Personally, I think this is a dead-end business decision. I've seen this gamebook play out over and over. It rarely ends well.
The problem is that in 2024, kids can play video games and watch stupid videos in the comfort of their own home. Perhaps screens beat animatronics, ball pits, and whatnot, but there's no competitive advantage over superior alternatives in the new space.
Examples:
- Book stores. Cut costs to compete with online sellers. Move more and more digitally. Have no upside over pure online stores. Keel over.
- Radio Shack. Stop selling electronics components, and start targeting to the bigger market of cell phones. Have no competitive advantage over Best Buy or cell phones stores. Keel over.
In those situations, it's better to either:
* Shift business models (e.g. Radio Shack could become a very competitive makerspace, host kid afterschool programs, maker camps, and refocused on Raspberry PI, 3d printers, Micro:bits and similar).
* Shrink the business to follow a declining market without taking on debt (Radio Shack couldn't support the number of stores it had, but it could very much have supported 1/5 of the stores)
Both of those approaches usually require starting to adapt before the sky starts falling.
> The problem is that in 2024, kids can play video games and watch stupid videos in the comfort of their own home
I always thought of Chuck E. Cheese as being aimed at hosting larger children’s gatherings, freeing parents from concerns about space or catering. The video games would just be an extension of things they already want to do, but the draw is no cleanup/planning.
Considering how curated children’s activities have become (no more "free range" children), and how expensive housing is (more renters, less likely to host a big bash), it could actually address a growing need.
Whether it’s more attractive than booking a dedicated kids venue and just ordering pizza is open to debate.
Anecdotal, but all the 2-9 year olds who's party's we attend are at similar places to what you describe, but specifically NOT ever Chuck E. Cheese. It's usually a bouncy place, or dave and busters, or a special rental party place of some type.
>Radio Shack. Stop selling electronics components, and start targeting to the bigger market of cell phones. Have no competitive advantage over Best Buy or cell phones stores. Keel over.
I was a radio shack employee as a teen in the 90s, right before the pivot to cellphones started. I joined the Army and got the hell out of there right before the 1998 catalog came out, the one with the Sprint PCS partnership on the cover. I helped install and stock the Sprint furniture and signage.
At my store and every single store I was aware of, if they had not pivoted to cellphones they would have gone out of business in 2000.
By 1998 people no longer purchased computers at electronics stores. They either bought them from Gateway, out of PC Magazine or Computer Shopper, or from Walmart.
By 1998 people no longer bought CB radios from electronics stores. They no longer saw Optimus or Realistic scanners/AV receivers as desirable products. Throughout the 80s and early 90s the Japanese brands snuffed out the cheap Radio Shack brands.
By 1998 people hadn't purchased electronic components in volumes high enough to turn a profit (needed to pay wages, rent, and buy inventory) in 10-20 years.
Even in the late 90s, components were a vestigial organ, a money pit, a revenue black hole.
"But I used to buy capacito.." You were the exception.
You were the atypical customer.
You literally lost Radio Shack money and hastened the transformation every time you walked past the CD players and plasma spheres towards the back of the store where the components lived.
> At my store and every single store I was aware of, if they had not pivoted to cellphones they would have gone out of business in 2000.
Let's shorten this: "if they had not pivoted, they would have gone out of business in 2000." A pivot was needed, and a long time earlier. They key question is which pivot.
Identifying a big market, with a lot of competition and no competitive advantage, was better than nothing, but worse than identifying a market with some competitive advantage.
> You literally lost Radio Shack money and hastened the transformation every time you walked past the CD players and plasma spheres towards the back of the store where the components lived.
True.
To make money, they would have needed to monetize me for a lot more than the price of a component. Have a quick look to see what Russian School of Math charges for afterschool math classes, what summer STEM camps cost, or tuition at a university. More critically, look at the derivative -- which prices are going up and which are going down.
If you earn 50 cents selling me a resistor, I'm losing them money.
If you earn $1000 teaching my kid something about electronics. All of a sudden you need far fewer of me, and you broaden the appeal to anyone educated with money and a child.
They had everything in place to do that, right down to wonderful educators like Forrest Mims.
And if they had done that well, there would have been many more of me around now too.
>Have a quick look to see what Russian School of Math charges for afterschool math classes, what summer STEM camps cost, or tuition at a university.
None of those are geographically distributed physical locations that need to be staffed and operated constantly. They're monolithic institutions, pop-up restaurants of learning, or virtual.
I would have used Kumon as an example except the comparison breaks down when you realize parents pay Kumon a lot of money to increase their children's test scores, and very few schools test for hobby electronics.
Pivoting to your plan would have achieved the same result: the death of Radio Shack.
Preserving a brand for the sake of preserving a brand doesn't make sense.
Customers don't exist for after-school hobby electronics classes for teens at over 8,000 locations across the US. So you pivot anyways (to a sector you have no practical or institutional knowledge in, which doesn't exist already), close down 7,000 stores (to roughly match the number of Kumon locations), get rid of all of your inventory because you don't have the scale at 1,000 small locations to make competing with big-box or online make any sense and then-- bam!
> Customers don't exist for after-school hobby electronics classes for teens at over 8,000 locations across the US.
I'm not sure that's obvious, at least if you don't completely restrict yourself only to specific kinds of electronics, eg. have computer assembly, troubleshooting, phone and other device repair classes/workshops, etc. The most successful pivots create a market where there previously was none.
> None of those are geographically distributed physical locations that need to be staffed and operated constantly. They're monolithic institutions, pop-up restaurants of learning, or virtual.
