Today we’d like to introduce you to Tiffany Prinster.
Tiffany, we appreciate you taking the time to share your story with us today. Where does your story begin?
I come from a family of entrepreneurs and I am an owner in several businesses. So I’m always looking for my next venture. I was approached to buy our first escape room, our downtown St. Louis location, back in 2015 by a friend of a friend. It was the first escape room in St. Louis. I had never even heard of an escape room before! I met with the owner (who was looking to relocate) and when he told me the concept, I didn’t really find it very appealing. I actually said that I don’t see a wide market wanting to do these types of games. He said something to the tune of, “Just come and play. Then, make your decision”. So I grabbed some brothers, my mom, and a friend to go play. Let me just tell you: that was the most fun I had had in a long time. It was so exhilarating, challenging, entertaining, and bonding at the same time. I walked out of there knowing I wanted to buy the business. And about a month later, I did…along with two of my younger brothers. That location had just two room themes at the time. We later brought our mom into the business as a partner and my dad is a huge help in room building. We opened our second escape room in St. Charles in 2016. And we’ve been going ever since now with our 2 locations having over 13 rooms themes.
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
Family businesses are tough. Maintaining those relationships during stressful times can be extremely difficult with even the closest family. So there were definitely tears shed once or twice. Haha. But we are all good in the long run, and that is what is most important to me. Besides the challenge of working with family, the forced shutdown took a HUGE toll on our business. We hope that we never have to go through something like that again.
We’ve been impressed with Mastermind Room Escape, but for folks who might not be as familiar, what can you share with them about what you do and what sets you apart from others?
Mastermind Room Escape is our family-owned business here in the St. Louis area. We specialize in, you guessed it, escape room experiences! In case you don’t know, escape rooms are an experience where your team is given a mission to complete while inside the room. To complete the mission, you must find clues and solve a series of puzzles in order to find your way out and ‘escape’ the room. It’s a very fun and interactive activity that has a way of bonding whoever is in the room together working on the common mission. We love to watch (yes, we watch and listen to all games to be able to give clues) different ages, personality types, professions, etc. all come together for the cause to complete the goal. That’s one reason why escape rooms are a perfect team building activity or even holiday family outing as it helps bring people who may not usually team up (an accountant and salesman or grandpa and the nine years old grandson) together.
What sets Mastermind Room Escape apart from the now over 20 escape rooms in the St. Louis area is that we are a family-owned and local business. Our family lives around the O’Fallon, MO area. We also make up all of our rooms and build them ourselves (instead of being a franchise or paying someone to come build a room for us). We take great pride in making unique, fun, and challenging rooms that have a variety of types of puzzles/riddles/clues in each room so that all can participate in some way during the escape.
We also have more room themes and rooms than most other escape rooms. So we are able to host large parties where the whole office, student group, frat/sorority can split up into groups and play different rooms at the same time. At our St. Louis location, the room themes we have are: Diamond Heist, Creepy Lair, Secret Society, Cursed Castle, and Stadium Scare. Our St. Charles escape room themes are: The Electric Chair, DaVinci’s Workshop, The Shed, and Diamond Heist. Both of our locations also feature holiday escape room themes: Elf Escape and Home Alone, which are a family-friendly holiday activity that families really enjoy.
Mastermind Room Escape is the top-rated escape room in St. Louis on Trip Advisor and we have great ratings on Facebook as well as Google. We really pride ourselves on an amazing customer experience and work with our team of “game masters” to make sure our locations, games, and experiences meet our high customer service standards. We hope everyone walks away wanting to come play another room.
Before we let you go, we’ve got to ask if you have any advice for those who are just starting out?
My advice for those just starting out is to get things in writing and signed by both parties. It makes things so much easier than relying on memory. Mood, stress, new circumstances, disagreements, a surge of money, etc. can throw a real wrench into the best of intentions. So just get all the important stuff (what people’s roles in business will be, who will be contributing money/assets, what happens if a tragedy occurs, etc.) in writing, signed, and dated. You’ll be glad you did.
Pricing:
- $28 Per Person
Contact Info:
- Email: info@mastermindroomescape.com
- Website: www.MastermindRoomEscape.com
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mastermindroomescape
