Ain’t no party like a Fresno Foam Party. New company brings the bubbles to you, by the hour

Milana Salas was mostly being nosy when she joined a Facebook group dedicated to foam parties.

As a mother, she knew it was something her children would love. But as an entrepreneur running three businesses, she quickly saw it was something with real potential.

“I hadn’t seen anything like that out here,” says Salas, who along with husband Ricky started Fresno Foam Party earlier this month.

“When I see stuff that is not really common, I jump on it.”

Since then, the foam cannon rental/party entertainment company has been booked up with events, sometimes three to a weekend, just from social media and word of mouth. The new business is booked for most of September and into October.

For a fee, starting at $295 all summer long, Salas and her husband (and sometime their son dressed in a blow-up shark costume) can set up anywhere there’s a power outlet and access to running water. A typical session runs two hours, though they can do more or less, Salas says, depending on the event.

Foam parties aren’t exactly new.

Dance club promoters have been filling rooms and blasting crowds with walls for decades. There are entire tours dedicated to the foam. The Foam Wonderland tour was at Chukchansi Park last week, which Salas knows because her company kept getting mistakenly tagged on social media.

There are also various foam fun runs that incorporate bubbles through the course.

For home purposes, you can buy a foam machine on Amazon or at stores like Target.

Fresno Foam Party has a foam cannon, commercial grade, with a pump and huge fan that can shoot bubbles up to 20 feet and build walls of foam six feet high.

And all with little clean up.

The foam solution is hypoallergenic, biodegradable, pet friendly and tear safe.

“It looks really messy,” Salas says, but the foam essentially disintegrates, especially on hot summer days.

So far, Fresno Foam Party has mostly been booked at children’s parties and the like, but eventually the company hopes to expand into larger events and into places like day care centers to keep the calendar full. Salas has seen similar companies that book 9,000 or more event each year. That’s where she’d like to get.

They’d like to be able to hire extra help.

Already, Salas’ husband is looking to quit his day job to focus in on the family business (businesses, really) and the company is looking to invest in a second foam cannon.

“We’re always down for expanding,” Salas says.

This story was originally published August 24, 2022 at 5:00 AM.