Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, July 7, 1993 TAG: 9309180301
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: BETH MACY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Teresa Somma first heard the voice when her son turned 8 - too old for a Showbiz birthday party, she says, too young not to trash her house.
If you build it, they will come.
To which Somma added: And they will party to their hearts' content: birthday cakes, pizzas, video games, and fastballs coming in right above the plate.
The Sommas didn't have to build their field of dreams from the ground up, though they had to risk everything they had to open Somma's in the old West Salem Winn Dixie building.
There are batting cages for baseball and slow-pitch softball, video games galore, pool tables and air hockey set-ups. And best of all: an open invitation to mothers in the Roanoke Valley to turn Somma's into kid-birthday-party central.
The Sommas built it last year, opened in January. And the kids are coming by the station-wagon-full.
"Moms don't want to have birthday parties at home anymore because the kids can be so destructive," says Teresa Somma, who formerly baby-sat children in her home. "Having it here is easy: They don't have to plan or organize it, and there's no cleanup at all."
Marketing Somma's as the Showbiz Pizza of the 8- to-15-year-old set seems like the perfect play for Lou and Teresa Somma.
And while the place seems to attract mostly boys, it has a pretty good batting average with girls and adults as well.
The inside is set up to look like a baseball field, with green Astroturf . The far wall resembles a home-run fence with Major League team logos painted at the top and brown tile placed in front of it - just like a warning track.
Because Somma knows most parents are spacing their kids further apart these days than the traditional two-year spread, she added a kiddie corner to appeal to the little ones so Mom can bring them along, too. While the 8-year-old is yukking it up inside the batting cages - which are jug system with a rotating arm, so the batter can see the ball at release point - the 4-year-old sibling can play on the jungle gym.
"The secret is, she knows what moms want," says Lou Somma, formerly a car dealership finance manager.
To cater to even younger siblings, the Sommas are adding a party room for the 2-and-under set - high chairs and video cameras, plus a separate, private space for breast-feeding.
"We try to make each birthday party individual," Teresa says. "We don't try to cattle-mill 'em in and cattle-mill 'em out."
Parties last an hour and a half. When the kids aren't playing with the games or batting cages, they can have time away from the crowds in a private party room.
There's a larger room for baseball-team parties, too. It has a large-screen television, with a VCR so parents and players can watch game videos.
At a cost of $6 per child (with a minimum party of eight children), parties include a large, single-topping pizza for every four guests; unlimited soft drinks; four machine tokens for each guest and eight for the birthday boy or girl; plus a cake to match the theme of the party room. Parents can choose from a list of popular themes, including Batman, Barney and baseball.
"I bought $10 worth of extra tokens, and they're about to token me to death," says Susan Gray, whose son, Will, celebrated his seventh birthday a few weeks ago at Somma's. With 10 kids on the guest list, the cost came to $60, plus the extra tokens. But the home parties are just as expensive -- not counting the clean-up time, the Elliston mother says.
"Plus, at home parties you end up cleaning your whole house for a bunch of kids who are gonna mess it up in 10 minutes."
While targeting birthday parties as the crux of their business, Somma's is also luring in a good deal of other customers as well.
"We have student preachers from the Latter-day Saints that come here every day to spend a dollar and a quarter on the NBA Jam video game," Somma says.
The Salem Sports Foundation bought the high-school baseball team practice time here. And adults trying out for minor-league teams or playing rec-league games come here to brush up on their swings, too.
In sports-crazy Salem, Somma's may just have hit upon the right recipe. "You ask anybody: Vinton is baseball; Salem is football," Somma says.
"Now Salem's trying to get good at baseball again."
The Sommas' field of dreams, she hopes, will keep them coming in.
by CNB