I think you're misunderstanding how these operate. Almost all of these are staffed and operated for at least the same number of hours as a typical Radio Shack location.
> to a sector you have no practical or institutional knowledge in, which doesn't exist already
No, Radio Shack had more institutional knowledge here than just about anyone else. They made electronics kits, wonderful books, etc. A better example is AoPS opening up physical tutoring center (which they did, and which has been very successful).
> close down 7,000 stores (to roughly match the number of Kumon locations), get rid of all of your inventory
If you do this, you're managing the pivot like an idiot. Here is how you pivot:
1) Start a summer camp at one location. Iterate on the program until it's efficient and turnkey.
2) Start a small number of afterschool programs in a similar fashion
3) See what it takes to be successful. Perhaps grant some kind of certificate for those, and ideally, frame it so it can go on a college application, or if you're really ambitious, so amount of college credit. I can name a dozen other places this could go, but critically, it takes a bit of financial elbowroom to have time to explore and pivot like this.
Once this is going, expand reach to more and more stores. And do this in 1990, so you have time and elbowroom, rather than in 2000.
For big institutions, pivots almost never work wholesale.
> close down 7,000 stores
Scaling down was probably necessary at some point, but bankruptcy was not.
> The problem is that in 2024, kids can play video games and watch stupid videos in the comfort of their own home
With that thinking, why do restaurants exist when you could just eat from the comfort of your own home (or going to a sports game in-person, etc).
What’s being sold is the experience and/or convenience.
In the case of Chuck E Cheese, it’s a bit of both. Parents get to buy an experience for their kids, and if it’s for a birthday party - they are buying the convenience of not having to host/cook/cleanup a party.
I think that the more important factor is that home console games are genuinely a better play experience than what's in arcades nowadays. The graphics are better, the game quality is better, etc.
Minecraft Dungeons vs. Minecraft Dungeons Arcade is an interesting case study. Introducing arcade mechanics designed to prompt kids to put more money into the machine legitimately makes the game less fun. Every few minutes you're interrupted and taken out of the game and back into meatspace so that you can put another couple dollars in the slot. And some of the more interesting elements of the game had to be removed because there's no saving your progress in the arcade. And you and your friends are crammed in around the cabinet, either constantly bumping each other with your elbows or playing in a mildly uncomfortable position to try and keep your elbows in. At home you can spread out on the couch or floor.
Back in the 80s and early 90s I put up with a poorer gameplay experience because arcade machines still had noticeably better graphics. (Dragon's Lair might be the poster child for this phenomenon.) But that just isn't the case anymore.
>Back in the 80s and early 90s I put up with a poorer gameplay experience because arcade machines still had noticeably better graphics. (Dragon's Lair might be the poster child for this phenomenon.) But that just isn't the case anymore.
Yeah, I mean even with games that had perfectly equivalent gameplay with debatably better controls like Street Fighter 2 arcade vs home, you still got 90% of the experience with the home version. Nowadays the best reasons to play at arcades are prohibitively expensive hardware-specific games like DDR, other more advanced Japanese rhythm games like BeatMania, racing games, and mecha piloting simulators.
The only other thing that could work well in an arcade model nowadays would be a high end VR setup, but ideally you'd have your own sealed booth for that with an omnidirectional treadmill. They were starting to take off before COVID shut most of them down for good. Here's hoping VRcades do eventually become more of a thing again.
Well when you host a kids party at your home you now have to bring food and clean up. And chuck e cheese can handle a lot more screaming children than your home ever could.
Bookstores do have upside over pure online stores though, they can lay out their shop with interesting books and the like, personalised recommendations from staff, organise events, rebrand as a coffee shop, etc etc etc. Sure, pure book shops that sell books are at a disadvantage, but in my country there's still plenty of local book shops that at least for now keep their head above water.
Radio Shack could've had a field day when the Raspberry Pi and co came around and made electronics and programming a hobby for the masses, especially if they rebranded into a hacker space of sorts and organised events and classes and the like. Whether that would've saved them is another matter though, as the Raspberry revolution also came with very cheap and affordable electronics, which only works if sold en masse.
That's exactly my point. Many of those bookstores survived.
The ones that died were the ones who tried to lower prices to compete with online, had commercial books selling shelf space (rather than curated selections), and minimum-wage employees who didn't know what they were selling.
I don't mind paying for good books, and what I'll pay for is having a person who has read a lot of books and can recommend what I'll enjoy.
They're not over expanded and are generally fun to visit. They basically have the right number of stores to interest ratio in an area and they're competitive on pricing.
That's most of it, but there's also MAP. A lot of products Microcenter cells have minimum advertised pricing. That means brick-and-mortar can compete with online and make decent margins.
If Amazon / Walmart sells something for $149, and Microcenter does as well, I might go with Amazon / Walmart for convenience of having it shipped, or Microcenter for speed of having it now.
MAP can give pretty high margins too, in some industries.
At least in my area, Chuck E Cheese is experiencing stiff competition from places like ClimbZone, a kid-oriented climbing gym and ropes course, and Altitude, a trampoline park for kids. They all have the arcade, albeit in somewhat scaled back form. Their food offerings are vestigial.
I've been to kids' birthday parties at all of these. Chuck E Cheese is the only one that doesn't have our kids asking to go back again on the ride home. They have a good time while they're there, but they don't perceive much "replay value".
