on the suburb’s foot traffic.
“Travelling around, I found a lot of other places don’t get walk ins. Whereas we have 80-90 per cent walk ins and only 10 per cent online bookings.”
“We were looking for around 500 square metres, so we could get up to 10 rooms. Your average escape room venue will have three or four.”
They settled on an entire floor at 38 Cavill Avenue – turning what was a sprawling law firm office into a fantasy game.
“As we were walking around, because it was already built into office spaces, it was already divided up,” Muller says. “It kind of laid it out for us. Things like cabling was already run and power was already run. The foyer was already set up.”
The business venture was completely self-funded, and the two young men created, constructed and completed all of the escape rooms and their props and puzzles from scratch, with some labouring help from friends and families.
“I was basically working 15 to 16 hours a day for three months,” Muller says. “But it was really, really fun. Painting a forest scene, creating fake grass, we built a fake cabin for a gingerbread man.”
They took over the lease on September 1 and opened in early December of 2021.
They currently have six rooms open: Cottage Capers, Twisted Trials, Buccaneers Bounty, an R18 room and two arcade-themed rooms.
Lost Locks has enjoyed enormous success in the 17 months since they opened, achieving a five-star rating from more than 1200 Google reviews. Muller attributes that to ensuring his staff offer excellent customer service.
“I come from a retail management and business management background. A lot of it was based on customer and client service.
“A lot of [escape room] places hire theatre kids to give great experiences, but don’t have that one-on-one experiences with guests. The room will sell itself but a game-master can make it even better.”
While Gidding now lives in Townsville, Muller runs the day-to-day operations at the venue with 14 other staff.
They are planning to build more escape rooms in their current premises.
“The goal for the next couple of years is to fill up the venue,” says Muller. “Right now, we have space for another four rooms to be built.”
“We are tossing up whether we will open a second location.”
The pair are also considering opening a pinball and retro gaming bar venue in Surfers Paradise.
Steve Clark, the managing director or Clark Commercial, says Surfers Paradise has always been the capital of the Gold Coast. “It’s got the amenity.”
“I haven’t seen the Gold Coast, especially Surfers Paradise, this busy in decades.
“The business mix is finally starting to get there. It doesn’t matter what day of week it is, it’s busy for what time of year it is.”
Clark has an entire floor of offices for lease in the same building as Lost Locks at 38 Cavill Avenue. According to him, refurbished offices are in high demand.
“We’ve come off the back of leasing 4000 square metres of commercial space in the first quarter of this year.”
“The biggest risk we have to our market is undersupply.”
Even though escape rooms are now his full-time job, Muller still loves to play them – having visited venues in Perth, Tasmania and Sydney. “I’m up to almost 220 rooms played,” he says. “It’s a bit of an addiction. I reckon I could get to 500 or 600.”
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