Greg Bartoli’s PopStroke might just be the fastest-growing concept among its peer set, having hit 240 percent unit expansion since January 2023. The 2018-founded brand, which received an equity investment from Tiger Woods’ TGR Ventures in late 2019, is up to 17 stores, with Nos. 18, 19, and 20 on deck. Markets from central Orlando to Austin, Texas, to Nashville, Tennessee, then California for the first time, Hawaii, deeper into Arizona, the Lone Star State, and soon, breaking into areas, potentially Denver, thanks a cold-weather prototype (starting in Nashville) that’s opening the aperture on the road to 150–200 locations.
However, says Bartoli, who created JEM Capital in 2013 and began this journey with a “Lighthouse Cove” mini-golf and sport-themed restaurant, leaving behind a 15-year career on Wall Street, PopStroke has deliberately stayed under the radar. But as it reaches new audiences, it’s allowing for a bit more exposure.
Bartoli says PopStroke’s unit-level economics have separated it from the pack of big-box eatertainment chains and allowed it to grow responsibly, all through corporate development. The plan once it races through this coming wave of development is to achieve an eight- to 10-store per calendar run rate.
“The growth has been pretty dramatic,” he says. “The company is only about four or five years old really.”
MORE: PopStroke’s Journey to 200 Locations is Rooted in Connection
There’s a lot fueling PopStroke behind the scenes at its Jupiter, Florida, headquarters, where roughly 20 corporate employees steer a company of about 2,000 people.
Technology, Bartoli explains, was one of its Day 1 lines in the sand that has become the backbone of its trajectory. He founded Heard Technology in 2019 to craft a proprietary mobile app that enables customers to keep score of their putting rounds electronically. Importantly, it also enables them to order drinks for course delivery and place orders from anywhere on the property.
Bartoli saw the need for this infrastructure from a few angles. He owned four different restaurant brands and relied on the same number of point-of-sale companies for support. The system felt antiquated. Stores needed multiple third-party integrations to manage guest interactions, from loyalty to inventory management to labor scheduling and reservations.
As he began to develop a mobile app for PopStroke—which began in March 2019 in Port St. Lucie, Florida, with 36 holes, a full-service bar and restaurant, ice cream parlor, and enclosed playground for kids—his POS provider told him the dots couldn’t be connected, even with an open API. Even then, Bartoli had a vision of 200 or so PopStrokes. Yet the image of scaling with third-party dependencies wasn’t something that made sense. So he hired a team of engineers and developers to create a vertically integrated, direct-to-guest mobile app-based POS.
More recently, Bartoli brought on a CTO, Gavin Hall, who once worked at Instagram and also held the same role at TED (he most recently clocked time for WME Group parent company Endeavor). “We have a whole tech development team,” Bartoli says.
Nearly 80 percent (78 on the number) of transactions that happen at PopStroke take place as direct-to-guest interactions from its mobile app. In the next 12 months, Bartoli says, the company will record about 4 million visitors across its properties. If you do the math, it’s about 3.12 million coming through the system. “It’s pretty incredible,” Bartoli says.
The app also allows PopStroke’s ticket sizes to grow given guests order direct and more frequently since they don’t have to flag anybody down. The same notion applies to add-ons.
Additionally, Heard enables an instant review function. Bartoli explains PopStroke receives “tens of thousands” pieces of real-time feedback from users. That flows to mobile devices of managers. They’ll see, for instance, Table 7 just received a great review, or someone noted their burger was undercooked. Employees can then head over immediately and address concerns.
“That ability for us to be flexible and number and adapt and continue to develop, based on our own internal needs, is tremendous,” Bartoli says. “If you’re relying on 15 different third-party software systems, you’re stuck. And I think it prevents growth. It’s really enabled us to unlock a long road.”
Stepping back, Bartoli feels PopStroke’s success owes to one of its early aims. Comparing the brand to, say, Dave & Buster’s or Topgolf, is like measuring “apples to watermelons,” he says. Firstly, he considers the multi-layered design of PopStroke to be nimbler. But the pillar lies in its cross-generational appeal.
Lighthouse Cove was ideated to target this when Bartoli, living in New York toward the end of the financial crisis of 2010–2012, began to buy South Florida commercial real estate and saw a spot near the beach in Jupiter. Yes, it would feature golf, but there would also be music, a bar, elevated food, TVs, a playground, and ice cream. It resonated and led to three openings. Bartoli bought some other restaurants and continued expanding his real estate venture when he decided to package the premise of Lighthouse Cove into PopStroke.
Essentially, it would be an all-inclusive version of mini-golf, like its predecessor, but with modernized technology and everything dialed up. You could get drinks and food anywhere. There would be professionally designed putting greens, jumbotron leader boards, and entertainment in every corner. Vitally, though, PopStroke—a name inspired by Bartoli’s father (PopPop) and the golf phrase of using a short putting backstroke with a fast follow through—would be deliberate in catering to guests from 3-year-olds (playground, ice cream) to seniors.
“You won’t see that at any other competitor in this space,” Bartoli says.