In light of that, this seems like a good move on Chuck E Cheese's part. They arguably can't completely get rid of the show component for brand identity reasons, but converting it to screens probably reduces their cost structure enormously. And it could free up some floor space, which would let them shift the focus toward physical play. That is something that has a lot more novelty value for kids nowadays than it did when I was growing up. I think probably because the availability situation has flip-flopped: they live in an ocean of high quality passive entertainment, but opportunities to jump and run with a crowd of other kids are becoming increasingly hard to come by.
I still suspect it's too little too late though? Chuck E Cheese locations are physically too small to accommodate a really good indoor play space. They're typically in strip mall locations that don't offer the kind of floor and overhead space needed to install indoor play equipment that's up to modern standards for novelty.
I can second this. Here in Brooklyn there was some big woop made about the local Chuck E Cheese getting a trampoline floor, seemingly a direct reaction to the arrival of these giant trampoline parks. We went to take a look and it was pretty sad, a tiny little area that had a time limit for each kid to manage demand.
But like you say, they're stuck. There's a great (I mean, relatively speaking) trampoline park in the city but it's out in an industrial area where they could easily find a space the size of a football field. The Chuck E Cheese is in a shopping mall and clearly has no extra space to use.
The couple we frequent have had digital screen "bands" at least the last 5 years and the kids mostly just ignore it. They usually have someone wear a mascot uniform and come dance during the main event, but most kids could care less. They're over in the arcade area. The addition of the trampoline area just occurred recently and the whole time we were their they had a teammate chasing kids off of it because most of them didn't have the necessary grippy socks. Initial observations on my end was that it's going to cost them more to manage it than it will bring in in revenue.
We go there sometimes alone because my son is obsessed with a particular arcade they have and it's like a special treat to take him, outside of birthday parties the place seems dead. Also, I never see anyone actually eat there. I think birthday parties is their entire business at this point. It's even a joke amongst our parent groups that if you are late to plan something, just do Chuck E Cheese because it's easy and pretty much always available. The kids enjoy it either way
The odd part to me is that back when I was a kid Chuck E Cheese _did_ have a play area section, with at least a tube climbing thing, ball pit, etc. When I took my daughter there a few years ago though it was nothing but arcade games, and I think it was the same one my parents used to take me too.
IMO this is an extra bad move for them because it means they're directly competing with all the arcade places near me and those are much better maintained (and/or have various other attractions).
Competing with dedicated arcades and also competing with home video games. Like, the only arcade cabinets that are remotely of interest to me as an adult are the ones with a novel input mechanism— DDR, light gun games, and driving sims.
Everything else feels kind of pointless when I can play the same thing at home with way better graphics and no predatory progression nonsense.
A big climber and ballpit is 100x more novel to today's kids than a knockoff kart game or sidescrolling beat-em-up.
Jenny Nicholson is one of the best YouTubers, incredibly thorough research, and one of the funniest people on the platform. I just wish she posted more.
Her Star Wars hotel video was effectively just her talking to a camera for four hours (2 hours at 2x speed), occasionally sharing a photo or clip, and somehow it was genuinely compelling viewing. Really impressive.
Because it's important context. I didn't spend to give the incorrect impression that I found the content so compelling that I spent 4 hours watching it when I actually watched it for 2 hours.
I also like to remind people that you don't have to spend 4 hours of your time to watch a 4 hour video.
I enjoyed her Star Wars hotel review enough that I watched a ton of her other videos. The thing that bugged me about her channel, and the reason I unsubscribed, is because I couldn't see any evidence that she ever really liked anything. She never had a positive review of a thing. Every video was taking something apart and criticizing it. I think her take down of the SW hotel was probably just, but it's exhausting hearing from someone who only finds flaws in things.
This is an issue I noticed about her, too. It's an archetype of person I've noticed in others, especially back in the small town I grew up in: they get enjoyment out of not enjoying things.
For the uninitiated, that sounds like a paradox. But really, it's a need to be able to complain about something. The more the person has to complain about, the better. Something that was actually good would not allow the opportunity for them to provide their (superior) input on how it was done wrong.
The key give away is the fact that she keeps going back to Disney. If I had experienced half of the slights and snafus she claims [1] to have experienced, I'd never go back to the place.
At the end of the day, I figured I had much better things to do with my time than watch someone complain about theme parks, even assuming the complaints were realistic. I like taking my kids to theme parks on occasion, but I have no desire to become so frequent of a customer that I ever need some kind of "inside scoop".
[1] eeeeh, I don't necessarily disbelieve her. A lot of what she says rings true for my own opinion of Disney. But at the same time, her attitude is nearly identical to that of folks I grew up with, speech patterns that I've come to recognize as over aggrandized consumerist "suffering." It feels like she's leaving a whole lot of context out, context that might reveal the her trials and tribulations were of her own making.
The Star Wars video was a bit strange to me. On one hand, it did absolutely suck, but there also were many times in the video where she obviously specifically chose expectations on purpose knowing that the park would not live up to them, and then acted like she was just totally surprised that it happened. I found it even more egregious for her Evermore park video, where she seemed genuinely shocked to not have an absolutely perfect roleplaying experience there.
It's all a bit strange because all of her unrealistic expectations are perfectly woven into the realistic ones in a way that makes it very difficult to distinguish what is reasonable about her expectations. Somehow she manages to make it so that something that will genuinely suck for everyone, like standing in line for hours or her app being totally broken, gets mixed up with much more obviously subjective things like the actors not really matching her energy.
I don't recall anywhere in her video where she didn't bring up expectations without also bringing up an example of when the Disney company had already implemented the idea.
