20 Steps to Start a Zoos and Botanical Gardens Business
Opening a zoos and botanical gardens business means creating a living destination where animals, plants, and people share the same space. This guide walks you through every practical step — from choosing your collection to selling your first membership — in plain language built for founders, not bureaucrats.
Whether you're opening a small local museum, caring for a historical site, running a nature park, or building a place where people come to see plants and animals, this guide walks you through it one step at a time. You don't need a business degree. You may already be charging admission or running tours. That's fine — start where you are.
Most people who read this are already earning something — a few dollars at the gate, a paid weekend tour, a donation jar that pays the bills. That is a real business, even with no paperwork behind it yet. The permits and registrations catch up to the work you're already doing; the work doesn't wait for them. Find your honest answer above, then jump to the step it points to.
## Prove
Before anything else, decide plainly that you are going to run a museum or nature attraction as a business, not just a hobby you sometimes charge for. This decision changes how you treat your time, your collection, your land, and your visitors. This week, write one sentence: "I am opening a place where people come to see and learn about ___." Say it out loud. Tell one person you trust. The point isn't a grand plan yet — it's committing to the idea firmly enough that you'll do the next nineteen steps. Everything that follows gets easier once you've stopped asking whether and started asking how.
Your attraction may do many things, but you sell one core experience: a visit. Decide exactly what a visitor gets when they pay. Is it entry to see a collection, a guided walk through a preserved site, time among animals or plants, a hands-on exhibit? Write it in one plain line: what they see, how long it takes, what they walk away remembering. This week, describe your core visit to someone who's never been. If they can picture it and want to come, you've defined it. If they look confused, tighten it. A clear single offer is easier to price, promote, and protect than a vague "we do a bit of everything."
A zoos and botanical gardens business sells direct to its visitors and members — there is no intermediate wholesale channel standing between the organization and its audience. The people who spend money here fall into a few broad groups.
Individual and family visitors are the day-ticket core: people choosing a weekend outing, a school-break activity, or a birthday destination. They arrive through word of mouth, local tourism marketing, and search.
School and educational groups represent a distinct segment — teachers and program coordinators who book field trips and structured learning experiences, often on recurring annual schedules.
Membership holders function as the recurring-revenue backbone, paying annually for unlimited access and often contributing through donations and volunteer hours as well.
Understanding which of these groups will anchor your model in year one shapes every pricing, programming, and marketing decision that follows.
Take money from one real visitor for the experience you defined in step 2. Not a friend doing you a favour — someone who chooses to pay because they want what you offer. This week, invite a handful of people to a set time, charge asimple admission, and run the visit start to finish. Watch where they linger, what they ask, what they skip. One paid visit teaches you more than months of planning: whether people value it, what it's worth to them, and what breaks when strangers arrive. Keep it small and real. The goal is proof that someone outside your circle will pay to walk through your doors.
## Legalise
You may already be running visits and taking money with no formal structure — that's a common place to start, and it's not a problem to fix in a panic. Now decide how the business will be organised going forward. The main choices are running as a sole proprietor, forming a company, or setting up as a nonprofit, which many museums and nature sites choose because it fits their mission and funding. Each affects your taxes, your liability, and how you raise money. This week, list what matters most to you: keeping it simple, protecting your personal assets, or qualifying for grants and donations. That list points you toward the right form.
Once you've picked a structure, register it with your state, usually through the office of the Secretary of State or its equivalent. If you've been earning informally, this is the step where the paperwork catches up to the work you're already doing — nothing about your past visits was wrong, you're simply making it official now. Registration gives your attraction a legal name and a record the state recognises. This week, look up your state's business registration office online and read what your chosen structure requires. If you're forming a nonprofit, note that there's a separate step later for tax-exempt status. Register the basic entity first; the rest builds on it.
After the entity exists, get its federal Employer Identification Number from the IRS — it's the business's tax ID, free to obtain, and you'll need it for a bank account, payroll, and filings. Then handle state and local registration: your state may require you to register for sales tax if you sell admission tickets or gift shop items, and your city or county may require a local business registration. This week, apply for the EIN online through the IRS, then check your state revenue department's site for what a visitor attraction owes. Write down each account number as you get it. These IDs are the spine of every form you'll file from here on.
A zoos and botanical gardens business operates at the LOW regulatory tier, meaning the general registrations that apply to almost every business are your foundation. You will need to form a legal entity (LLC, nonprofit corporation, or similar structure) and register it with your state's secretary of state office. A federal Employer Identification Number is required to open a business bank account and hire staff. Depending on your municipality, a general business license or occupancy permit may be required before you open to the public. Because a zoos and botanical gardens business may also involve animal care, confirm with your local and state agencies whether any animal-keeping ordinances apply to your specific collection — and do so before you take your first visitor through the gate.
## Equip
Open a bank account in the business's name using your EIN and registration papers. Keep every dollar the attraction earns and spends flowing through it — admissions, gift shop sales, donations, supplier payments, everything. Mixing business and personal money is the single most common thing that makes bookkeeping and taxes miserable later, and it weakens the legal separation you set up in step 5. This week, call or visit a bank, ask what documents they need for your structure, and open the account. If you're a nonprofit, ask about accounts built for that. Once it's open, route your next admission payment straight into it. From now on, the business pays for the business.
The first money in a zoos and botanical gardens business goes, in roughly this order, to site preparation and infrastructure — fencing, pathways, enclosures, and irrigation systems for living collections. After the physical plant, spending shifts to acquiring the collection itself: animals, plants, seeds, and propagation stock. Next comes equipment for daily care — climate control, feeding systems, signage, and interpretive displays. Visitor-facing costs follow: ticketing systems, restrooms, accessibility features, and a point-of-sale setup. Finally, pre-opening marketing, staff training, and an operating reserve to cover payroll and care costs before ticket revenue stabilizes round out the initial capital picture. The range varies widely depending on the scale, species mix, and whether the site is leased, built new, or adapted from an existing facility.
