TruGolf Opens First Flagship Franchise in Cherry Hill

TruGolf Links opened its first flagship franchise location on July 23 in Cherry Hill, New Jersey. The company is a publicly traded business (Nasdaq: TRUG) that has been selling sim hardware since 1983. Up until now, they’ve mostly been an OEM — you buy their sim, you build your own business around it. The Cherry Hill location is the first time they’ve put their own flag in the ground.

It’s 6,045 square feet. Five premium simulator bays. The Horizon simulator with a 17-foot screen. A full-service restaurant. A bar. A multi-sport arcade. And a grand opening celebration that runs from August 4 through August 8, complete with the Cherry Hill mayor cutting a ribbon, a PXG fitting van, a live radio broadcast, and a closest-to-the-pin contest where the winner gets Ed Sheeran tickets.

This is not a putting green in a strip mall. This is a proper venue.

What TruGolf Links Actually Is

TruGolf has been around since 1983. That’s not a typo — they predate the internet. They’ve been making simulator software and hardware for four decades, mostly selling to commercial facilities, golf schools, and the occasional home buyer who wrote a big check. Their sim software powers a lot of the indoor golf centers you’ve probably been to, even if you didn’t know it.

The Links franchise model is newer. The company started signing Regional Developers — people who buy the rights to a territory with a population of one million or more — and those developers open flagship locations while also recruiting franchisees. Cherry Hill is the first of those flagships to actually open. Romeoville, Illinois signed a lease in July. Long Island, New York signed one in June. Three Regional Developers (NJ, NY, IL) have committed to more than 100 future locations.

The guy behind Cherry Hill is Nick Reimondo. He’s a former Hyatt and Deloitte guy who spent 17 years in hospitality and consulting, then ran an Amazon Delivery Service Partner business before deciding indoor golf was his next play. He holds the rights to develop up to 40 locations across New Jersey and parts of Pennsylvania. That’s a lot of sims.

The Eatertainment Model

TruGolf calls it “eatertainment” — which is a terrible word but an accurate description. The Cherry Hill location isn’t a golf facility that happens to serve food. It’s a restaurant and bar that also has five simulators. The menu is chef-inspired. The cocktails are handcrafted. There’s stadium seating in the Horizon bay. The whole thing is designed around the idea that people will come for the food and drink, and then also book a sim bay.

This is the same model Five Iron Golf has been running successfully in New York, Chicago, and now London. It’s the same model Puttshack uses for mini-golf. You sell the experience, not the game. The game is the hook. The food and drink are the margin.

For home sim buyers, the rise of this model matters. Every eatertainment venue that opens is a place where you can test a sim before buying one. TruGolf’s Horizon sim with the 17-foot screen is a premium product — if you’re considering a home build, you can now go to Cherry Hill and hit balls on it before you commit. That’s a lot better than reading spec sheets and watching YouTube reviews.

Why This Matters for the Industry

TruGolf is a public company. When they open a flagship location, they’re not just testing a concept — they’re demonstrating to shareholders that the franchise model works. The stock jumped 12% on the Romeoville lease announcement. The market is watching.

The bigger signal is about the facility boom itself. We’ve been tracking this for a while now — the explosion of indoor golf venues across the US and UK. The State of Indoor Golf report counted 3,849 venues in America alone. TruGolf, with its 100+ committed locations, is planning to add roughly 3% to that total by itself. That’s a lot of sim bays.

The franchise model is what makes this scalable. A single operator can open one facility and make it work. But a company with a public market valuation, a franchise playbook, and regional developers who have already committed to 100+ locations — that’s a different conversation. That’s consolidation before the market has even matured.

The Home Sim Connection

The guy building a sim in his garage should care about this for a few reasons.

First, more venues means more places to test hardware. If you’re deciding between a Foresight Falcon and a Trackman iO for your home build, you can now go to Cherry Hill and hit balls on a Horizon sim that uses TruGolf’s own tech stack. You might not buy the Horizon — it’s a commercial product, not a home unit — but the experience of hitting on a 17-foot screen with stadium seating will tell you what you actually want from your own setup.

Second, the franchise boom means simulator prices are going to keep coming down. When a company like TruGolf is scaling to 100+ locations, they’re buying sim hardware in bulk. That drives down component costs across the industry. The same sensors, screens, and software that power a commercial venue eventually trickle down to home products.

Third, every venue that opens is another data point for the thesis that sim golf is a real market, not a fad. The more facilities that survive and thrive, the more manufacturers invest in R&D, the more software improves, the better the ecosystem gets for everyone — including the guy in his garage.

The Grand Opening

If you’re in the Philadelphia area, the grand opening celebration runs August 4-8. August 4 is the ribbon cutting with Cherry Hill Mayor Dave Fleisher at 1 PM. August 7 has PXG’s mobile fitting van on site. August 8 has a live DJ and a closest-to-the-pin contest where the winner gets Ed Sheeran tickets. The place is at 2100 Route 38, Unit 2A, in the Plaza at Cherry Hill shopping center — right next to Cherry Hill Mall, between Guitar Center and Total Wine.

TruGolf Links Cherry Hill is open seven days a week, 10 AM to 10 PM. If you’re in the market for a sim, or just curious about where the industry is heading, go hit some balls and order a cocktail. That’s the whole point of the place.