Attention campers: Lunch may be canceled due to lack of hustle, but this newsletter isn’t. As we enter the time of year when suddenly millions of kids (and some adults) are looking for stuff to do, we’re bringing you a special edition all about the business of summer camps. Read on to learn how they evolved from military-like drill camps to a billion-dollar industry that serves kids gourmet meals in between ceramics courses. Welcome to Camp Morning Brew. |
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The duffel bags and shower caddies are being packed. Whether it’s a two-week day camp in a city park or an exclusive sleepaway tucked away in the Maine wilderness that charges $17,000 a kid, the 20,000+ camps scattered around the US are a huge business. The state of summer camp: The US youth camp industry was worth an estimated $4.6 billion last year, according to an analysis from IBISWorld. As childcare costs skyrocket, so too have prices at summer camps, which have roared back to life after the industry took a $16 billion pandemic blow in 2020, according to the American Camp Association (ACA). Inflation and rising labor costs have pushed up camp costs for families around the country:
- Day camps in 2024 cost an average of $87 per day, while overnight camps clock in at about $173 per day, according to the most recent data from the ACA.
- At the start of 2025, 25% of parents said they expected to spend over $2,000 on summer camps, according to a NerdWallet survey.
- And in expensive cities like NYC, that number can easily shoot past $10,000, with popular summer camps filling up 10 months before the start date.
The spending doesn’t stop there. Wealthy parents are inventing a whole new industry of camp amenities by shelling out for specialized laundry services to get the bug-spray smell out of everything, $125/hour packing helpers, and personal shoppers offering “new camper appointments” at children’s boutiques to get kids totally outfitted.—MM |
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Traditionally, sleepaway summer camps have been places to connect with nature, make boondoggle bracelets, and shower in your swimsuit. But that’s not all that they have to be, especially if your parents can afford to send you to a luxury camp. Amenity now: Luxury camps can run as much as $17,000 for the summer, so they don’t scrimp on the nice-to-haves. For example, Brant Lake Camp in upstate New York offers:
- Fifteen tennis courts (11 of which are clay), 11 basketball courts, and a covered roller hockey rink.
- A fully stocked weight room, a 30-foot climbing wall, and a ninja course.
- A woodshop, a clay studio, a ceramics room, and podcasting classes.
Hello Muddah, hello Fadduh. We need more sushi, for the grottoDon’t expect today’s luxury campers to get by on just gorp and Eggs Erroneous. They’re eating farm-to-table, scratch-made meals. Sometimes, they even help grow the produce in on-site, organic gardens. But if omelets, daily salad bars, and fresh-baked cakes aren’t enough, there’s always visiting day, which many parents use to sneak in giant candy balls, sushi platters, and steak. Some families even bring their housekeepers, presumably to clean up all of the empty soy sauce packets. There are benefits for the counselors, too. In a bid to set their teenage staffers on the right career course, some summer camps offer job-hunting lessons, internship-style programs, and connections to successful camp alumni.—BC |
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Sending kids away for weeks at a time each summer to commune with nature is as American as patriotism, capitalism, and anxiety. So, unsurprisingly, the history of summer camp twines around all three. Eight score and five years ago…In the summer of 1861, just after the Civil War began, the educator Frederick Gunn unofficially brought forth the first summer camp in conjunction with his boarding school in Connecticut. He made around 40 kids hike 42 miles to the Long Island Sound, where they woke up to a bugle call, caught their own fish, and performed military drills. The first independent summer camp came along five years later, when the North Mountain School of Physical Culture charged the parents of “weakly boys” $200 to spend four months in the woods of Northeastern Pennsylvania to toughen them up. By the end of World War I, summer camps were well established throughout the US, with options for very poor children to gain the benefits of nature and for very rich children to be whipped into shape outside of their summer hotels. Postwar changed everythingAfter World War II, parents increasingly worried that their children had been toughened enough by life—food rations, air raid drills, family members dying in service—and that summer camp could become a place for them to chill out instead. This is how we got to the handicrafts-and-s’mores era. Specialized camps centered around a particular interest for shorter amounts of time emerged in the last decades of the 20th century:
- Perhaps the most famous is Space Camp, launched by the US Space & Rocket Center in Huntsville, AL, in 1982.