That doesn’t really relate to what I say. Just because a company did something once before or even promised something doesn’t make it realistic to expect it
It's been a few months since I saw the video, but from what I remember all of her expectations should have been realistic when taking into account the price of the experience. This was an extremely expensive experience, and she was comparing it to things done way better at way lower price points.
It’s not realistic to expect the experience to be that good even if the price is insane, though, because it was obvious Disney wouldn’t be able to deliver on that
> because it was obvious Disney wouldn’t be able to deliver on that
Then they should not claim it in their marketing materials that they will deliver it. What happened with the good old “underpromise and over deliver”? Besides she is not demanding her money back. She is making a review where she is informing the public that an experience did not live up to the marketing of it and is not worth the price.
In fact i believe that is the unstated conclusion of her video. Disney should have crunched the numbers and should have realised that the experience they are advertising cannot be delivered.
You’re missing my point. I’m not saying that she as a consumer doesn’t have the right to those expectations. She is absolutely in the moral right. I’m saying that it was obvious those expectations wouldn’t be fulfilled and she pretended to still believe in them anyway
The thing that people miss in talking about Jenny Nicholson is: A) on a minor aspect, the forest for the trees. Any one particular video of hers is--to some degree--completely reasonable complaints. But B) on a major aspect, the amount of time they are spending on listening to these complaints.
As a drive-buy observer, it's easy to watch one video and say, "oh, yeah, that makes sense." But when you take them as a whole, you really have to question: why do you (Jenny) keep going back to this hole? You claim to have been burnt so many times. Why do you keep going back to Disney properties, knowing you'll probably not have the experience you are hoping to have?
That's my problem with her. She has clearly identified a problem. Good on her for being so articulate on exactly why the experiences she had sucked so much. But then why does she keep going back for more abuse?
And then, on top of that, why do people keep watching her FOUR HOUR LONG videos about these issues? SERIOUSLY!? People are spending significantly more time than a single Star Wars movie to watch someone complain about a related theme hotel? What the hell is wrong with these people?! You know what I can do in 4 hours? I can watch 2 Star Wars movies. I can make wash all of my laundry. I can drive to another city, have a drink with a friend, and get back in time to put my kids to bed.
I feel like a lot of the zietgeist around her videos are caught up in "we stan women who haven't got what they want." And in most other aspects, I'm there, most women do get a raw deal in life. But Jenny Nicholson... she's just trolling for YooToob likes.
She releases a video like, once a year, if that. We can have a little trolling, as a treat.
And I would suggest she's able to go on and on about these particular experiences for so long is that they're genuinely unique experiences with clear flaws and she'd like to thought experiment a way to make them work given the constraints for an audience of interested people, not that she's literally pitching Disney to reopen the Star Wars hotel with her leading the project.
> That's my problem with her. She has clearly identified a problem. Good on her for being so articulate on exactly why the experiences she had sucked so much. But then why does she keep going back for more abuse?
Yeah I totally agree . Her exasperation clashes with the existence of her content. It's like "ludonarrative dissonance" but for YouTube videos. I mean this is very common thing to see, the YouTuber claims to hate having to "subject themselves to more" but they go back for more and more.
That's really my complaint, if she spends so much time being exposed to these issues, surely she should expect it by now? And yet she still acts shocked every time. It's strange
> And then, on top of that, why do people keep watching her FOUR HOUR LONG videos about these issues? SERIOUSLY!? People are spending significantly more time than a single Star Wars movie to watch someone complain about a related theme hotel? What the hell is wrong with these people?! You know what I can do in 4 hours? I can watch 2 Star Wars movies. I can make wash all of my laundry. I can drive to another city, have a drink with a friend, and get back in time to put my kids to bed.
Well, they are entertaining background noise. It's a fun thing to hear her rant about while doing something else. Long video essays are very popular
This video (which might be my favourite from her) on a particular church annual theater productions is positive. Still poking fun at it and taking it apart, as she's wont to do. But I do believe she genuinely enjoys how kish and over the top it is.
I've subscribed to her channel for a long time, and my impression has been that she loves these kinds of things (otherwise why keep exploring the space?), but she finds it interesting and potentially productive to talk about the flaws, as a way to strive for better. It's like she's acting as an editor to an author--sure, editors are technically criticizing, but they do so intending to improve the original.
i find that in videos of her being critical of something she describes something she likes and then explains why she likes it and then describes why the thing she is criticizing isnt that.
She also does mention things she did like about the thing she’s criticizing. For example, she liked the themed food at the Star Wars hotel, as I recall.
I had the same reaction. I got hooked on Bright Sun FIlms and several of their other channels like Bright Sun Travels which do similar reviews, but always seem to give positive and negative feedback and are honest about resorts being a good deal or not. The majority of Bright Sun Films cover abandoned places which go into great detail about a resort's history and why a resort or property failed and what led to its downfall.
All of their stuff is incredibly well researched and have always seemed to me to be pretty objective; which is why I have avoided Nicholson's reviews - you already know its not going to be very objective.
I would have expected animatronics to become more popular after Five Nights at Freddy's, not less. But I've never seen a store with animatronics in my country, so I don't really know how kids feel about them.
Idk, parents took kids to Chuck E. Cheese for the (at the time seemingly) wholesome appeal. Having an extremely popular and visible IP point out how creepy animatronic animals are is not gonna make parents want to take their kids to Chuck E. Cheese more. Nobody wants to take their kids to an “edgy food and entertainment place”, that’s not a thing. I think this is a great textbook example of “There is such a thing as bad publicity.”
