Freddy Fazbear absolutely crushed the competition in movie theaters a month ago, but you know what else he crushed? His real-life counterpart, Chuck E. Cheese. One week after the FNAF movie took a big ol' bite of 87 out-of-box offices, the popular restaurant chain Chuck E. Cheese made a massive announcement that they would be removing the animatronic entertainers from practically all of their 500-plus restaurant locations. They claim that it's an effort to update their look by modernizing the restaurant with new light-up dance floors. Because, you know, nothing says cool modern eatery like a disco floor ripped straight out of the 70s. Anyway, the timing for this huge shift away from animatronics felt too much like a coincidence to be a coincidence for the internet, prompting everyone to start making the claim that Five Nights at Freddy's killed Chuck E. Cheese, that the family-friendly restaurant didn't want to be confused with a place where scary murder animatronics could come out and grab you. But is that really true? Is Charles Entertainment Cheese yet another bloody, brutalized victim of Freddy and the Gang? Or is there some other mysterious killer lurking in the shadows? Loyal theorists, it's time we investigate. Hello, Internet! Welcome to Food Theory, where an adult in his 30s can be a kid. By the way, while you're here, add to our ticket total by skee-balling that subscribe button. If you manage to do it, it'll even light up like you've hit the jackpot, because you will have a jackpot full of amazing food, lore, and science-related content. Heck, you don't even need to trade in a wheelbarrow full of tickets to get it. So, when it comes to the case of FNAF vs. Charles Entertainment Cheese, I've seen a lot of assumptions floating around that this is an open-and-shut case. The belief is that Freddy's murderous brand has tainted the world of animatronic entertainment so much that Chuck E. Cheese is afraid it'll scare families away if he keeps the robots around. I mean, the irony of that is pretty hilarious when you consider that it was their creepy, outdated animatronics that inspired FNAF in the first place. But regardless, it seems like Chuck, Pasqually, Munch, and Helen are now on their farewell tour, before they permanently get retired to a suburban strip mall over in Northridge, California. So today, then, we're faced with a mystery. Who killed Chuck E. Cheese? Primary suspect number one is obviously Freddy and the mascot horror genre that he represents, but is there any truth to this theory? Can we really blame FNAF for this sort of corporate shake-up? It's not like the CEO of CEC woke up to the box office numbers one morning and said, ''Shut it all down!'' These sorts of decisions take a lot of time. There are a lot of people who'd have to weigh in on a decision like this, because there's a lot of financial ramification here. But if it's not Freddy, then who or what else could it be? Are all arcades just going down the drain? Was this a self-inflicted wound by Chuck E. himself looking to be put out of his misery? Or is there something more nefarious at play? Ladies and gentlemen, it's time to explore the economics of eatertainment, which, I promise, is gonna be a lot easier to understand than the FNAF timeline. Now, I've talked about the Chuck E. Cheese franchise a few times already on this channel, but before we dive into the downfall of the rat, let's just make sure that we're all aware of the broad strokes of the company's evolution. I mean, when you're dealing with a brand that's been around for 46 years, there's bound to be some drama. Trust me, it's gonna be important later on. As you probably already know, Chuck E. Cheese was started by the co-founder of Atari, Nolan Bushnell. What you may not know is that Nolan was a bit of a robotics nerd who once dreamed of working as a Disney Imagineer. But when his application to the program got repeatedly rejected, he decided to create his own Disney. Impressed by attractions like the Enchanted Tiki Room and the Country Bear Jamboree, Bushnell saw potential in animatronic shows that could be taken out of the theme parks and used for entertainment during meals. The idea was a smash hit, but soon a new challenger entered the market. A rival restaurant with far better animatronics. This then led to an arms race. Not only were these chains opening up competing restaurants right next to each other, but they were creating an onslaught of mascots by throwing random ingredients at the wall to see what toppings stuck. That's how we wound up with characters that are literally singing mops and busty hippo women. Hold on, hippo and mop animatronics? Again, I point out how Chuck E. Cheese should really be doing some introspection if they think FNAF is the thing that's giving them a bad look. Anyway, the two companies were eventually forced to merge due to declining sales. And from there, the brand never really stopped adapting. Over the past 30 years, Charles and the gang have progressively gotten younger. What started as a cigar-smoking rat became a slick skateboarding teen in the late 90s, and then in the 2010s, he was changed again into this. What's officially called Glamrock