We Started a Photo Booth Company in a Garage in 2017

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A founder’s note from a Veteran-Owned photo booth company in the Inland Empire.

How this started

In 2017 I was a Marine Corps Career Recruiter trying to figure out what came next. My job had been telling people the truth about something hard for a living. You learn pretty fast that the only thing that actually convinces a 19-year-old to sign a four-year contract is being the one person in the room who doesn’t lie to them.

I bought a photo booth. One booth, in a garage in Chino. The first event was a quinceañera in Fontana for 80 guests. The second was a wedding in Riverside for 150. The third was a corporate party at a winery in Temecula for 200.

That was nine years ago. Since then we’ve served more than 5,500 events across the Inland Empire and LA County. 36% of our clients book us again. I can still tell you the names of about half of them.

This is a long way of saying: we’re a photo booth company, but the thing we’re actually selling is the same thing I was selling as a Marine recruiter — the certainty that the person on the other end of the conversation isn’t going to disappear on you.

What couples actually buy when they hire a photo booth

Couples planning a wedding think they’re buying a piece of equipment. They aren’t. They’re buying:

  1. Someone who shows up on time. A photo booth that arrives at 4:45 for a 5:00 reception is worth more than the most expensive booth in the world.
  2. Someone who has a backup unit in the truck. Equipment fails. Wedding days don’t care. The vendors who make it 5,500 events deep are the vendors who never told a bride “sorry, the equipment broke” because they had a second unit ten feet away.
  3. Someone who reads the room. A booth attendant who knows when to hype up the dance floor and when to step back is invisible labor — but couples notice when it’s missing.
  4. A printout the same night. Not “we’ll email you the gallery on Tuesday.” A physical print, in their hand, before the cake is cut. People still want this. They always will.

This is what makes the difference between a $400 photo booth that one Yelp reviewer calls “fine, I guess” and an $1,800 photo booth that gets booked for the bride’s sister’s wedding a year later. The booth isn’t the product. The certainty is.

What “Veteran-Owned” actually means here

A lot of small businesses put “Veteran-Owned” in the footer of their website in 10-pixel gray text. We put it at the top, on purpose, because it’s the load-bearing piece of how we run this company.

Here’s what it means in practice:

  1. We show up early. Marine Corps standard: if you’re on time, you’re late. Our average load-in time is 90 minutes before the contracted start. Every single event.
  2. We brief and back-brief. Before every event we walk through the timeline with the venue coordinator and the planner. After every event we send a one-paragraph brief about anything that went sideways. This is how the military runs operations and it works.
  3. We have backup plans for backup plans. Equipment failure rate over 5,500 events: about 1.2%. Bookings affected by equipment failure: zero. Because the second unit is in the truck.
  4. We don’t haggle on the day of. Pricing is locked. Add-ons are locked. If something changes day-of, we figure it out and bill it next week. The couple has enough to worry about on their wedding day.

None of this is unique to veterans. There are non-veteran photo booth companies in the Inland Empire that operate this way. But it’s the cultural shorthand for “we’re not going to surprise you.” And in the wedding industry — where surprises are almost always bad — that matters more than the equipment list.

The Inland Empire wedding market specifically

We’re in Chino. We work primarily across Riverside County, San Bernardino County, and the eastern half of LA County. That’s about 110 named cities in our service area, with a wedding market that’s grown a lot in the last decade as venues like the Mission Inn, Padua Hills, the Hacienda, and dozens of newer wineries and ranches have come online.

The Inland Empire wedding market has three things going for it that the LA core doesn’t:

  1. Cultural depth. Quinceañeras, sweet sixteens, large extended family weddings — the IE has an event-density that makes a photo booth more central to the celebration than a backdrop in West Hollywood.
  2. Venue-friendly logistics. Most IE venues have power, parking, and load-in dock access designed for vendors. Setting up a booth at a Glendale loft requires a freight elevator and three trips.
  3. A repeat-booking culture. Inland Empire couples talk to their friends. Inland Empire planners talk to their colleagues. A satisfied client this year is two referrals next year. That’s the 36% repeat rate showing up in the numbers.

What we’re here to do

We’re here to be one of those vendors couples can hand to their friends without a footnote. The kind that shows up early, has the backup unit, reads the room, prints the photo strip the same night, and never makes the bride wonder if the booth got lost in traffic.

If you’ve got a wedding date in the Inland Empire and you want to talk to us, we’re at book.thepbguy.com/proposal. Quote in two minutes. Real number. Real photos of the actual booth you’ll get.

Or if it’s easier — text 909-570-1988 and we’ll talk like humans about your day.

Whatever you decide, two pieces of advice for your photo booth shopping, regardless of who you book:

  1. Ask about the backup unit. Any answer that isn’t “yes, in the truck” is a no.
  2. Ask for a photo of the actual booth. Not a stock photo from a booth manufacturer. The real one, at a real wedding, with their real branding on it.

If those two questions don’t get clean answers, keep looking.

— Andrew Cruz
The Photo Booth Guy
Chino, California

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