Indoor Mini-City & Playground Opens in Buckhead
Roi Shlomo designed Kids Avenue so children would have a soft indoor place to play and learn.
In the heart of Buckhead, word is spreading like wildfire about a 4,700 square-foot magical kid-sized city where imaginations can run wild. Thanks to a fateful rainy day and no place fun to go, serial entrepreneur Roi Shlomo was inspired by his two-and-a-half-year-old daughter Giselle, to create Kids Avenue so she (and other children) would have a soft-indoor place to play, learn and pretend.
Shlomo said, “Kids Avenue represents the first time in my life I’ve opened a business without having profit in mind. It was strictly love for my daughter and the community as I knew parents would value a special place like this for their kids. We are thanked non-stop, and parents are driving from all over the Southeast and the response has been a dream, now turned reality.”
Raised in a small village in Israel, Shlomo, a dreamer since childhood, as a young boy in second grade took cucumbers from his mother’s refrigerator, cleaned and sold them door-to-door to their neighbors. As he grew up, next came street fairs, selling clothes on the beach, and Roi was always selling something.
After the military, Shlomo moved to the United States, a friend who was in Houston offered him a job on an ice cream truck driving the streets of Houston. At 21, he moved to Baltimore, then New York and when he was out of money, began working in Soho selling henna tattoos for five years and jewelry on the streets. He saved enough money to move to Atlanta and opened one kiosk in North Point Mall selling aromatherapy items. Before he knew it, Roi had opened 13 more mall kiosks.
A serial entrepreneur, Shlomo then launched Yogli Mogli in Sandy Springs, and said, “With every business, I always look for what’s missing in the market. I don’t jump on trends, and I want to be the first. I opened Yogli Mogli and in two years opened 27 locations in five different states. Timing is everything, and it was a good product.”
Shlomo wanted a casual lunch place and couldn’t find one and created Kale Me Crazy. He commented, “I started eating healthy and decided to eat kale. Since my biggest struggle was to find healthy food in a casual environment, I opened a fast-food healthy concept focusing on super foods.”
Kids Avenue was Shlomo’s first entry in the kids’ market. He shared, “My daughter, Giselle, is an amazing little girl, and she changed my life. This is the first time I’m grounded and as I was adjusting to this new lifestyle, I was looking for things to do with her. The first thing I noticed was all the playgrounds targeted older-age kids and her age group 0 to 7 was underserved. On a rainy weekend I was stuck in the house and didn’t have anywhere to go. I decided to create an indoor playground in a pretend city. She loved the soft play in the mall area, and I decided to combine fun stuff with a sensory experience all in one place.”
He added, “I owned an event space in Buckhead and converted it into the kid’s world and haven. Parents must always accompany and stay with children. It’s a great opportunity for parents to teach their kids real world activities. They can play in a grocery store, hair salon, dentist’s office, a bakery, ride foot propelled cars, sliding rock, popular slide, make pretend pizzas in the pizza parlor and other kid-sized, real-life experiences. When the kids walk in, they are so excited, and regulars come back over and over.”
The response was overnight insanity with 26,000 Instagram impressions and now more than 600,000 views. Parents can reserve a two-hour time slot and book it online and there is a limited capacity for the best experience. As with all playgrounds, Kids Avenue requires parents to stay and play alongside their children to supervise them and ensure a safe and happy experience. Visit Kids Avenue at www.kidsavenueatlanta.com.
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