BY KADIE TAYLOR
THE OBSERVER
OPELIKA — Axe Marks the Spot and the Opelika Rage Room are teaming up to provide one location for community fun. With the renovations completed, the business owners are working to reorganize and best accommodate customer fun in the shared space.
“I talked with Alex from Rage Room, and we decided that bringing another activity downtown would be beneficial to the community,” said Axe Marks the Spot owner Emily Key. “I think it’s going to be a really good thing to have both the activities under one roof. I think that it’s going to grow both of our businesses, because my clients are going to want to use the rage room, and his clients are going to want to throw axes — and that way, I think it’ll just be a one-stop shop for some exciting entertainment for people.”
Through providing a space for locals to throw axes and enjoy a rage room, Key said this collaboration can enable families and friends to join together and do both activities in the same night.
“Instead of people having to make two separate reservations and having to schedule things in a way to transport themselves from one area to the next, this makes it so that, when someone wants to do both, to have fun, they can just come to one place,” she said. “Especially with [the fact that] I’m allowed to have [customers] bring their own alcohol. My customers are allowed to bring in anything they want to eat and drink. And so it makes it to where people can stay longer, have fun and be safe as well.”
Opelika Rage Room owner, Alex Miller, said the collaboration has changed the offered space for certain activities, but there is lots of fun to be had and plenty of opportunities for groups to rage.
“As far as the difference goes, as of right now, we don’t have the splatter room, but we’re planning on potentially bringing our mobile splatter room down there,” he said. “The rage room is a little bit smaller, but that won’t really affect the experience too much. We just may not be able to get big, big groups in all at once, but we do have an observation window to help compensate for that. And then, Axe Marks the Spot should pretty much be the same, but with a few less lanes, but they already had a ton of lanes anyway.”
Along with the opportunity to collaborate with another activity-focused local business, Miller said he is excited to move the fun of the Rage Room to downtown Opelika.
“The big thing for us is the allure of being in downtown Opelika, [which] was something we tried to do when we opened the first time, there just wasn’t space available,” he said. “So being able to kind of funnel people to downtown, or grab people that [are] already doing whatever else they’re doing, was a big opportunity for us — and that was a big reason we wanted to move into that building.”
Key said she is thankful for the support of the community and said she wants to encourage residents to support local businesses when they are seeking activities and entertainment.
“We really have let Axe Marks the Spot grow organically, mainly just [through] word of mouth,” she said. “People come, have a good time and tell their friends about it. So I think it’s been a blessing and a testament to how the Opelika community truly works in the fact that we have been able to be open four and a half years now.”
Key and Miller both said they share a goal to eventually hold business hours, but for now reservations are needed to join in on the fun. For more information, visit Axe Marks the Spot or Opelika Rage Room on Facebook.