Dave and Buster's is an edgy arcade+alcohol place that plenty of people brings kids to. I took some friends who were 19 and 20 and we were turned away at the door.
"Nobody wants to take their kids to an “edgy food and entertainment place”,"
This is 100% wrong though, my 5 year old is in kindergarten and they LOVED FNAF. Like, seriously a lot.
I've done my fair share of Chuck E Cheese birthday parties - the place near me already doesn't have animatronics etc and is virtually unrecognizable by people who knew it in the 90s. It's literally just a single big room with 5 very long tables to host 3-5 birthday parties concurrently, taking up about 40% of the space. Then there's a smallish trampoline area (which requires paying an additional $10 or $15 or somesuch amount) comprising 10% or so, then the other 50% is just arcade machines laid out in a grid that take a card scan instead of coins, and pay out non-tangible credits instead of physical tickets.
So I assume that's the future here - take a low-rent semi-large space off a side-street of a main road, fill it with low-operating-cost stuff, and let it collect revenue. Pretty sensible business, and also utterly soulless and has absolutely no cultural or sticking power.
I really cannot believe FNAF hasn't done some kind of play here - you could absolutely charge 2-4x the price of Chuck E Cheese's parties for a FNAF-themed "what-a-6-year-old-calls-scary" birthday party / event space and no kid would ever go to Chuck E Cheese ever again.
I'm guessing it's because Chuck E Cheese is busy being mediocre and barely existing, and why do physical stuff when you can make millions off selling plushies and funkos.
So I really think this is just a case of capitalism being too lazy and profit-motivated to bother with providing something people - kids - would definitely want.
I was a showbiz kid (same thing but different 'band').
For me I really didnt care much one way or the other about the animatronics. You would snarf down your pizza watch the dumb show and go back to the game room. Now some of my friends were smitten by the things. They wanted front row and would try to get the merch.
They were mildly interesting and gave the place a uniqueness over the dozens of other places with video games and pizza. More importantly your parents would be in on it and would take you out to a 'safe' arcade.
When the places where all over the place. It was a tiered system. The showbiz/chuckie places were for kids under 12. Usually much cleaner and less of the older kids bullying the younger ones off the machines. The arcades were for the over 10 group and were much less supervised. The people running them would actively discourage older kids from coming in by themselves in groups of 4 or more. If you went in and dropped a couple of quarters and kept to yourself they would ignore you.
I was invited back years later to a CC with a family. The pizza was utter rubish, SB had better pizza. Many of the games were outdated or broken. The place felt worn out and tired and very focused on the ball pit (which any free playground can provide a similar experiance). Not pleasant at all for anyone involved. Pretty sure the animatronics was broken then too.
The five nights thing would be more for the 12+ crowd. CC is squarely aimed at lower aged kids and parents who want 'a break'. They might know about it and have played the game but it would not factor much on if they want to go.
It might have been Nolan's idea, but the first Chuck E. Cheese was actually created, operated, and owned by Atari. Nolan wanted Atari to have a place to operate and profit from the arcade machines they built. But the engineering work, marketing etc. was all done by Atari employees.
When Warner Communications bought Atari from Nolan, they really didn't want the restaurant. So Nolan bought it from them, took it private, and expanded it.
Oddly enough, Chuck E Cheese has been trying to “rebrand” itself since COVID. During the pandemic they actually operated as a shadow kitchen pizza chain and possibly as a result, the quality of their pizza (at least at our local restaurant) has substantially improved, to the point that I would rank it above a couple other nationwide chains. The atmosphere is very different from the dark, grody, funky 1980s rat pizza restaurant, and is now a loud party atmosphere with TV screens constantly blasting kiddie music videos. They’ve shifted their age demographic from “family” to “kids”, and their locations have become much cleaner.
The name of the shadow kitchen is "Pasqually's Pizza & Wings". If you read the "Our Story" page on their website, it says that they "leverage the operational infrastructure of Chuck E. Cheese kitchens across the country".
Pasqually is one of the animatronic characters, he is a chef.
As a nerd of a kid who enjoyed "Lore", it amused me when people complaining about Pasqually's Pizza at the time, because I immediately recognized it as the name of the Pizza restaurant inside Chuck E. Cheese, that's what it was always called.
Pasqually is not just the chef (and the drummer), he's the owner of the restaurant in the show. It was always his restaurant, Chuck is just the front man of the band.
Yeah I went to one last year for a friend’s kid’s birthday - the giant playground maze and ball pit is gone, the animatronic stage is gone, it’s a big dance floor and more arcade games and even a tiny carousel for toddlers
I went again recently (less than a year ago) for the first time since the 90s and the animatronics stage was still fully functional. Apparently very few locations are left with working stages, and I was impressed that my local stage had continued operating. They also serve alcohol now or something.
It felt a bit more open, one giant room, but I might just be remembering more walls because I'm taller now than I was when I was 10. Definitely no ball pit though.
I was probably around ~5(ish) years old when I went to Chuck E. Cheese for a birthday party; distinctly remember disliking the pizza (and cheese, by extension) so much that I thought I *hated* pizza altogether until I was ~16(ish) and started working at a local pizza place in town called Valeos where we'd get a free 16in to take home after every shift. I still use their sauce recipe to this day it's literally so good!
