Susannah Barr is more than just a professional pickleball player — she is also a business owner. Susannah opened The Flying Pickle in Meridian, Idaho (just outside of Boise), along with fellow pro Nick Peterson. We spoke with Susannah about running a pickleball club and what she has learned.
“Myself and one of the other pros in town, Nick Peterson, we were always talking about the fact that we needed better pickleball options specifically in Boise,” Barr explained. “I'd pull up real estate just out of fun, but really we didn't know how to start something — we're the pickleball players.”
Barr and Peterson met Paul Starita, CEO of The Flying Pickle, who was looking at opening a new location in the Boise area.
“We knew what was going to make a successful club as far as bringing in players and members and events,” she said. “And as soon as we met it got going pretty quickly and then it was just a matter of finding the right location and dealing with the permits and all the other things that go into actually opening a club.”
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The Flying Pickle in Boise opened in late 2023, after about a year of “finding the right building, dealing with the funding, and all of those in the legal side of things — all that stuff that us pickleball players don't really want to think about. But it's very important to do something successfully.”
Pickleball club membership model
The Flying Pickle works through a membership model. Although non-member guests have some opportunities to play, the courts are always reserved first for members, including both open play and leagues. Memberships have been sold out for months, which means the club has reached their capacity — even though they have 18 courts.
“We have leagues going all the time. We have open play every day,” Barr said. “There are some things that members are going to pay for that are extra: tournaments, leagues, clinics, things like that. But because it is a membership-based club, we do try to provide a lot of fun opportunities for our members. Our main focus is on building that community and making it their home away from home. We definitely want to make sure that our members come first and that they have a really great experience.”
Building a (pickleball) community
The community The Flying Pickleball is creating starts with pickleball, but encourages members to stay at the club long after their games are over.
“You want it to be a place people want to stay even beyond their pickleball experience,” Barr said. “I've been to so many indoor clubs where it's great to play your pickleball there, but then you want to leave because maybe it's too loud or the lighting isn't great or they don't have other amenities. And so really you don't have a sense of community.”
The Flying Pickle has a full restaurant, plenty of hangout areas, and locker rooms — which was an intentional design plan to build that community.
“People will stay and they'll watch their friends play and they'll get something to eat or something to drink or they'll play cards upstairs or they'll use our meeting room,” she explained. “So it's just pretty neat to see that it's really more of a true community hangout place rather than just purely ‘get in and play your pickleball and get out.’”
Balancing beginner players vs. pros
One of the most difficult parts of running a pickleball club has been to balance the needs of all levels of players: from brand new, never-played-before players to professionals. One of Barr’s goals when opening was to embrace beginners and brand new players.
“Because in my experience, if you give them a great first experience, then they become your most loyal members — because it's their home. It's where they've always played. It's where all their friends are,” she said. “I know some people might find that surprising being that I'm a pro player and you think I'd be like, ‘Oh no, how are we going to cater to the highest level?’ But I actually don't really believe that. We try to cater to both. We have some really high-end courts. We have a lot of technology in our club. You can stream and record all your matches.”
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Barr said the higher level players also tend to organize themselves and don’t need as many planned activities, but the club does provide tournaments and cash games for them to continue to play as well. But she added that: “It is really the beginners, the 3.0s, the 3.5s that make up the largest portion of our membership.”
The Flying Pickle team is passionate about helping those players who are just beginning and those wanting to get better.
“I feel like if we can create that kind of generous spirit, it helps our club feel more like a community. But also it helps us to be a little bit more humble in our approach to ‘where's the right place for me to play?'"
Because there is a waitlist at The Flying Pickle in Meridian, they are planning to open a second location in the nearby town of Nampa. The new location will have 16 courts and a full restaurant, and they are hoping to be open by the end of October or beginning of November 2025.
The Flying Pickle also has plans to open a new club in the Tri-Cities, Washington (in Kennwick specifically) and is also selling franchises, with the first one opening soon in Post Falls, Idaho.
