After years of stagnancy, glow-in-the-dark mini golf concept Monster Mini Golf is in growth mode. CEO and partner Christopher King believes the 22-year-old brand, with internal investments underway, is slated to make a name for itself in family entertainment.
CHARLOTTE, NC (Jan 29, 2026) – When Christina and Patrick Vitagliano prepared to retire and sell glow-in-the-dark mini golf concept Monster Mini Golf, the founders rejected larger corporations in favor of a group of tried-and-true franchisees.
Three years later, the 22-year-old brand has found its footing and turned stagnancy into growth, led by its four franchisees-turned-owners.
“As we’re growing, the culture is growing with it, and it’s not going the other way,” CEO and partner Christopher King said. “I think that’s a testament to the four of us owning it, being multi-unit operators, living in the same shoes, having the same failures, the same successes, walking the same walk our franchisees do every day.”
King is an owner alongside Chief Development Officer Nick Mastrandrea, Chief Legal Officer Holly Hernandez and Alex Gonzalez. King joined the brand in 2015 as chief operating officer, and became a franchisee in 2023 with his wife, Kristin King, who operates the couple’s three units around the Charlotte, North Carolina, metro.
The mini golf franchise, which also offers arcades and indoor games, finished 2025 with 39 units.
Unit growth moved to the back burner, with the company’s franchise disclosure document reporting no net unit change in 2023. The company’s unit count increased by two a year later, to end 2024 with 28 units.
With a now-established infrastructure, King said the brand’s approach to growth quickly turned aggressive: “We wanted to pour a little gas on the fire.”
The brand began working with franchise development company Rep’M Group in October 2024 to outsource franchise sales and assist with construction project management.
“Monster has never been a sales company,” King said. “We’ve always been training and support first, so we didn’t want to take away resources from what we feel we really do well.”
Multi-unit operators make up a little more than half of Monster Mini Golf’s system. While most of those franchisees started as single-unit operators, 2025 was the first year the brand signed multi-unit deals with new franchisees.
King sees it as a testament to the brand’s continuous focus on training and support. “We’ve doubled down on what we do really, really well. We train, support and protect our family culture at all cost—that has been the difference in people wanting to sign up,” he said.
Monster Mini Golf’s average unit volume for 2024 was a little more than $1 million, King said. The cost to open a Monster Mini Golf ranges between $885,235 and $1.5 million, its FDD states. Momentum has given the brand a newfound confidence in site selection. King said he’s aware of the competition Monster Mini Golf faces in family entertainment but sees the brand’s buildout—at 10,000 to 12,000 square feet—as all the more reason for franchisees to view smaller, overlooked markets as pockets for success.
“You position yourself as the only game in town because none of the bigger boxes are coming into these small markets,” he said. “We’re still looking for those high-population suburbs outside of big metro areas, but what we’re learning is there’s opportunity in markets we didn’t think there was before.”
The brand is innovating on the technology side, led by investing in a CRM program last year and a mobile app launch at the start of this year.
Monster Mini Golf expects to open 10 units this year, with King sharing his larger goal of inching toward 100 units. But make no mistake—the brand’s decades-long, “family business” culture is here to stay, King said, no matter how big it gets.
“We’re an emerging brand in available options, but we’re a legacy brand in training, support, the mistakes we’ve made, the learning and the education, and our roadmap is really solid because of all of those years,” he said. “It wasn’t an intentional place to be, but I feel it’s a very advantageous place to be. … Overall, we make decisions on what’s best for franchisees because we’re franchisees ourselves. As long as we do that, we feel the success is as much as we want, and we’ll just keep marching toward there.”
Article Originally Posted by Alyssa Huglen on With Franchisees at the Helm, Monster Mini Golf Tees Up Growth Push | Franchise News | franchisetimes.com