In that differentiation arrived another evolution. PopStroke and its 98 percent scratch kitchen places food and drink innovation atop its priorities. But the idea of having a high-level, independent restaurant-like experience at a place called “PopStroke” didn’t sit right with Bartoli. At the least, it wasn’t reflective of internal efforts.
The company is now in the process of building a “brand within the brand,” he says. The restaurants, retroactively and going forward, will be called “Bar Tenders.” It’s a twofold play on PopStroke’s popular chicken tenders—“we feel like our chicken is as good as anybody’s in the space, period,” he says. “Or better.”—and the service element of relying heavily on bartenders due to the direct-to-guest mobile app unlock. PopStroke doesn’t have servers; just bartenders.
So when customers show up, the golf experience will be just that. The restaurant experience, however, will be “Bar Tenders.” That’s where you’ll see the dining, the enclosed playground, flat-screen TVs, craft beers, and signature cocktails.
One of the issues, Bartoli says, he observes with some giant-box competitors is they don’t invite dining occasions outside their entertainment. The present like cavernous sidecars. That’s not really how it shows up at PopStroke, he notes, where the brand pays attention to ambiance, landscape, and more traditional dining. “So why the hell would you call it something golf related?” Bartoli says.
That led to the rebranding and development of a prototype around a separated restaurant experience from golf, all living within the same property. Different signage, uniforms, and menu. “It’s really focusing more on the attributes of the restaurant, independent of the golf,” he says.
Those include, as mentioned, scratch-made cuisine, TVs to watch games, and the playground.
“We put a lot of focus on the culinary side, so why not promote that?” Bartoli says. “It’s new websites. It’s social media. And, in all cases going forward, a new layout. It’s a layout with this independent restaurant in mind that happens to be cousins to this golf experience, which is over and around the dining experience. But we don’t want the golf experience to overwhelm what we think is a great dining and culinary experience.”
PopStroke’s Nashville cold-weather store, which broke ground in February at the Century Farms development, and should open early 2026, can’t be understated as an inflection point. It’s the first venue featuring a blend of outdoor and indoor mini golf—18 holes outside and 36 inside—sitting on 5.4 acres with five 23-foot jumbotrons. The indoor mini golf, under 20-foot ceilings, will cover 52,000 square feet, outdoor 25,000, and there will be another 9,500 of building with indoor dining, private events, and bars spread across two floors.
Again, on the demographic equity, a fully enclosed children’s playground and outdoor table games, such as Ping-Pong, foosball, and cornhole, will showcase throughout as well. Also, an ice cream parlor featuring 22 flavors and custom milkshakes.
The unit has garage doors that open with nice weather and close to keep the experience going when it’s cold.
“You don’t want to be pigeonholed into just 25-year-olds. There are some entertainment brands that are just meant for urban, after work, 22- to 25-year-olds,” Bartoli says. “If you were 45 you would never go to it. If you were 8, you would never go to it. If you were 60 years old, you’d never even heard of it before. Our thing is our ability to resonate throughout the day, nighttime, lively night crowd, date night, 28 year olds, 25 year olds, during the day, families, seniors, couples, little kids, grandparents.”
Bartoli says Nashville was an ideal first spot. It welcomes all sorts of weather and will inform learnings for future development in cities that haven’t been able to host a PopStroke previously. Places like Seattle, Chicago, New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, and beyond.
The unit raises PopStroke to three growth prototypes: A college build—like in College Station, Texas—which is a retro-fitted shipping container. Those are more cost efficient and designed for smaller markets. Then, you have the Sunbelt, traditional outdoor PopStroke, and, with Nashville opening, a cold-weather box. All in, it clarifies a path to 150–200 U.S. stores, Bartoli says.
These will arrive in markets with population centers at 150,000, 500,000 to a million, and the largest metros in America.
PopStroke has also self-funded all its growth. It hasn’t relied on REIT financing and, in turn, hasn’t gotten over levered. Its real estate rental lease obligations haven’t been as high as some others. The company doesn’t spend $40 million building locations or rely on any sort of releverage, Bartoli says. Development wasn’t financed by REITs that get paid out in the form of rent over 30 years, leading to “astronomical rent obligations.”
“We’ve been able to keep our leverage to zero,” he says. “And our rents are very, very low, which allow us to be extraordinarily profitable.”
There are some high-profile spots coming. PopStroke partnered to open a store in Miami Freedom Park, a mixed-used development centered around a new 25,000-seat stadium from Inter Miami CF—the MLS soccer team home to soccer legend Lionel Messi. The Orlando spot will sprout on attraction-laden International Drive.
And as this high-profile development unfolds and new markets onboard, Bartoli says PopStroke will continue to hone its differentiators. He plans to take Heard to market for other experiential concepts soon, even restaurant hospitality groups. And it recently launched a membership program that has about 15,000 enrollees. You spend $25 per month, commit to 90 days, and get free golf and 25 percent off all F&B. PopStroke hasn’t marketed it outside of in-store activations. Expect that to change in the second half of the year.
But overall, like its larger growth plans, PopStroke is ready to step out. “We’re going to keep building an experience that resonates with everybody,” Bartoli says.
