Members of over 35 million households (29%) with more than one-third of the U.S. population visited and paid for an activity at an agritainment farm over the summer and fall this year. This is the finding from the first national agritainment survey conducted by the White Hutchinson Leisure & Learning Group consultancy firm. 2,004 people were surveyed about their agritainment farm visits and activities that took place between July 1 and mid-November. Activities they were asked about were multi-activity Fall/Halloween attractions, corn mazes, u-pick pumpkins, u-pick apples and other fruits, haunted attractions and hayrides.
Participation was highest in the Northeast where 38% of households attended an agritainment farm activity and lowest in the South with one-quarter attending.
In the South, Midwest and West regions of the country, more people attended a multi-activity Fall/Halloween attraction than any other type activity, with the Midwest having the highest participation rate. However, in the Northeast, u-pick apples, cherries and other fruits was the most popular, followed by Fall/Halloween attractions, almost tied with corn mazes as third in popularity. In both the Midwest and South, u-pick pumpkin patches were the second most popular activity followed by corn mazes in third place. In the West corn mazes are the 2nd most popular activity followed by u-pick pumpkin patches.
In our company’s twenty years of working in the agritainment industry, we knew farms were growing in the crowds they attracted, but we never realized how high the household participation rate had become. For entertainment-type destinations, these are incredible market penetration rates. It’s second only to movie theaters and higher than participation at theme parks. Agritainment truly owns the Fall, and especially October.
About Randy White
Randy White is CEO and co-founder of the White Hutchinson Leisure & Learning Group. The 31-year-old company, with offices in Kansas City, Missouri, has worked for over 600 clients in 37 countries throughout the world. Projects the company has designed and produced have won seventeen 1st place awards. Randy is considered to be one of the world's foremost authorities on feasibility, brand development, design and production of leisure experience destinations including entertainment, eatertainment, edutainment, agritainment/agritourism, play and leisure facilities.
Randy was featured on the Food Network's Unwrapped television show as an eatertainment expert, quoted as an entertainment/edutainment center expert in the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, New York Times and Time magazine and received recognition for family-friendly designs by Pizza Today magazine. One of the company's projects was featured as an example of an edutainment project in the book The Experience Economy. Numerous national newspapers have interviewed him as an expert on shopping center and mall entertainment and retail-tainment.
Randy is a graduate of New York University. Prior to repositioning the company in 1989 to work exclusively in the leisure and learning industry, White Hutchinson was active in the retail/commercial real estate industry as a real estate consultancy specializing in workouts/turnarounds of commercial projects. In the late 1960s to early 1980s, Randy managed a diversified real estate development company that developed, owned and managed over 2.0 million square feet of shopping centers and mixed-use projects and 2,000 acres of residential subdivisions. Randy has held the designations of CSM (Certified Shopping Center Manager) and Certified Retail Property Executive (CRX) from the International Council of Shopping Centers (ICSC).
He has authored over 150 articles that have been published in over 40 leading entertainment/leisure and early childhood education industry magazines and journals and has been a featured speaker and keynoter at over 40 different conventions and trade groups.
Randy is the editor of his company's Leisure eNewsletter, has a blog and posts on Twitter and Linkedin.
