HISTORY OF AXE THROWING
The history of Craft Axe Throwing quite literally starts with drinking beer and throwing axes. Back in 2015, Jake Jensen was back in his home state of Nebraska at the Escape Games Unlimited warehouse, dreaming and scheming with his friends and business partners, Travis Cornelius, Alan Dipple, TJ Cornelius, Zach Nuttleman, and Joel Johnson. Axe throwing venues were slowly popping up around them, and the team decided to throw their shot into the newest entertainment craze.
While in the warehouse and planning the next big business moves, Jake went to a hardware store and bought five axes and some 2×4 boards. He screwed them into the wall, cracked open a cold beer and started throwing. The casual environment of the planning session would follow him back to Greenville, South Carolina, where he and his family had moved to for the escape rooms. From that point, he started looking into locations for the newest axe house and found an opening at a budding entertainment district in northern Greenville, Hampton Station. “The vibe of that district really drew me to it,” says Jake. “Putting an entertainment venue in the same area as a craft brewery was a no-brainer.” Partnering with Birds Fly South Brewing Company as the first craft beer to be served at the store, Craft Axe Throwing opened its first location in March of 2018.
After the flagship store opened up, the rest of the team eventually moved down to Greenville as well, and they looked around the country for the next location and landed on Springfield, Missouri, partnering with Escape Games manager, John Lepant. Later in the year, the third location opened in Lincoln, Nebraska shortly after Christmas in 2018. Three stores opened in 2019, and despite the coronavirus pandemic hindering plans, two more locations opened in the summer and fall of 2020. By 2021, two more locations were added to the Craft Axe Family, with plans to build at least two more venues in 2022 and expand into franchising opportunities.
Since opening in 2018, Craft Axe Throwing has served more than 300,000 guests within 174 throwing lanes, and partnering with hundreds of local-to-the-location organizations in cross-promotions, beer tastings, and private corporate events. Axevertising has also been expanding, with local companies using our lanes to advertise their business.
To celebrate the birthday, all guests (21 and up) are able to pay just $20 a beer, a koozie and one hour of axe throwing across all locations the week of March 14, and ending on March 17, 2022.
Works cited:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axe_throwing
https://batlgrounds.com/history-of-axe-throwing