About Rock City
Perched atop Lookout Mountain just outside Chattanooga, Tennessee, Rock City is one of the South's most iconic natural attractions, drawing roughly half a million visitors a year to its rock gardens, Fairyland Caverns, and the famous Seven States view from Lover's Leap. Rock City Enterprises also operates several other Chattanooga-area hospitality and cultural venues.
The Challenge: A Slow, Siloed System That Couldn't Keep Up
Before Ticketure, Rock City ran its ticketing, point-of-sale, and reporting through a single vendor headquartered in Australia. The vendor had promised an all-in-one solution, but in practice the system couldn't deliver the real-time visibility a modern attraction needs.
Greg Scheid, Rock City's Chief Operating Officer, came to the role from the theme park industry, where he was used to seeing performance data update by the minute. Under the legacy system, pulling a same-day attendance report took 10 to 15 minutes to run — and even then, Rock City had no way to break revenue down by cashier or by point-of-sale terminal, only by store.
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Limited financial visibility: The system had no financial breakdown by cashier or terminal — only a top-line number per store, making it impossible to spot performance issues quickly.
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Expensive, on-premise infrastructure: Rock City operated the previous system on a local, on-premise server, at a cost of roughly $150,000–$200,000, with all the maintenance burden that comes with it.
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Frequent, costly downtime: The system consistently buckled during peak traffic spikes, leading to significant lost revenue and exacerbated by a slow, overseas support response.
The Solution: One Trusted Partner for Ticketing, Retail, and F&B
When Rock City set out to replace its legacy ticketing system roughly two years ago, it chose Ticketure for the flexibility its team needed — and found a partner willing to grow with them and deliver on product enhancement requests.
As Rock City later began evaluating point-of-sale options for its retail and food & beverage operations, the team ran into a familiar problem: most vendors were strong in one area and weak in the other, and the systems built to do both well — like Micros — came at enterprise pricing. That's when the Ticketure team introduced Rock City to Ticketure Retail, the commerce platform that unifies retail, F&B, and inventory management.
Rock City knew it would be an early adopter of the combined Ticketure and Ticketure Retail ecosystem. As Greg put it, Rock City was “sort of the guinea pig,” but the relationship built over two years with Ticketure's team gave leadership confidence to move forward.
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Fast, high-volume onboarding: the implementation team onboarded nearly 50,000 SKUs into the new system ahead of launch.
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Coordinated hardware rollout: Rock City's internal team configured and rolled out hardware to 9 locations — 3 food & beverage and 6 retail — in time for a single go-live date.
The Results: Real-Time Data, Fewer Vendors, and a Strong Launch
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Strong launch-day performance: Rock City went live across all nine locations and staff reported the new system was already “much better” than what they'd used before.
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Same-day, cashier-level visibility: Greg and his team can now start each morning by reviewing real-time revenue by location and by cashier, and dig into an underperforming store or shift the moment they see a variance — something that was effectively impossible under the old system.
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A clear financial win: Retiring the on-premise server eliminated roughly $150,000–$200,000 in associated infrastructure costs and overhead maintenance, and Rock City's revised credit card processing rates more than offset the modest increase in combined software fees versus its previous vendor.
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Reliability during the moments that matter most: Rock City has now gone two full years without an unplanned outage on Ticketure — a sharp contrast to the frequent, costly downtime the team experienced during peak weekends with previous vendors.
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A partner, not just a vendor: Greg described Ticketure and its team as nimble and responsive — support tickets are answered quickly, and Rock City doesn't feel like just another account number.
Looking Ahead: One Unified View of the Guest
The partnership between Rock City and Ticketure has evolved far beyond a typical vendor relationship into a deep, collaborative alliance. Both organizations are now working as strategic partners to define the next generation of the guest experience.
Looking toward the long-term, this partnership aims to leverage integrated data to unlock unprecedented levels of guest engagement and behavioral insight. By utilizing Stripe-powered connections, the teams are building a framework to map the entire guest journey—from the initial online engagement to on-site interactions. This collaborative roadmap provides the foundation for Rock City's upcoming initiatives, allowing both teams to move in lockstep toward a future powered by connected data.
"How do we redefine the guest journey together?" is the central question Greg and the Ticketure team are now answering as strategic partners—building a future where data and collaboration drive every innovation.
