PHOTO: Chad Brodsky, right, has launched Kid Krawl, an interactive scavenger hunt company. Shown here with him are Nathaniel Allen House Managing Director Adrienne Hartzell Knudsen, left, and All Over Newton’s Lauren Berman, center. Photo by Bryan McGonigle
Kids and tours don’t often mix. One local company is working to fix that by mixing modern technology with an old-fashioned scavenger hunt.
“We’re an interactive touring app you can get to with your smartphone,” Chad Brodsky said as he watched a group of kids solve a riddle in the Nathaniel Topliff Allen House dining room.
A few months ago, he and his wife, Liana, started Kid Krawl, an interactive tour company that immerses kids in tours and store crawls with interactive scavenger hunts and clues that teach about places and businesses in Newton.
They launched the company’s first location in Newton Centre—they named that location “Adventure in Pawsington” in honor of their dog, Ollie—to help small businesses in that village.
Here’s how it works:
- Families book a tour and when they get there, they scan a QR code to unlock the tour.
- Kids get a clue from the QR code, solve it, and it sends them to the next local business with the next clue.
- At the end of the experience, kids have learned about the place they’re touring, and the interactive fun gives them a sense of accomplishment.
Sometimes, the kids get prizes.
“At Newtonville books, they get a book as part of the crawl,” Brodsky said. “So they read a little of the book and then it takes them to the next place.”
The Allen House tour was held during the Newton Cultural Alliance and All Over Newton pop-up lunch event on Wednesday, and it allowed Brodsky to showcase the business to local families outside of Newton Centre.
“We get to teach kids about the Allen Center in a very interactive way,” Brodsky said.
And the business is expanding. Soon, Brodsky said, Kid Krawl will open a location at Legacy Place, the Natick Mall and the Boston Common.
“So essentially, we’re just going to be popping these up and turning urban areas into treasure hunts that bring people to those areas,” Brodsky said.
You can learn more about Kid Krawl and book a tour here.