Food for Padel Clubs, Gyms and Tennis Venues: How to Add Revenue Without a Kitchen

Members who play padel for ninety minutes, hit the gym before work, or finish a tennis lesson with their children are hungry by the time they leave. Most leisure venues are not capturing that spend. Some have tried and given up after finding a full kitchen commercially impossible to justify. This article explains how a growing number of UK venues are solving that problem — and what the PadelHub rollout shows about how quickly it can happen.

Why padel, tennis and gym venues are well-placed for a food offer

The standard objection to adding food in a leisure venue is that the numbers do not add up. A commercial kitchen costs tens of thousands of pounds to fit out, a qualified chef costs £30,000 or more per year, and a leisure centre or padel venue is not a restaurant. It is a fair objection — against the traditional model. The same objection does not apply when the food arrives chef-prepared and ready to finish.

What these venues do have, in abundance, is the right conditions for food to sell. Three factors set them apart from most hospitality operations.

Dwell time is long. A padel session is ninety minutes. A gym member may be on site for two hours. A family using a leisure-centre pool may be there for most of a Saturday morning. Members are not passing through — they are staying, and at some point they will be hungry or thirsty. If the venue can offer food, that spend stays on site. If it cannot, the member drives to the nearest supermarket or fast-food outlet.

The social culture of padel and tennis drives post-game eating. Padel in particular is a social sport. Courts are booked in groups of four. Post-match drinks and food are a natural extension of the session, and venues that offer them turn a ninety-minute court booking into a two-hour visit with a material uplift in secondary spend. Tennis clubs have long had this culture at a membership level; padel venues are building it from scratch and the ones that add food early are shaping how members behave.

The fitness audience wants food, but specific food. Gym members and dedicated sports players are not necessarily looking for a bacon roll, though they may want one. They are looking for high-protein meals, low-calorie options, and food that fits their training. A menu that cannot offer this will be used only occasionally. A menu that can offer it becomes part of the member's routine.

Nova Chef's range of 40-plus rotating meals covers both audiences. Post-match comfort dishes sit alongside higher-protein, lower-calorie options. Allergen information is available for every meal — useful for any venue with a mixed membership.

What to serve: matching your menu to your venue type

The right menu angle varies slightly depending on what your venue is and who comes through the door. The table below gives a starting-point frame. Nova Chef's team will refine this for your specific operation during the demo process.

Meat across the Nova Chef range is sourced from a certified halal supplier, making the menu halal-friendly across non-pork dishes — relevant for padel and leisure-centre operators serving diverse communities. The menu rotates across 40-plus dishes so there is always something new, and venues can set a fixed menu from the available range based on what their membership responds to.

The PadelHub story: seven sites in six weeks

PadelHub operates multiple padel venues across the UK. Before partnering with Nova Chef, food on site was limited or absent — typical for padel venues that have scaled quickly and focused capital on courts rather than kitchens.

Nova Chef launched food operations across seven PadelHub sites in six weeks. There was no brigade to recruit, no commercial kitchen to fit out, and no lengthy procurement process. Each site received a setup that any staff member could operate from day one: meals stored in an upright freezer, finished to order in a compact smart oven, and served hot within minutes of the order being placed.

Food and drink revenue has been rising across those sites since launch. The speed of the rollout — seven venues in six weeks — demonstrates how little infrastructure is required. A padel venue that decides to add food today does not need to plan around a six-month kitchen build or a chef recruitment campaign. It needs a freezer, two ovens, and a delivery schedule.

The PadelHub rollout also illustrates how the model scales across a multi-site operation. Because every dish arrives ready to finish and the staff operating procedure is identical at every site, there is no quality variation between venues. A member visiting one PadelHub site and then another will receive the same food, at the same standard, without the site manager having to train a different kitchen team at each location.

Setting up: what it actually takes

The infrastructure required to run a Nova Chef food operation is deliberately minimal. This is not a simplified version of a commercial catering operation — it is a different model altogether, designed for venues where a full kitchen is not viable.

The essentials are an upright freezer to hold stock, one or two compact smart ovens to finish to order, and a reliable delivery cadence from Nova Chef. That is it. There is no extraction requirement, no raw food preparation area, no commercial kitchen sign-off, and no brigade of staff.

On the equipment side, a double-door upright freezer costs roughly £1,200 to purchase outright from a standard catering supplier. Smart ovens are available to rent at around £50 per month each — Nova Chef advises two units for most venues, which keeps service moving at busy periods. An optional air fryer for chips and sides costs around £80–£200 and is bought outright.

The minimum order with Nova Chef is £500, with free delivery. The six-month shelf life means venues can hold sensible stock without waste pressure, and order on a cadence that matches their footfall rather than committing to daily or weekly deliveries.

Cost per meal to the venue runs from £3.10 to £4.50 depending on the dish, giving strong margin at standard leisure-venue retail pricing. Nova Chef charges no management fee. Overall labour runs at around 50% lower than a traditional kitchen setup because your existing reception or bar staff run the food — a typical session needs one person, a busy 100-cover session two — not a dedicated kitchen team.

From decision to first service, a venue can typically be live in around two weeks. There is no planning permission required, no build work, and no equipment that takes months to procure.