From April Fool’s Joke to $2.5 Million Franchise

By Sean Goldsmith

More than 100 customers asked Oakwell Beer Spa to turn its April Fool’s Wine Bath into a real product. Now the joke is going on the menu.

Oakwell Beer Spa invented a Wine Bath for an April Fool’s joke. More than 100 customers wrote in asking for the real thing, so the company made one. It is the latest twist from a Colorado business now asking franchisees to invest as much as $2.5 million in a beer spa.

Oakwell Beer Spa thought it had a decent April Fool’s joke. The Colorado company announced that it was becoming Oakwell Wine Spa and published pictures showing wine being poured into its baths.

The problem was that customers rather liked the idea. More than 100 people contacted Oakwell asking whether they could actually book a Wine Bath, and on August 28 the company announced that they soon could. The new treatment will be available at its Denver and Highlands Ranch locations from early September.

Customers will not actually be sitting in a bath full of wine. The treatment uses grape skin powder, rose petals, tulsi and flaked oats in the water, with the wine kept where it belongs, in a glass.

It is an odd new product from a business that was unusual to begin with. Oakwell sells private spa sessions combining beer-inspired hydrotherapy baths, infrared saunas and zero-gravity massage chairs, with a craft beer and wine taproom attached.

The company is now trying to franchise the idea across America, and this is where the joke meets some very serious money. Oakwell says opening a location can cost between $1,285,700 and $2,537,300.

They Went Travelling Looking for a Business

Oakwell was founded by husband-and-wife team Jessica and Damien Zouaoui after they left corporate careers in New York, sold their belongings and spent 14 months travelling through more than 25 countries.

They were looking for a business idea they could take back to the United States. During the trip they encountered European beer spas, where beer culture had already found its way into the wellness business, and eventually developed their own version for the American market.

The first Oakwell Beer Spa opened in downtown Denver in 2021. A second location followed in Highlands Ranch in 2024, giving the couple two company-owned sites before they began offering franchises nationally this year.

Customers book a private suite containing a hydrotherapy bath, infrared sauna and shower. Beer-inspired ingredients can be added to the bath, while the beer itself is served separately from the taproom.

It is easy to see why people talk about it. The harder question for a prospective franchisee is whether people will keep paying for it after the novelty has worn off.

Would You Put $2.5 Million Into It?

Oakwell says prospective owners should have at least $400,000 in liquid capital and a net worth of $1 million. At the top of the investment range, a franchisee could spend more than $2.5 million by the time premises, construction, equipment and opening costs are included.

That changes the conversation considerably. A customer only needs to decide whether a beer bath sounds like a fun way to spend an afternoon. An investor needs to know how many of those customers come back.

There are some practical attractions to the model. Oakwell says its treatments do not require licensed service providers, potentially avoiding some of the recruitment problems faced by conventional spas. The business is reservation based and can generate revenue from treatments, memberships, beverages and retail.

Oakwell also promotes an average customer ticket of around $300. That reduces the number of customers required compared with a low-ticket restaurant or fitness business, but it does not remove the cost of running a large, heavily fitted-out property. Private suites have to be occupied often enough to justify the money spent building them.

For a franchisee, that means the useful numbers are occupancy, repeat visits, membership retention and customer acquisition costs. How amusing people find the concept matters much less once the rent is due.

An April Fool’s Joke Became Market Research

The Wine Bath is a good example of Oakwell using its unusual identity without changing the basic business.

The company floated a ridiculous idea and more than 100 customers took the trouble to ask for it. Oakwell can now sell those customers a different treatment using rooms and infrastructure it already has, while giving previous visitors a reason to consider another booking.

That matters because a beer spa cannot depend indefinitely on first-time curiosity. Franchisees will need repeat customers, memberships, couples, celebrations and new treatments to keep their appointment books busy.

Oakwell's strangeness helps with the first visit. People immediately understand why it is different from a conventional spa, and customers have something unusual to tell friends about afterwards. What remains unproven is whether that advantage can be reproduced economically across a national franchise network.

There are only two operating Oakwell locations today. A franchisee opening elsewhere will encounter different rents, construction costs, competitors and customer habits. Someone considering a seven-figure investment should therefore be asking the founders difficult questions about how often customers return, how full the private suites need to be and what proportion of bookings comes from tourists or first-time visitors.

Now Oakwell Has to Prove the Idea Travels

The company has already cleared one important hurdle. It has persuaded people to spend money on a service that sounds faintly ridiculous when described to somebody who has never seen it.

Franchising creates a much tougher test. Oakwell now has to show that an owner in another city can spend up to $2.5 million building the business and attract enough paying customers to produce a worthwhile return.

The Wine Bath may help. New treatments allow franchisees to give existing customers something different without rebuilding the spa, while the sheer oddness of the concept provides the sort of word-of-mouth publicity many businesses spend heavily trying to manufacture.

None of that makes Oakwell a safe investment, particularly at this early stage of its franchise development. It does give the company something valuable before the first franchisee opens: people remember what it does.

If Oakwell can combine that attention with repeat customers and disciplined property economics, the beer bath may turn out to be more than a good photograph. There could be a serious franchise business underneath it.

What We Can Learn From This

Anyone considering an unusual franchise should separate the reason customers notice the business from the reason they return and spend money. For Oakwell, prospective owners need to examine occupancy, repeat visits, memberships, construction costs and the number of $300 bookings required to support an investment that can exceed $2.5 million. The company already has an unusually memorable proposition and direct evidence that customers are asking it for new treatments. Its next job is to prove that those advantages can support profitable locations well beyond Colorado.

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