You invite the public onto your property, near exhibits, animals, plants, trails, or old structures. That means you carry real risk, and insurance is how you handle it. At minimum, most attractions need general liability coverage for visitor injuries. Depending on what you run, you may also need coverage for your collection, your buildings, your land, live animals, or the volunteers and staff who work for you. This week, call an insurance broker who works with attractions or nonprofits, describe exactly what you do and who comes, and ask what coverage they'd recommend. Get it in writing. Don't guess at this — one visitor accident without cover can end a small attraction overnight.
A zoos and botanical gardens business draws from a broader supply network than most founders expect; the positions named here represent just a portion of that full picture.
Biological product manufacturers Biological product (except diagnostic) manufacturing supply vaccines, supplements, and biological preparations used in animal health programs — products that keep the living collection in good condition year-round.
Miscellaneous durable goods wholesalers Miscellaneous Durable Goods Wholesalers provide the wide range of physical goods that don't fit neatly elsewhere: enclosure hardware, horticultural tools, interpretive materials, and specialty care equipment.
Commercial printers produce the signage, interpretive panels, maps, membership cards, and educational materials that turn a living collection into a coherent guest experience.
The full supplier picture for a zoos and botanical gardens business extends across several additional categories not listed here.
## Operate
Write down how your attraction actually runs, step by step, so it doesn't all live in your head. How you open in the morning, take admission, guide or supervise visitors, handle a sick animal or a damaged exhibit, close up at night. Include what to do when something goes wrong — a fall, a lost child, bad weather. This week, pick one routine and write it out plainly enough that someone else could follow it. These written procedures are what let you take a day off, train a helper, and prove to an insurer or inspector that you run a safe, careful operation. Add one more each week until the basics are all on paper.
Keep track of every dollar in and out from day one. Record each admission, sale, donation, and expense, and keep the receipts. Good records tell you whether you're actually making money, make tax time simple, and are required if you run a nonprofit answerable to donors. You don't need anything fancy to start — a simple spreadsheet or bookkeeping tool like QuickBooks works fine early on. This week, set up one place to log income and expenses, and enter everything from the past month to get current. Do it weekly so it never piles up. Numbers you can trust are the difference between guessing about your attraction and knowing where it stands.
Sort out what taxes your attraction owes and when. If you collect sales tax on tickets or shop items, you'll file and pay it on a schedule your state sets. You'll also have income tax obligations that depend on your structure — and if you're a nonprofit, you'll apply separately to the IRS for tax-exempt status, which is its own process worth doing carefully. This week, talk to an accountant who knows attractions or nonprofits, or read your state revenue site, and write down every tax you owe and when it's due. Set aside money for taxes as you earn it, in a separate place. Surprises at tax time are almost always avoidable.
At some point you can't do it all alone — you need someone to guide tours, care for animals or grounds, staff the gate, or clean. Decide whether that person is a contractor or an employee, because the rules differ. A contractor handles their own taxes and works on their own terms; an employee works under your direction, and you must withhold taxes and follow labour law. Getting this wrong causes real trouble with the IRS. This week, if you're ready for help, write out exactly what the role does and how much control you'll have, then use that to decide which category fits. When in doubt, ask your accountant before the first payment.
## Grow
The first three sales for a zoos and botanical gardens business almost never come from advertising. They come from people who already know and trust you.
Start with your own network: friends, family, and community members who want to see the project succeed and will buy a founding membership or sponsor a named exhibit before you open. These early supporters also generate the first reviews and social media posts that make a soft-opening feel legitimate.
The second source is local educators. A single phone call to a nearby school's science department or an early-childhood program can book a field trip that fills a Tuesday morning and pays the same as dozens of individual tickets.
The third source is local media. A feature story in a community newspaper or a segment on a regional lifestyle broadcast costs nothing and can drive more first-visit traffic than any paid campaign at this stage.
Make sure people searching for something to do near them can find you. Claim your free listing on Google Business Profile so your attraction shows up on maps with hours, photos, and directions. Get listed on the review and travel sites visitors actually check before choosing where to go. Then get verified where you can — a claimed, verified listing looks trustworthy and ranks higher. This week, create or claim your Google listing, add clear photos and correct hours, and ask a few recent happy visitors to leave an honest review. Accurate listings and real reviews do more for a small attraction than almost any paid advertising, and they keep working for you around the clock.
Once you've run for a few months, compare your numbers against what's normal for attractions like yours. How many visitors per open day, how much each visitor spends, how much goes to staff versus upkeep. These comparisons show you where you're strong and where you're leaking money or missing visitors. Public sources, industry associations for museums and nature sites, and your accountant can point you to typical figures. This week, pick one number you already track — say, average spend per visitor — and find out what similar attractions see. If you're far off, ask why. Measuring yourself against real benchmarks turns vague worry into a clear list of things to fix.
Now that you've proven the work, made it legal, equipped it, and run it, write the plan that ties it together. Cover what you offer, who comes, how you price it, what it costs to run, and where you want it in a year. A plan forces you to see the whole thing at once and makes clear what to do next. You'll also need one if you ever seek a loan, a grant, or a partner. This week, draft it in a few pages using a simple template — many free ones exist, and tools like LivePlan can guide you. Keep it short and honest. Revisit it every few months and update it as your attraction grows.
Starting this business? Get the printable one-page checklist for these 20 steps.
This is how to get started. If you want the whole thing — a plan with your numbers in it, benchmarked against federal figures for your industry, with the procedures for running it already written — that is what we build. A free template asks you to describe your customers. Ours names them.