TeeBox Golf was featured by AllBooked as a case study on how founder Brian Stenson built one of the industry's most advanced, fully automated 24/7 indoor golf facilities.
After evaluating the market, over 20 booking platforms, TeeBox Golf was designed to deliver a seamless customer experience with secure keyless access, automated booking and payments, and zero front-desk management.
Pivoting from corporate leadership to business ownership, Brian Stenson, Owner and sole operator of TeeBox 24/7 Indoor Golf, explored a variety of franchise concepts—everything from massage studios to barbershops—before landing on golf. But the thing that really sold him? The major potential for running a lean, lucrative business.
A visit to the PGA conference opened his eyes to the massive addressable market and near-universal appeal of the sport.
“Golf is a huge market, much bigger than if I was considering baseball or softball. It’s kids, it's old people, it’s everyone.”
The conference floor reflected that reach. Everyone from apparel brands to software companies had a presence there, and the latter sparked an idea. With his background in tech, Stenson immediately saw the revenue potential of a fully automated, 24/7 unmanned business model.
“That’s really what got me excited, and I just ran with it.”
From day one, he designed TeeBox with this concept in mind. If the business was going to run on its own, the technology stack had to do the heavy lifting.
There’s something to be said about the time Stenson dedicated to evaluating the 80+ booking platforms on the market that claim to be “golf simulator-specific” booking software before opening his doors.
He looked at everything from golf-specific startups to general booking platforms expanding into golf, along with gym software companies trying to break into the golf simulator market, before narrowing down his shortlist and selecting AllBooked.
“I evaluated 29 platforms total,” Stenson says.
Yet, very few passed the 24/7 automation test.
Having worked in tech, Stenson knows how to evaluate software, what questions to ask to sniff out sales jargon, and ultimately how to decide what would work best for his use case.
Here are his requirements for a 24/7 golf facility, and why AllBooked came out on top.
Once he narrowed the list down to a few contenders, he started pressure-testing the full customer experience from booking to access control.
“There were a couple platforms I thought were promising, but during the demo it would crash,” Stenson says. “I emailed them and they replied, ‘Yeah, it’s been broken for a few days.’”
For a fully unmanned operation, that was a dealbreaker. If the software failed, there was no front desk stepping in to save the customer experience. Reliability wasn’t just a feature. It was the business model.
Stenson explains, "AllBooked is my employee. That's the one thing they interact with."
Because of that, the user experience has to work flawlessly from start to finish.
When a customer visits his website, they can either sign up for a membership or click the big green “Book Now” button for a one-time booking. In both cases, the customer is instantly directed to payment and booking in AllBooked.
What feels simple to customers is backed by a highly customizable rules engine that Stenson says was easy to configure from day one.
“The rules... you don't have to code. You're just like clicking a button to set them up.”
On the backend, Stenson has carefully set up “Strict” cancellation policies that require customers to cancel or change their bookings at least 24 hours in advance. Otherwise, they forfeit their upfront payment.
This level of flexibility does more than just create an automated, hands-off workflow: it protects revenue by creating accountability.
As soon as a customer books, AllBooked collects payment—regardless of if they show up or not—so Stenson doesn’t have to worry about chasing payments or managing booking back-and-forth. More importantly, it sets expectations for future use by making it clear that if you want to swing, you have to really commit.
In the long term, this protects precious bookable hours while still collecting payment from the original reservation.
Without a workflow like this in place, Stenson would have had to tediously manage phone calls and email chains, creating more admin overhead and leaving room for human error that could result in a poor customer experience.
The simplicity translates directly into time saved.
"I literally spend zero time managing bookings."
And the experience speaks for itself.
In a Google Review, TeeBox member Bryan G. writes, "The booking site is super easy… you can now book up to 14 days in advance, and lock in recurring tee times so you don't miss out on your favorite time slot."
Stenson’s membership model was deliberately designed to accomplish two things: recurring revenue and a strong community that keeps customers coming back. Yet, he learned that it served another purpose too—one that helps keep TeeBox secure when he’s asleep.
Stenson says that due to the “cyclical nature of the business,” it’s important to keep a tight pricing model that supports consistent demand.
Within AllBooked, Stenson set up three Membership tiers, each intentionally designed as an upsell path to the next. The first tier serves as a gateway for casual golfers to experience TeeBox, with the subsequent tiers offering more exclusive benefits, like full 24/7 access to the facility.
“Some guys will stay in the White Tee, but most of them end up transitioning into the next tier.”
In the backend of AllBooked, Stenson completed a one-time setup for unique access permissions, advanced booking rules, and quotas for each membership type. From that moment on, the process has run automatically.
When a customer visits their site, they sign up for the membership of their choice, pay online, and start booking immediately in AllBooked with all access and rules applied automatically.
The result? A facility that attracts customers, keeps them coming back long-term, and runs with little to no manual intervention.
Interestingly, building a community of golfers through memberships does more than support sustainable revenue—it also adds an extra layer of security for TeeBox, helping keep the facility secure without needing any staff on-site.
For starters, because Stenson collects members’ personal information through AllBooked, there’s built-in accountability tied to every booking.
He explains, “I was really concerned about security in the beginning, right, and so one of my security measures is basically, you've registered and used your pin to open the door, so we know who’s in the building.”
This strategy works particularly well when paired with access control. With AllBooked’s Memberships feature, Stenson is in control of who can make bookings and when. At night, access is limited exclusively to members.
"When I'm awake, people off the street can book, right? When I'm sleeping, they can’t. Just members can.”
By limiting overnight access to members, Stenson has created a level of trust that affects how members view the space. Instead of acting like visitors, members treat the facility like their own.
"My members treat it like it's their basement, right? Or their garage. It's part of their house."
As a result, they look out for the facility and self-police the space.
Beyond self-policing, Stenson has layered in cameras, automated door access, and a full integration stack that powers an entirely unmanned operation—and he walked us through the entire blueprint.
AllBooked serves as the backbone of the operation, with every downstream action triggered by a booking—there’s a lot more happening behind the scenes than meets the eye. But for TeeBox members? All they experience is one seamless booking and access flow. To see the full blueprint, click here.
In Stenson’s words, the real value of running lean is “priceless.” But behind that sentiment, the numbers tell a clear story.
With zero time managing bookings and an estimated 10 to 20 hours saved per week on back-office operations, Stenson is free to dedicate time to what actually grows his business.
"If I was taking a quarter of my week and spending it on back-office admin... I'm not available to satisfy my customers, to do the marketing, to do all those other things I need to do to grow the business. So AllBooked’s opening my bandwidth to be able to generate the revenue I need to generate."
But time isn't the only place Stenson is seeing a return. Cutting staffing overhead is a major win on its own. Beyond that, AllBooked's integration infrastructure has kept Stenson’s energy costs down through automated bay shutdowns, and its Memberships feature supports his entire pricing model, from encouraging tier upgrades to generating recurring revenue in a business that's cyclical by nature.
But for Stenson, the biggest return may not have to do with the numbers at all.
"If I was using some platform that people were having problems with, I'd be looking for something else. The fact that I'm not having to worry about it... it goes back to that priceless thing."