Have you seen the going rate on beginners classes? All I'm saying is the folks who run bowling allies are in the wrong business. Both are basically renting space and equipment. The bowling ally is charging about $30 per hour. The amount of space dedicated for just you is quite a lot. It requires some very specialized equipment that needs maintanence. And you can have multiple people in your party. It's also worth noting that a lot of this square footage you are taking up is engineered and maintained. It's built to have balls thrown at it and stay consistent.

A pottery wheel is $90 a head for a 4'x4' spot on the gound with a wooden wheel and some refined dirt. Usually for a beginner class they aren't going to kiln it. Just have your fun and get out. Sure you are getting some instruction, but in a big class that was paid for quite a few times over. The first student in the room paid for that. Do you really need much instruction? People are just there to play with the clay and have a date.

So here is what you do. Stop what you are doing and set up a studio. Forget the kiln. You don't need it. Just go full didication on the try it once workshop. If someone actually wants to progress further they can follow up with a different place. Charge $70-$75. At that price you will be booked all hours past 5pm till midnight maybe even some before that. If you set yourself up for volume you can get a class of 15-20. Whatever scale you want to set up you will book it. Fuck learning this shit yourself. Just buy equipment and supplies and set up the website. Run the class shorter than the real studios tend to. 1h15 is good enough.

Even on the lower scale of a 16 person setup (no odd numbers, who's doing this by themselves), that's $1,1120 a class. From 5pm till midnight (the late one are 100% getting booked), that's 5 classes, with 45 minutes of break time and pushing people out the door and bringing people in. That's $5,600 a night.

When you account for clay you can reuse, it doesn't even need to be a well balanced clay because you aren't firing it, it doesn't even dent.

Even if you couldn't book all of that it's still worth. Setting up a fake studio that just gives people the date premise is a good idea. Then you forget all the complexity and skills needed to run a real shop. Your customers don't care. They are just going to get a hands on experience and warm up their date to a hands on experince. Just take their date money without making it complicated. You are basically getting a pimp fee, above the table, and without having to source the girls.