At the time, I think a friends mom [jokingly] said the pizza was 'cardboard' and I began crying as I genuinely believed it was actual cardboard
[we were a thin-crust only type of place; we also used a little handful of cornmeal as it was placed in the brick oven to prevent the crust from sticking - it adds a little extra flavor and texture to the pizza :)]
In a pot, placed on medium-heat on the stove top, add:
- 2tbsp EVOO
- two twigs of fresh oregano, crushed or finely chopped (to express the oils in the plant)
- 1/4 white onion, minced very finely
- 1/4 yellow onion, minced very finely
- 2-3 squished cloves of roasted garlic (cut the top part from a bulb of garlic, add some EVOO and bake @ 400 for ~30(ish) minutes; be sure to do it in foil or the ceramic baking dishes for roasting garlic!)
- 1tbsp of salt mixed with black pepper and crushed red pepper flakes
Until onions are translucent and aromatic
Then add:
- 1 large can of Cento-brand peeled San Marzano tomatoes
Stir intermittently until sauce develops a deep red color and you can use it right away or keep it in the fridge!
- As it cools, add in a handful (1/4 cup) of freshly crumbled Parmesan cheese (you could see the cheese chunks as we applied the sauce to the dough so they weren't large pieces but little(ish) crumbles)
I was going to guess it wasn't that good until I saw "San Marzano" tomatoes. In my opinion that's the single best decision you can make for pizza sauce. No other tomato comes close.
The Cento brand and the Nina brand (at least the ones I have) which are often sold at Costco are the ones to get.
Note: you MUST avoid any tomatoes that are packed with calcium chloride, as it greatly increases the time for the tomatoes to fall apart and make good sauce.
Ha awesome, stashing this for the next time I make dough. Already have stacks of Cento SMs, since they sell them at Costco and they work well with Marcella Hazan’s pasta sauce. Thanks for typing all that out!
For a classic Napolitano sauce, open a 28 oz. can of your favorite crushed tomatoes and then mix in 2T extra virgin olive oil, 2 cloves garlic (minced), 1.5t kosher salt. That's it, you're done.
The funny thing is I remember the pizza being pretty lousy when I was a kid, but when one of my kids had a friend's birthday party there I tried a slice and it was surprisingly decent. The crust was done right, and while the toppings were probably cheap they did at least add some Italian seasoning to it to punch it up.
It was better than a couple of the local pizza chains that have catered some of the other birthday parties we have attended.
I was so excited to be invited to my first party there. The pizza was a huge letdown, and Pizza Hut was the best thing I experienced for many, many years, followed by Godfather’s. Chuck E. Cheese wasn’t even on the list. But I sure had fun on the video games and ski ball.
Have you been in the last few years? We thought the same, but they've gotten a lot better since COVID. Still overpriced, but at least edible (at least if you get the stuffed crust).
Also worth listening to this excellent podcast about the two competing pizza-animatronic chains. The history is bizarre -- they were meant to make an 'arcade' feel less like a place for delinquents, and give the parents a chance to drink and watch the 'show'.
No kidding. I peeked behind a literal curtain to see the 'band' cold, dead, and in various states of disrepair on a dark stage at a Chuck E Cheese when I was maybe 8 y/o. I still remember being horrified by the mechanical eyes of a particular animatron without any of the 'fur' on the face.
Never wanted to go back for my birthday, let's say.
“At the time, Atari was selling its arcade games for US $1,500 to $2,000 each, but the real money was in the $50,000 in coins that a game would take in over its lifetime”
Has business changed since then? Surely Nvidia isn’t selling GPUs with such a low fixed up front price only for the hyperscalers to turn around and rent them out for all the profits. Am i missing something?
If you mean the arcade business, absolutely, operators have gone through several boom and bust cycles and the business is basically unrecognizable from what it was in the 80s and 90s. To bring this back to your analogy, imagine if Nvidia decided they were going to charge a $10/hr license fee on the driver software for datacenter-licensed GPUs. This business model is called revenue share licensing[0] and all the Japanese rhythm and fighting games (i.e. the ones that are actually games) moved to revshare over the last decade and change.
Naturally, American operators[1] hate this, both because it makes the network a single point of failure and because they can't hold onto old versions of games during lean times. When DDR came back to US arcades, Dave & Busters (back when Round1 was a lot smaller than it is today) specifically demanded a perpetually licensed version of the game, which made upgrade kits a pain in the ass. A lot of Japanese arcade games don't actually get official US releases because of this, or they're just Round1 exclusives[2], despite the fact that there's a fairly big and dedicated American player base for rhythm games[3].
The irony is, revshare licensing would fix one of the other biggest fears American operators have about running rhythm games: ASCAP. When Guitar Hero got an arcade port, the collection societies started going after arcade operators that had bought the machines. I suppose the entire perpetual licensing business model that arcade machines used to use is not actually legally coherent[4], at least for games with licensed music in them. But having actual per-credit licensing attached to the machines would be an easy way to tell collection societies to fuck off, because they already got paid when you paid your revshare to the arcade manufacturer, and they can't sue you if you paid for your license.
There's two other big metas in American arcades:
- Redemption arcades, or the "child-friendly casino". Chuck E. Cheese was a pioneer in this particular kind of arcade brain rot and most American operators just run these kinds of games exclusively. Actually, Japan does this way worse than America does; pretty much every arcade in Japan will have an insanely large section of crane games, gamble-able horse racing simulators, or literal slot machines. It's just that Japan also isn't horribly underserved like the US market is.
- Retro arcades, which run older perpetually licensed games, typically on a "pay for entry" basis. Problem is keeping all these old games in order; they don't make new parts for old games. You basically have to be an electronics restoration expert to run a retro arcade well; I suppose this is why 8-Bit Guy got into the business with Time Rift Arcade.