Chuck- Sorry, honest mistake. What's officially called Rockstar Chuck E. Mm-hmm, Rockstar Chuck E. Cheese. All this is to say that Chuck E., the OG pizza rat, has constantly been forced to adapt in order to survive. Except that this time, it's the biggest change-up the company's ever experienced before. With Freddy killing off the competition permanently. Or, at least that's what online theorists would like you to believe. You see, the thing that most people missed when they were reading the headlines here is that the restaurant's been trying to kill off Chuck E. for years. This isn't the first time they've tried to do a move like this. All the way back in 2017, the franchise made the exact same announcement. The retirement of the band. But, due to the public backlash, they decided to push the decision out by a couple years. This isn't a story about scary animatronics killing off a brand, it's about a brand killing itself off. Let me explain. I don't think it'll come as a big surprise to hear that Chuck E. Cheese was hit hard by the pandemic. Without kids to come in and rub their snotty hands across those arcade games, there was no money to go around. It's not like people were coming in for the pizza, after all. It got so bad that in 2020, Chuck E. Cheese filed for bankruptcy with over $2 billion in debt. But they were far from alone. Dave & Buster's' sales fell by 70%. And as of 2023, the Rainforest Cafe has shut down 37 of their 60 original locations. Despite the reignited interest coming to the brand in the aftermath of Eddie Burback and Ted Nivison's cross-country odyssey. And while they all saw a bit of an upswing post-pandemic, they're now back on the slide. In short, eatertainment as an industry is in decline. What do I mean by that? Well, eatertainment is the class of business that fuses together, as the name would imply, dining and entertainment. In eatertainment venues, the focus isn't just about providing food, but also offering you a fun environment. I'm talking about your Topgolfs, your Bowleros, your Benihanas, your Hard Rock Cafes, and your Medieval Times. And across the board, they're all on the decline right now. Topgolf, down 30%. Bowlero, down 56%. Even more generalist places like Main Event, they've suffered recently. Despite Main Event having it all, Lazer Tag, Bowling, Minigolf, Escape Rooms, Virtual Reality Experiences, basically this place is the Security Breach Pizzaplex, their sales have also started to go down. And yet, while everything else is in decline, there is one pocket of eatertainment that's seen a massive uptick in recent years. Barcades. While Chuck, Dave, and Buster all scrambled to modernize, the barcade industry, with its old-school pinball machines and Galaga cabinets, has surged past a billion dollars in annual revenue. Now, I know what you might be thinking. There is a stark difference between Chuck E. Cheese and a regular barcade. One's for kids, and the other is for grown-up kids. But actually, since 2015, Chuck E. Cheese has been trying to appeal to the taste buds of parents by extending the menu's palette beyond just cheese and pepperoni, by introducing beer and wine to help drown out the war cries of amped-up kids. Not a bad strategy. Luring in exhausted parents with the promise of responsible inebriation, while the kids spend hundreds of dollars on prizes they could have bought from Amazon at a fraction of the price. So, if the difference here isn't alcohol, what is it? How can barcades thrive, while Dave and Buster's, literally the mega-sized version of a barcade, flounders? Well, in the end, it all seems to be an issue of brand. Knowing who you're targeting as a consumer. Barcades get it. The rest of eatertainment doesn't. Look back at the jokes that I've been making throughout this episode. Poking fun of the bad pizza, the janky animatronics, the dirty arcade games, the overpriced prizes. They're all jokes that have been made at the expense of Chuck E. Cheese for decades now. The restaurant sits in this nebulous place where it's trying to appeal to everyone. But by doing that, they're failing to appeal to anyone. Kids don't care about interactive dance floors, or games that are inferior to the ones that they could just play on their phones for free, and adults don't want to have to deal with screaming kids around them while they're trying to have a beer and set a new high score after work. And no one is going there for the pizza, regardless of whether it's recycled or not. Dave and Buster's? It's the exact same story. If I'm a dad and I want to watch a football game at a sports bar, I don't want to be interrupted by the sound of an air hockey table or Whack-A-Minion. Just look at the way that it's names listed on the internet. Dave and Buster's, Arcade, Sports Bar, Restaurant. It's all too much. Meanwhile, places like Rainforest Cafe, Benihana, Hard Rock Cafe, it's all novelty. You go there once, or maybe twice to experience it, but the food just isn't strong enough to pull you back. It's overpriced for what it is, and the entertainment value is just kind of... Eh, it was interesting, I guess. There's just nothing there to make you want to go back on a regular basis. Now look