Get to the heart of pickleball in each kitchen

Writers and content creators in the pickleball field tend to focus on the pro game when creating content, and I certainly do that, writing recap articles of major pro events, but one thing I've noticed is that my non-pro related articles are consistently better than the pro recaps and pro content, often by 10x.

Why is that? Well, it could be the fact that the majority of the sport's current players couldn't pick a professional player out of the lineup. Of the roughly 50 million American adults who tried pickleball last year, 97 percent couldn't name a single professional player, according to Tom Webb, APP's chief marketing officer.

So who is working for the “remaining 97%” of players? Currently, there are multiple pickleball “news” outlets, with bloggers posting short articles about the sport several times a day. There are numerous podcasts in this field dominated by professional players and professional coverage. Additionally, major social media sites have individuals creating content to promote their brands, hoping to get a share of the current gold rush in the pickleball industry. However, most fall into the same trap – focusing too much on “big pickle” news and a few top professional players.

There is one pickleball brand that is unique in terms of the content it offers at the moment, and that is The Kitchen, which doesn’t easily fit into any of the content channels mentioned above and doesn’t focus on the professional game.

The Kitchen's vision and ongoing mission is simple: to create a place where pickleball players can come together, communicate, and share experiences. Even more simply, the Kitchen has created and maintained the largest, most engaged pickleball community in the world.

Founder Jared Paul said, “Pickleball is community. That's our business model: to grow through community. We're not selling paddles or trying to monopolize the pro tour. We're not leaking news, creating controversy or chasing negativity and drama for the sake of clicks. We see ourselves as the heart of pickleball.”

Jared and The Kitchen's co-founders (Dane Iliff and Jason Aspes, who has become president of UPA-A) have carefully cultivated a brand that began as a Facebook group designed to help Austin-area residents find a game and now grows by about 1,500 followers a day across various platforms. The Kitchen recently hit the milestone of reaching 1 million combined members, followers and email subscribers across its various media properties, surpassing 500,000 subscribers on Instagram alone. They are the first pickleball brand to achieve such high subscriber numbers, and it was all achieved through grassroots growth. “We've spent less than $10,000 on marketing to date,” Paul proudly says.

The Kitchen creates fun and exciting content for a wider player base. They try to blend culture with pickleball, and often create content featuring celebrities and athletes, such as Jamie Foxx, Rob Gronkowski, Drew Brees, David Dobrik, Doug Ellin, and Richard Branson. They post highlights of professional games (Paul says his biggest pro highlight was viewed nearly 90 million times), but like me, they get much more engagement when they post non-professional content. Paul says, “Posting non-professional content like 12-year-olds playing, trick shots, and funny memes about sports gives you a much broader view.” Human interest content seems to spark real human interest.

What started as a Facebook group to help Jared find fellow Austin-based pickleball players has quickly become one of the most recognizable brands in the sport: The Kitchen has now grown into a wide-reaching social media conglomerate that produces engaging content every day, hosts events and tournaments, interacts with celebrities and athletes, and helps users find the best gear in its curated online store.

Paul says, “We've played a huge role in bringing attention to the sport and showcasing different aspects of the sport. There are a lot of social media players out there but no one is getting as much attention as we are. We travel all over the country and everyone knows our kitchen. It's where everyone comes together – professionals, amateurs, celebrities. Everyone comes to us to consume content and learn about the game. It's not just social media, it's community-centric. It's about interacting and connecting, not just consuming.”

Why is community important? Well, it's a much bigger question. With the rise of social media, cell phones, and working from home, and the relentless decline of longstanding institutions in this country like the church, we are more isolated than ever. COVID also made the situation worse, with the entire country confined to their homes for nearly a year. I don't think it's a coincidence that pickleball's booming growth coincided with the lifting of COVID lockdowns. We've been stuck at home for months, unable to see family and friends, sit down in a restaurant to eat with others, or gather for any purpose.

Pickleball suddenly provided a community for people who craved it — a community that wasn't centered around political views, religious beliefs, or economic ability — and instead centered around a unique sport with mass appeal that anyone from age 8 to 80 could play, and that was played primarily in large groups that traded places on and off the court, with plenty of time in between to chat and catch up.

What we realize now is that most people play sports growing up, but it's not realistic to continue once their education is over. The most popular sport in the country right now is football. Who is going to continue playing football after high school unless they're a college player? The same is true to a lesser extent for the other “major” sports: basketball, baseball, and hockey. Some may move on to playing other sports as adults that are “easier” (tennis and golf are good examples), but none of these sports have what pickleball has to offer.

“Pickleball is a lifelong sport. It's more than just a sport; it becomes a lifestyle and a religion for many people. It becomes a close-knit community. Pickleball has literally saved lives,” Paul said.

And The Kitchen exists as a tool to help move the community forward.