[0] The arcade cabs are always-online; they will fail to start if they cannot connect to their central server. Alongside buying the cab, you also have to buy a VPN box for the manufacturer's online service and pay a monthly fee, per cab, for access to that service. The online service then tracks each credit played on the machine and charges you some fraction of a dollar per credit.
[1] There's two exceptions: Hawaiian arcade operators (which have a steady stream of Japanese tourists) and Round1 (which is a Japanese arcade chain with US operations)
[2] Round1 has an exclusive rhythm game called Music Diver which they operate in both their US and Japanese locations. In the US, Music Diver's right up front and gets a lot of casuals playing. In Japan, it's hidden in the back and there's no one playing.
[3] EU/UK is somehow even worse, even though they have the urban infrastructure for arcades and we don't. Best they have is DDR A20 PLUS with eAmuse stripped out - reheated leftovers from the Dave & Busters / Round1 deal that fell through two years ago.
[4] It's one thing for ActiVision to license a bunch of rock music and stick it in an arcade machine, but buying the cab doesn't exactly give you a license to publicly perform the game and the music attached to it. Sort of like how game streaming is technically illegal, even though everyone does it, and the game industry wants you to do it.
And the retro arcades are really bars for their business model. The profit is all in the $9 beers and $16 nachos, not the admission charge or coin drops. The games are just the crowd draw like live music or trivia or whatever.
Redemption games get families loading up $50 per kid at the card machine (and then $50 more after the kids blow it in twenty minutes); retrocades aren't pulling that from anybody.
Im going to bring this back to my cloud computing analogy. I’m trying to figure out the future of the business model wrt GPUs. Its possible that GPUs and machine learning APIs could act as the “crowd draw” meanwhile they make all the profit on overpriced commodity x86 vcpu and storage buckets (the beer and nachos)
> But having actual per-credit licensing attached to the machines would be an easy way to tell collection societies to fuck off, because they already got paid when you paid your revshare to the arcade manufacturer, and they can't sue you if you paid for your license.
This is precisely why revenue share exists as a model. There are a lot of US operators who are still cold to the idea, but it isn't out of the question that operators would pay for updated, modern games. Rhythm games especially are difficult due to cross-border licensing issues.
The times are changing though: There has been an ongoing maimai DX location test in the US (in California, Round1 PHM and in Texas, at Dave 'n Busters), and there was recently the successful completion of the location test for Taiko no Tatsujin, with a full scale launch starting in November. There are pains, but these games are slowly coming over.
I assume you already know this stuff, but I think the average person would read your take as fairly cynical. The fact that SEGA Fave and Bandai Namco are even remotely considering operating online, networked rhythm games in the US is something to be thankful for. maimai's location test was online, with a large catalog of songs, on the international ALL.net service. Compared to the maimai PiNK loctest, which was offline with paltry songs, it's way, way more likely to be a long-term initiative.
I don't just know about the maimai DX location test, I actually flew out to the Puente Hills Mall[0] just to play it.
One other thing I left out (because I thought it was too inside-baseball) is that the way Japanese companies structure their overseas operations also harms the US rhythm game market. For example, the only reason why we got a maimai DX location test was that SEGA had completely upended their US arcade division. It used to be licensed out to a completely different company with zero interest in rhythm games. Presumably with the same assumption that they wouldn't sell well or that arcade operators wouldn't sign a revshare agreement. The best we could get was a bunch of offline'd Chunithm Paradise Lost machine with all the licenses stripped out[1].
Likewise, US players are also very cynical because of how poorly served we are for our given market size. When Taiko's US launch was announced a lot of people were worried that the cab quality would be shit because they were being assembled in the US (presumably for shipping or tariff reasons). The rhythm game community has a long memory; we remember what Raw Thrills did to DDR in the name of cost-cutting. The Taiko cabs that R1 USA got so far seem to be good, fortunately, but it's not irrational to worry about these sorts of things.
I can absolutely see some independent operators outside of Round1 picking up Taiko (or maimai if SEGA FAVE decides to grant our wishes). But I would still be rather shocked if, say, Dave & Busters[3] wound up running either game, given that they basically pulled out of rhythm games.
[0] Which is comically dead. Outside of the Round1 and the AMC basically half the shops are closed and the other half are going out of business. If PHM wasn't Round1's hero store the mall probably would have shut down by now.
[1] Hope you like Jingle Bells
[2] After Raw Thrills fucked DDR so hard it left the states, the reintroduction of DDR to the US (Hawaii exclusive) involved a special deal with Konami, Round1, and Dave & Busters. Because D&B was involved, they insisted on perpetual licensing, even though Konami had moved to revshare in every other region. Which meant having to buy upgrade kits.
[3] Or, hell, Chuck E. Cheese; even though Taiko would slot in perfectly with their target demo.
While I agree with the description of "kid-friendly casino", the big thing distinguishing "literal slot machines" to me is that they pay out in tokens. Any machine at Chuck E. Cheese would pay out in tickets.* That means you go in with X tokens, come out with Y tickets, and can't feed the tickets back into the machine. Instead, you get a plastic ring with a spider on it.
But you do get something; with a slot machine, you're guaranteed to end up with nothing.
* Actually, I think there was some kind of shelves-and-pushers machine where the goal was to somehow trigger the mechanism to shove a bunch of tokens off a shelf. This was not popular.
In port huron michigan at the birchwood mall that shelf was full of quarters!!