at Barcades. They're not trying to appeal to kids and adults, they are adult-focused experiences through and through. Heck, in most of them, kids aren't even allowed through the door. They offer a casual social environment without being forced to pay 50 bucks for a few rounds of bowling on the side. But Barcades also have another secret weapon, and that's the fact that they are, in fact, bars. You see, there's a generalization in the restaurant industry that says bars are recession-proof. People run to celebrate good times with alcohol, but studies have shown that alcohol consumption also goes up during hard economic times, as people try to cope with their stressors. And right now, with the world economy in turmoil, people are being more selective with what they're spending their money on. Consider this. Let's say I'm a parent and I have the option of spending $50 entertaining my kids. I could do that at Chuck E. Cheese, it'd give me about 90 minutes with lackluster animatronics, greasy pizza, and germy Games, or I could spend that exact same money on a video game. A video game that could keep him quietly playing in the corner of the room for years. The choice here is very clear. Speaking of other high-quality things that you could spend your money on that'll last for years, we have a brand new collection of apparel on sale right now over at TheoryWear.com. Instead of wasting 50 bucks trying to play Giant Flappy Bird, use that money to grab yourself some high-quality winter wear that'll be a staple of your wardrobe for years. On these channels, we're not just making merch anymore, we're making pieces of clothing that are so unique and so well-made, you're never gonna find stuff like this in your local store. Case in point, this cozy hibernation sweater, which is oversized and makes you feel like you're protected in a stylish warm blanket anywhere you go. It even has our signature thumb holes for making you feel secure during all those awkward holiday interactions. And here's the beauty of the piece. If you size it up, BOOM, it can also be worn as a sweater dress. So really, you can style it any way you want. The entire collection is called Northern Lights because it was inspired by the beautiful colors of the Aurora Borealis lighting up the winter sky at night. And you can see that in pieces like the Aurora Blazer or the Carry-On Luggage, bright, vibrant colors that pop during the cold, dark winter months. But if you're in the mood for something that's a bit more toned down, there's also the Field Watch Heavy Fleece, made from 100% recycled polyester Sherpa. And no, not 100% recycled animatronic. The thing is so soft and so warm that I now have turned off the heat in my entire house so I have an extra excuse to wear it around. My utility bill's happy, and so am I. And if none of that's your speed, the collection isn't just a bunch of sweaters and jackets. We also have gloves and even snow pants. So if you're still looking for a last-minute gift or a thing to spend all that new Christmas money on, Northern Lights by Theoryware is a great, snuggly option. Links are below the video or just in the video, thanks to YouTube Shopping. Speaking of shopping, there's yet another thing that's holding Chuck specifically back in the world of entertainment. He's wildly expensive. The business move to roll back the ban makes a lot of sense when you take into consideration the cost and effort it takes to repair Munch's make-believe band. A full setup of the eight-character band cost roughly $90,000 in 1982, and it hasn't gotten cheaper since. But a Chucky Cheese Tech explained in a Reddit AMA that, although these animatronic skeletons are fairly simplistic, they're also incredibly expensive to make. He claims that there are 32 special pneumatic cylinders throughout the entire character that allow for the individual joint movements, and 64 separate hoses connect them to the pneumatic control board down in the floor. According to another user, it allegedly costs around $50,000 a year in tech maintenance, and $10,000 a year for parts, just to keep the band jamming. And restaurants aren't alone in trying to shy away from using animatronics as the primary source of entertainment. Even theme parks like Disney and Universal Studios are incorporating more and more digital tech into their previously animatronic-heavy rides, all in an effort to lower the overall cost of maintenance. Back in the day, it was important for theme parks to break uncharted ground to impress audiences, in much the same way that Chuck had to one-up his game against Showbiz Pizza's initially superior animatronics. But that time is long past now. The novelty of robot characters, it's largely worn off. For example, Universal recently updated the Jurassic Park water ride that's been around since the mid-90s to become the Jurassic World ride. Along with the addition of an Indominus Rex from the reboot, the new ride replaced key moments with videos, projections, digital dinos. It's a lot easier to fix a broken TV screen than it is to repair a 1,500-pound animatronic. And it's not just the reimagining of old parts either. New rides are being designed and built to squeeze more creativity