- The concept caught on more broadly, with computer camps, basketball camps, dance camps, and theater camps proliferating through the ’90s.
What has changed: It’s hard to find long-term residential summer camps for kids these days, as the market shifts to accommodate the hectic schedules of modern kids and their parents.—HVL |
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Pretty much any pretend game you used to play as a kid has been monetized by Big Summer Camp. Here are a handful: Fighting zombies with foam swords: Kids aged 8–17 can LARP their hearts out at Wizards & Warriors Camp in Charlton, Massachusetts. Jumping off roofs and becoming a spy: Southern California’s Hollywood Stunt Camp and Secret Agent Camp are $1,695 per week alternatives to letting little Billy fling himself around the living room furniture until you hear a crack. Blowing stuff up: Missouri University of Science and Technology teaches 16- to 18-year-olds how to use dynamite, set off fireworks, and turn pyrotechnic proclivities into a career. Honorable mentions include…Kids ‘N Comedy for young stand-ups, Camp BizSmart for 11- to 15-year-old aspiring entrepreneurs, and SparkForce (formerly known as Nuts, Bolts & Thingamajigs) for manufacturing-inclined middle and high schoolers who want to operate heavy machinery.—ML |
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When children go away to camp, they tend to make friends for life. But what if you missed out on that experience and are longing for those connections as a grown-up? That’s the purpose of the increasingly popular adult sleepaway camp. Some sound like a Club Med with heated pools and cocktails. Others focus on gaming or sci-fi. No matter the theme, the main purpose of adult sleepaway camps is to foster community among adults. At Camp Social, a luxury weekend camp in Pennsylvania for women, the slogan is “99% arrive solo, 100% leave as friends.” For ~$1,000, you get a dude-free environment featuring:
- Endless activities that include yoga, Pilates, journaling, arts and crafts, swimming, and tennis during the day, plus a party atmosphere with cocktails (and mocktails) at night.
- Women of all ages participate, with Camp Social boasting that an 83-year-old once attended. According to a USA Today writer who spent the weekend there, the most common age group was people 40 and older.
And then there are corporate retreats. Think of these as the same as the other camps, only you’re creating bonds to help you better achieve company goals and increase shareholder value, rather than, like, making a friend. And the friendship camps probably won’t force anyone to eat a dead tarantula.—DL |
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From comedy to horror, summer camps have long proven to be a narratively rich setting for storytelling. If you’re feeling nostalgic, here’s a camp-themed film and TV agenda to get lost in this summer. Camp Chippewa (Addams Family Values): Wednesday and Pugsley are basically in a separate movie where they make jokes at the expense of the ultrawealthy kids at the camp for two hours.—DL Camp Firewood (Wet Hot American Summer): I wouldn’t trade my actual summer camp experience for anything, but it’s hard to top a camp that has Bradley Cooper, Amy Poehler, an associate professor of astrophysics, and a talking can of mixed vegetables.—AR Camp Half-Blood (Percy Jackson): Roasting weenies and playing capture the flag must hit even harder when you’re the child of a Greek god. Give me a pen that turns into a sword and set me loose in a magical wood.—ML Camp Anawanna (Salute Your Shorts): I don’t remember much from this short-lived ’90s Nickelodeon sitcom besides a character named “Donkeylips,” but I can still recite the theme song 30+ years later, so it must have made an impression.—AE Camp Ivanhoe (Moonrise Kingdom): The Wes Anderson aesthetic would have made boarding the 7am bus in the rain to get to my own New England summer camp much less of a drag. Plus, 12-year-old me might have had a girlfriend that wasn’t imaginary.—SK Camp Hope (Heavyweights): Best-case scenario, you spend a week riding go-karts, getting launched into the water by the Blob, and eating contraband junk food. Worst case scenario, you have to overthrow a tyrannical fitness influencer, which could be a valuable skill to have in the future.—BC Camp Rock (Camp Rock). At 15, there was no bigger fantasy than being “discovered” and singing the show-stopping number at the Final Jam.—MM Camp Crystal Lake (Friday the 13th). I would have lived.—MM |
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