There was an article in the JR cookbook / anarchist cookbook about how to win these games I i remember correctly. Could never pull it off as a 10 yo that neened my parents to drive me there
There was one in the local mall briefly. While it was filled with quarters, when the coins dropped it released aluminium tokens from another source that were exchanged at the rate of 5 paper prize tickets.
Don't forget the bar + arcade. There's usually overlap with other types of arcades, but it's more like the arcade is a draw to sell beer instead of pizza.
The "pay for entry" model is also a way to get around offering pirated games or other games that normally would be not legal to accept quarters for.
I guess it's nostalgic for some but even as a kid back when the chain first rolled out I recognized right away that the animatronics were low rent versions of earlier Disney animatronics that were much better (albeit, significantly more complex and thus more expensive).
I guess if you're a toddler it's still a big, colorful, moving stuffed animal that talks, which might seem fascinating. But for an older kid it wasn't entertaining or engaging while the Disney animatronics still were.
Reflecting now on why one worked on me and the other didn't, I think the lack of variable speed motion had a lot to do with it because ease-in/out can add so much life and expression.
I went with my kids to a Chuck E Cheese party a few years back.
It was the perfect encapsulation of modern American capitalism.
As my kids milled about, suddenly the employees started chanting "Chuck E! Chuck E!" And, encouraging the kids to pump their arms in the air.
My kids did this as I stood there and the horror crept over me.
Then, Chuck E came out. My kids were putty in his hands at that point. He could have said "Now, turn to your dad and murder him. Don't think, just do it." And, they would have done that.
Then, they ate extraordinarily crappy pizza. I did too. It was a coping mechanism for me, I'm not sure why my kids ate it.
After that, they went into the arcade and were encouraged to "earn" tickets. Those tickets could be converted into cheap plastic toys that cost $0.10 to make in China. Earning 100 tickets would cost several dollars on a debit card. And, the conversion rate was 10000 tickets for that cheap plastic shit. It wasn't a good exchange rate. But, man, my kids were sucked in.
It was a gorgeous example of American capitalism. I have to tip my hat to Chuck E. He's a maestro.
Were you standoffish and angry enough that you managed to prevent the kids from having a fun party? It sounds like good harmless fun- dancing, games, pizza, and toys/prizes. The only negative to me is that the loudness and dancing can be overwhelming for some kids.
I feel like they can easily make the stuff you get from these things at least marginally worth it and still make a ton of money. It'd at least make the adults feel a bit better, but somehow it always seems to be the first thing they try to save on.
Then again, I find that I'm often the only one that has issues exchanging $20 for fifteen minutes of fun and a $0.1 toy.
You can never make enough money. Most local governments don't care that kiddy games are unregulated and you have no shot at winning the grand prize. Hence, "It was the perfect encapsulation of modern American capitalism."
I thoroughly enjoyed this article. I had no idea that Nolan Bushnell / Atari was behind the original Chuck E. Cheese, but in retrospect it makes so much sense. What an amazing playfulness and somewhat crazy thing for them to do-- i don't think having the kind of success Atari had was an accident when you read about visionary, long-term stuff like that (even if the venture itself didn't technically work out that well for Atari / Bushnell _this_ time...).
Following Dolli Dimples nightmare decent into booze and drugs and Jasper T. Jowls repeated arrests for excessive drooling, the wheels really came off. Pasqually ended up in an psych ward after an acute psychotic break, Crusty the Cat contracted rabies under mysterious circumstances, and Chuck himself has never been seen after his crypto pump and dump scheme.
Bankrupt - Chuck E Cheese's is a great 30ish min doc I highly recommend, actually everything put out Bright Sun youtube is super good: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BbI3zOm2BkE
Yeah, the updated version is basically a jukebox of modern pop and Disney songs with some light 'country' gilding. But, they did do a substantial refurb and upgrade of the animatronics themselves, which are working better than they have in a long time.
FNAF feels like something you want to view from far away through a screen and not actually live it. Having played FNAF I think the real thing would be less appealing than more.
I mean, yeah, the animatronics are weird in today's age, but honestly, the whole premise is what does the chain's image in.
Is it really anything other than chaos and sleaze distilled? You can have stoned 19-year-olds cavorting in the supply closet, drunken parents slugging it out at a birthday party, a man sneezing on a pizza he just baked, and a crying child defecating in the ball pit simultaneously. All against a hypnotic background of flashing lights and arcade sounds.
This is a grotesquery, torn from the pages of Huxley. One can only imagine the Romans had a similar palace of decadence for children shortly before their collapse.
No sane society would allow this to exist, let alone as a profitable enterprise. I know anglophone North America isn't sane, but isn't this a little too far, even for us?
The problem is that in 2024, kids can play video games and watch stupid videos in the comfort of their own home. Perhaps screens beat animatronics, ball pits, and whatnot, but there's no competitive advantage over superior alternatives in the new space.
Examples:
- Book stores. Cut costs to compete with online sellers. Move more and more digitally. Have no upside over pure online stores. Keel over.
- Radio Shack. Stop selling electronics components, and start targeting to the bigger market of cell phones. Have no competitive advantage over Best Buy or cell phones stores. Keel over.
In those situations, it's better to either:
* Shift business models (e.g. Radio Shack could become a very competitive makerspace, host kid afterschool programs, maker camps, and refocused on Raspberry PI, 3d printers, Micro:bits and similar).
* Shrink the business to follow a declining market without taking on debt (Radio Shack couldn't support the number of stores it had, but it could very much have supported 1/5 of the stores)
Both of those approaches usually require starting to adapt before the sky starts falling.