out of cheaper tech. For instance, Disney's brand new Mickey & Minnie's Runaway Railway combines simpler animatronics and physical forms with projecting hologram faces on the physical ride characters, thereby resulting in fewer intricate parts that are gonna break down and need maintenance. So to answer our initial question, what killed off Chuck E. Cheese? Well, it's delivering an unfocused experience that tries to appeal to everyone and satisfies no one, all in a market where cheaper, higher-quality options are available. And what's making it worse is that delivering that lackluster experience is also expensive to maintain. It's kind of your worst-of-all-scenarios thing happening there. So then what? Does FNAF not factor into this equation at all? Yes, actually. Yes, it does. In fact, quite the opposite. I think FNAF may be the single most important factor in this entire discussion, but not for being the one to kill Chuck E. Cheese. Rather, I think it's the thing that'll save Chuck E. Cheese. You see, one thing that research has shown time and again is that young Millennials and Gen Zers are spending more money on experiences than they are on material goods. They'd much rather have themselves an awesome trip to Japan than an expensive car. And they'd rather opt for a cool trip to an amusement park instead of something like a nice watch or a pair of shoes. And the one thing that they love above all else? Horror. Take the FNAF movie as an example here. 81% of the audience that went to see this thing in the theater were between the ages of 13 and 24. But more than just seeing it on screen, audiences have a growing desire to be immersed in that horror. From record-breaking five-hour wait times at Halloween Horror Nights to the rising number of horror-themed escape rooms and experiential dining, young audiences want to be scared. And I think you can see where all of this is going. When FNAF burst onto the scene back in 2015, they immediately eclipsed Chuck E. Cheese's Google search traffic. And the results since then? It hasn't even been close. The only reason Chuck E. Cheese is in the cultural conversation these days is because of this horror game franchise. And the business people over at Chuck E. Cheese know it. Case in point, this past Halloween, Chuck E. Cheese had their own FNAF event. Five Nights of Fun. I guess that's more of a FNoF event. Anyway, it was their way of very unofficially capitalizing off the release of the new movie. Just look at the poster for this thing. Looks a bit familiar, doesn't it? Chuck E. Cheese knew exactly what they were doing here, to the point that they even handed employees these cards to help them deflect any comparisons or questions about Freddy Fazbear. And yeah, good for them. They'd be dumb not to be trying to ride those coattails. But Chuck is now actively blocking anyone who calls out their strategy publicly. And that shows that their heads are in the wrong place. It shows that they want to have it both ways. They want to keep one foot in the door of, ooh, spooky scary animatronics, and one foot out of the door for fear of losing the kiddos and their parents because it's too scary. Except, as we've been talking about this entire episode, it creates a muddled, underconfident, confused brand that serves no one. Don't just unofficially rip off the greatest meal ticket, get-out-of-jail-free card you've ever been handed. Lean into it. If younger audiences like horror and want experiences, as the sales data has shown us time and time again, then give them the horror experience they want. Give them a haunted pizzeria experience via an official partnership with the FNAF brand. Take advantage of the existing, barely-functioning animatronics you have kicking around to create an experience that appeals to the FNAF audience. Heck, the fact that they're barely working actually adds to the creep factor, which is great for all the maintenance costs. And just like they did 30 years ago when Showbiz Pizza and Chuck E. Cheese merged, the pizza franchise could repurpose their old animatronic parts to create new characters, recreating Foxy, Bonnie, Chica, and Freddy live on the stage. This is an era where nostalgic mascots reign supreme and are constantly being mixed with horror. Just think about how McDonald's' Grimace was able to become one of the biggest trends of the year simply thanks to his killer purple shake. Grimace actually leaned into this memification of his 52nd birthday, and audiences ate it up. Literally, they ate it up. The trend helped boost McDonald's' second-quarter sales over 10% in the U.S. and 12% globally. But most importantly of all, people had fun. They were excited to engage with the food and the characters and the brand again. That's exactly what Chuck E. needs right now. To evolve one more time. To not be the rad skateboarder or the cool rock star, but instead to be the creepy animatronic shambling through the halls that he always was, and was always destined to be. And hey, if you can't manage to get your hands on that FNAF license, I know a similar franchise with a rat that's already lurking around in the shadows. But hey, that's just a theory. A food theory. Bon appétit.
