23/02/2022

How Barracudas Became a Bigger Fish

This series has been created to give you some insights into the principles behind Barracudas Activity Day Camps and the growth of the company over 30 years.

A strong foundation

So far, we’ve shared the early years and first stages of growth with our first summer camps in the South East. This will give you an idea of how we put kids at the centre of everything we do - and always have done. This is the foundation of Barracudas holiday club and what we’re built upon.

This time we’ll give you some insights into rolling out our camps to new seasons and regions. Confident that Barracudas successfully fulfilled a need for parents and children at our school holiday camps, the time was now right to expand!

Onwards and upwards

The early 2000’s saw quite a few changes to the operations side of the business. We moved the Head Office to bigger premises in St Ives, Cambridgeshire to accommodate our expanding team.

In 2003 we took on larger storage facilities for our growing fun activities equipment. By this time we had 16 kids camps and with each new camp Barracudas invested in a full set of equipment. We had to offer the same level of activities at each camp to make sure every child had the same opportunity for fun. Anything less wouldn’t have met our high standards and the expectations of the kids and their parents!

At this stage of Barracudas growth there were many changes going on in the background. Not just the logistics of office space and storage facilities but also staffing and training. With an expanding business and developments in the childcare industry, operations and processes had to become more sophisticated.

We’d always had an unrivalled range of activities with fantastic equipment and a high expectation of staff to be able to deliver quality sessions. As Barracudas expanded it was vital that we could sustain that growth and not compromise our quality of care as a result of these changes.

New seasons

In 2004 Barracudas opened our first Easter camps. This was a carefully considered decision. We knew there was a need for our fun activity camps in the Easter holidays - we’d had lots of requests from parents over the years. We needed to be sure that we could offer the same level of experience for children during the Easter break when the weather is less predictable!

Barracudas always offers a wide range of activities to suit every child but we had to make sure that we could still provide the same exciting opportunities for kids during those days that we would need to entertain them indoors. We opened 3 Easter camps in this first year and because we prepared so thoroughly, they were all really successful.

It’s not always been easy and there’s been many changes that we’ve adapted to at Barracudas over the years. By the mid 2000’s Barracudas had grown from 2 summer camps in London and Surrey to 28 summer camps and 6 Easter camps throughout the South of England. At each stage of growth Barracudas held its defining values and original mission to offer children exceptional holiday clubs, maximizing the fun in the school holidays.

Keep an eye out for our upcoming blogs to get insights into where we are now and what’s next for Barracudas.

Read Part 1 - The Vision, Part 2 - Starting Out and Part 3 - Growing Up, Part 5 - Latest Years and Part 6 - The Future's Bright.