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Online communities The Kitchen and
Pickleheads fuel pickleball’s rise
Jared Paul, Oscar-winning actor
Jamie Foxx, and Jason Aspes.
By Alex Ewalt
When longtime friends Jason Aspes and
Jared Paul started The Kitchen in 2020, it was
the result of a professional detour.
Paul had recently moved to Austin,
Texas, to work on a startup focusing on the
music and concert space, and Aspes had been
advising him in the endeavor. Of course, the
Covid-19 pandemic had other plans for the
concert industry, which subsequently shut
down and stopped the startup in its tracks.
Like many other Americans in the first
months of the pandemic, the two took to
pickleball, a racket sport that incorporates
elements of tennis, ping pong and badminton
and is played as either singles or doubles on
a surface smaller than a tennis court. The
sport, which has evolved quickly in the past
three years, can feature fierce “firelights” or
impressive displays of touch at the net with a
ball that resembles a smaller wiffle ball.
“During the pandemic, it was an
opportunity to get outside, get some exercise
and do something different,” Aspes said. “And
we both just really fell in love with the game
and recognized there was an opportunity
here.”
“One thing led to another and pickleball
just absolutely boomed,” Aspes added. “We
were right there at the ground level of that
groundswell.”
Enter The Kitchen, an online community
with a website, TheKitchenPickle.com, that
is chock full of content, as well as its various
social media accounts featuring news, views,
videos and, of course, memes.
“I was working on the music startup
and raised the round, and we built a similar
community to what The Kitchen is in the
concert space,” Paul said. “And then when
things got shut down after we raised the
round, I discovered pickleball and started
leveraging some of the same growth strategies
to build an audience, and it just took off
super quickly.”
“It's an incredibly social sport, but there
was nothing online tying people together,”
Aspes said. “It was all disparate, there was no
unification, there was no place to understand
what the rules were, there was no go-to home
for pickleball, and we tried to provide that.”
The two are early-90s graduates of
Riverwood High School in Sandy Springs
and have ample experience in the fields of
advertising and social media. Aspes, who
lives in Brookhaven, has been a competitive
basketball player, and Paul, who is still in
Austin, came up wrestling. Both say that
pickleball has brought out people from any
and all athletic backgrounds and has rekindled
the desire to compete for many.
“I wrestled in high school, and I think
that's one of the reasons why I'm so addicted
to pickleball, because it's been a while since
I've been able to compete in a sport at a
relatively high level,” Paul said.
“We see athletes from all different
backgrounds,” Aspes said. “Obviously all the
paddle and racket sports are huge. Ping pong,
badminton, squash, racquetball, tennis, that's
where we're seeing tons of people coming in
now, but also basketball, baseball, golfers who
are looking for more exercise and something
a little bit more social and quicker, and less
expensive. There's a lot of positives to the
game.”
Fans can expect a little bit of everything
at The Kitchen’s website, as well is its social
media channels on Instagram, YouTube,
Twitter and Facebook, with a dedicated
Atlanta group on Facebook with thousands of
followers. Across all platforms, The Kitchen
has nearly 300,000 followers, the largest
online pickleball fan community cumulatively,
according to Paul.
“I think it's a bit of a mish mash and it's
all about what you're looking for,” Aspes said.
“So if you're looking for instructional and
you're trying to improve your game, that's
there. If you're looking for conversations with
like-minded fans, that's an option. If you're
looking to interact with the pros, we have tons
of pros who pop into the platform. There's no
real barrier between spending time with the
professionals.”
From the tennis world, Paul cites big
professional names like Atlanta native Donald
Young and former UGA star John Isner who
have jumped into pickleball. And the game
has attracted big celebrities such as Jamie Foxx
and Leonardo DiCaprio as well as investing
interest from stars in other sports, such as Tom
Brady, Drew Brees and Rob Gronkowski. In
2022, The Kitchen hosted an event in Miami
with 11 Vodka and two events in California,
with Cutwater Spirits and comedy studio
Funny or Die.
For metro Atlanta, Aspes and Paul say
that there is more and more choice for courts
and venues, even at indoor gyms such as the
Lifetime Fitness in Sandy Springs, which
recently repurposed its basketball courts as
three permanent pickleball courts. Even a
fixture like Atlanta Lawn Tennis Association,
or ALTA, is jumping into pickleball
competition, Aspes said.
“There are a lot of options coming down
the pike, but we're seeing tennis courts, tennis
clubs, tennis communities convert their tennis
courts, not necessarily into full-time pickleball,
but to at least give people the option to play
pickleball or tennis,” Aspes said. “It's just
booming. Every day we're seeing new clubs
opened up around the country.”
Another online community, Atlanta-
based Pickleheads, is also riding the wave of
momentum. With offices in the Berkeley Park
neighborhood of West Midtown, Pickleheads
CEO Max Ade, an Atlanta resident, founded
the service in February 2022 with his team
in order to connect the growing number
of players to court and game options
nationwide. Brandon Mackie, a co-founder
of the company and a Georgia Tech graduate
who played tennis at Jenkins High School in
Savannah, says that at this stage of pickleball’s
rise, accessibility is key.
“The goal of Pickleheads is to be the
digital home for pickleball players,” Mackie
8 | MARCH 2023
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