My favorite semi local range does quite well, but it’s an outdoor range with numerous bays of steel poppers and dueling trees for pistol, a skeet section, and lanes for 25, 50, 75, 100, and 200 yards pistol and rifle. The whole shebang sits on less than 10 acres and he has made an amazing use of the space. He probably does spend a fair amount of money maintaining the berms and walls, but the guy clears 1k most weekends. He does this by offering a variety and charging a reasonable daily price (25 per head for the day). It doesn’t sound like much, but when you personally watch 9 or 10 vehicles come in over one hour with 2 to 4 people per vehicle you see how it adds up. The owner is a good guy, retired LEO and we know a lot of the same people. He also shares a passion of shooting milsurp and iron sights with me, so on super slow days we will shoot together if he has time. I’ve asked and he confirmed his net revenue for weekends. Plus he gets a fair bit of business through the week. If the weather is nice I’ve seen his range quite crowded on a Wednesday morning before.
That’s apples to oranges for what you’re talking about. I haven’t run a range/shop but I’ve looked into it heavily. I know one of the largest ranges/shops in the area (not far from my favorite range) is barely making it. Their range is indoor, they charge by the hour (30 an hour at that), and it’s under utilized unless the weather is crappy. There prices on everything are through the roof, and they only stock the generic hunter type stuff along with a smattering of over priced holsters and AR accessories. You could literally stand a great chance of getting what you need at Walmart sporting goods for 25% less. Same brand and all. They did well during the ban panics, but they have been hurting since that silliness ended.
Again, I have no actual experience so take it for what it’s worth. But I have made observations. Look at filling a niche like offering a great selection of reloading components at a decent price. Or a good selection of black powder both modern and traditional. Or a strong focus on archery. There is another local business that is the go to place for anything archery, to include working on compound bows and having virtually everything in stock. They have an archery range on sight to let you test out their work. They also sell firearms, ammo, etc. while not the cheapest by any account, they do quite well because they get a lot of folks in the door with their archery niche. People will drive a 100+ miles to get their equipment ready for hunting season at this business. I don’t go there, as I don’t do archery like that and I can get other stuff for less, but I commend their business model.
Beware, if you’re going to get into a niche like reloading you have to have a lot of diverse stock. I’ve seen several stores that had a couple of shelves devoted to reloading clearance it out saying they couldn’t make money on it. Well yeah, you had 3 or 4 powders to choose from, primers that were on the expensive side and typically only large rifle magnum, a smattering of dies only covering 9mm, 45, 223, and 308, some plated 9mm and 45 pistol bullets, and a few bulk boxes of 223 projectiles. Pretty much stock that only a brand new reloaded might be excited about, with the more experienced guys wondering where they can get 45 colt bullets from. If you go that route, it’s a lot of work to accumulate everything that would draw people to your store from miles around. But they will go if you set it up right. I would drive 50 miles to a store that specialized in reloading or traditional black powder pretty frequently.