Pebble helps Healthy Kidz meet booking demand

Founded in 2014, Healthy Kidz is Northern Ireland’s leading physical activity coaching provider. “We’re here to help every child achieve their best possible state of wellbeing,” explains CEO Chris Cousens, through their flagship PE programmes, after-school clubs and holiday camps.

“We run our programmes from 4 years old, and we see the knock-on effect of growing up healthily from that young age. Healthy kids become healthy adults, who have healthy families, who make healthy communities and a healthy society.”

Healthy kids, healthy society 

Getting kids active while they’re young is key to building lifelong healthy habits, but many primary school teachers lack the self-assurance or skills to deliver high-quality PE. “We find that an out-of-school experience allows teachers to observe and learn from our coaches, helping them build their confidence and competence,” Chris explains. “It’s more engaging for the kids, too. So we’re meeting the schools’ needs, and the kids are leaving our sessions with red, smiling faces.”

Building out from its leading reputation as a kids’ activity provider, the social enterprise is snowballing into other areas. “In a post-Covid world, health and wellbeing are very much at the forefront of people’s minds. They’re looking for innovative ways to keep themselves and their kids healthy,” says Chris.

“That’s got us working with local councils, offering physical wellness sessions for older individuals, post-natal Pilates, and so on. And healthy adults will tend to bring up healthy kids, so it comes full circle.”

When booking volumes crash your site, it’s time for a change

“I’ve pretty much had every role there is at Healthy Kidz, starting out as a coach in 2015. I always wanted to get to the stage where it was my full-time living, and joining as CEO three years ago saw that happen,” says Chris. 

So, he’s seen the ins and outs of every platform they’ve used to date. “We started with Eventbrite around 2016 but it got wildly expensive and wasn’t overly user-friendly,” he explains. Next, they turned their website into an e-commerce site, which worked well for a while. But booking demand meant it started crashing, and their email provider couldn’t keep up with the back and forth with parents. 

“It was stretched and we wanted to focus on the customer journey. No crashing at peak times, and a clean, easy booking experience for parents,” Chris adds. 

Healthy Kidz started using Pebble in 2024, introducing it for their summer camps. “Making the switch at a peak time in our calendar had me with my fingers and toes crossed that all would run smoothly. Thankfully, the transition was seamless,” Chris shares. 

“From the get-go, I was super impressed with the platform and loved the interaction we’ve had with Pebble. I can’t speak highly enough of the team — it’s a breath of fresh air compared to what we used before.”

More autonomy, more flexibility, more bookings

Listing multiple products, timings and price points

With 60+ products and counting, Healthy Kidz manages a shedload of dates, time slots, locations, activities, school term blocks and prices. “We want to make it as simple as possible for parents to book their after-school programmes, and Pebble’s helping us get there,” says Chris. 

Register access

With Pebble, everyone who needs to can access activity registers: the Healthy Kidz core team, all their coaches and the staff at school locations. “The schools can access the registers whenever’s convenient for them now, whereas before we had to email them all each morning with the day’s attendance lists. That’s saved the Healthy Kidz team so much time,” Chris says.

With around 50 coaches working on any given afternoon, better register access has made a big difference to efficiency: “Now, it’s easy for them to click on and see the kids’ details and parents’ contact numbers, and give someone a call if they need to,” he adds. 

Inbuilt marketing

One of the major things that attracted Chris to Pebble was being able to invite customers from previous blocks of after-school activities or holiday camps to future ones. “We used to have to export the lists from our website, upload them to our email marketing, and spend a lot of time keeping details updated and accurate. Now it’s done in a couple of clicks, all built in.”

Access for the whole team

Across administration, marketing and more, everyone who needs to at Healthy Kidz can access Pebble. “For autonomy and sharing the workload, that’s made a positive change,” says Chris. 

To find out more about Pebble’s award-winning management software for kids’ activity providers, head here.