Newschannel 8 at 5 30. as the economy continues to struggle and small businesses try to survive one bay area operation is doing more than just skating by as news channel jennifer lee explains it’s a business from an era gone by and it’s actually thriving
It’s a fun thing to do it’s in a safe environment how many are you paying for it’s tough for even the glitziest businesses to get on a roll in this economy okay every fourteen dollars but in the tightest of times chanel bellato’s bread and butter is booming
All right you guys are all set she caters to a crowd that prefers entertainment that won’t break the bank for our groups we charge them three dollars and at skate world in lakeland that’s what they get well i think that families that can’t afford to go to disney world come to skate world
That’s not to say chanel hasn’t stressed more than once over the struggling economy there were days where you know we were worried if we were going to have enough people to come in to cover turning on the air and running the lights and paying staff to be here hey
Guys how are y’all doing but those fears faded fast and chanel even braved a few improvements to give the business a boost we added new carpet we gutted the bathrooms we ordered new skates and people just started coming what size do it a two some nights close to 200 people
Will pack the rink and never shell out more than six dollars each to get in the door now i understand why my daddy did what he did for 30 years owning all of this wasn’t a lifelong goal of chanel’s but about two years ago her father who
Bought the business 30 years ago died very suddenly of cancer adonis davis’s death left a void in chanel’s life and a gaping hole in the business which suddenly thrust her into the role of entrepreneur and i thought you know i’ll do it for a few months
And then we’ll sell it and move on with our lives and all of a sudden all these things started coming together and i decided this was what i was meant to do right you’re all set and at a time when owning a business is as uncertain a prospect has some people’s skating
Skills chanelle feels her footing is just fine i think growing up in the skating rink and being by my dad’s side working the cash register since i was 10 years old helping host birthday parties in between putting my roller skates on and getting my groove on
It was just meant to be even in the glare of an unforgiving economy in lakeland i’m jennifer lee newschannel 8. skate world success is also benefiting local charities the rink holds fundraisers for churches and civic groups and gives the organizations 50 percent of all the proceeds at the door
In just one year skate world went from giving 2 500 back to the community 270 500 in fundraising dollars did you do that when you were a kid oh yeah no and my mother was really into that back in the day she had all that her mother made
Her dresses and things like that and she would go out and you know it was a big deal and of course she raised me obviously and took us skating and you know learned to do the backwards i was going to ask could you go backwards yeah it’s easier than ice skating
At that yeah no you did you did oh yeah yeah no yeah yeah you should jump people that don’t do this though you could do harm but you escaped video you enjoyed that well if it was back then or if it was now it’d be on youtube we could watch
You do that that would be fun that would be fun well a terrific
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