Why on EARTH Does Chuck E. Cheese Serve Alcohol?!

Chuck E cheese is one of those North American Staples that anyone with a childhood in the last 40 years can remember somehow has managed to bridge the generational gap between Millennial age groups uniting us all through the same weird shared experience who could forget the Sea of arcade games the pizza the animatronic in-house band if I close my eyes I can almost hear the sounds do you hear it the sound of the ticket muncher the Frantic laughter the joyful chorus of happy birthday juxtaposed by the sound of a screaming child that just cracked himself in the head with a Skee-Ball after a wildly inappropriate overhand throw the place was a blast and if you were fortunate enough to have a birthday there you were given the VIP treatment I mean you got a sticker a balloon high fives from Chuck himself you were the king but shortly after you'd be ushered into an assembly line of birthday parties with rows of other kids who had the exact same sticker and the exact same balloon as a six-year-old this was one of those subtle realizations that you weren't actually all that special regardless the overall consensus by most of us is that Chuck E cheese was a positive experience as a child something that we can remember fondly from our youth but over the past 12 years or so with the rise of cellular cameras guests have begun to capture a different side of the restaurant and it is absolutely insane two brutal brawls this week at the same Chuck E cheese restaurant in San Bernardino County offended with a inspired CCW permit I told you it was coming now this is a place where kids go unbelievable now that's Hospitality the number of violent outbreaks that occur at Chuck E cheese on a yearly basis is absolutely staggering to quote numbers certain locations like the one in Pennsylvania had the police called to their location 17 times in 18 months another location in Amherst New York had 123 calls to police in a three-year time frame violent outbreaks range from fist fights to knife attacks to even a handful of fatal shootings I mean you don't even see this much action out of Dave and Buster's the whole thing makes you wonder what happened to all the wholesome experiences we remember as kids you know like Chuck E cheese lighting a menorah for a bunch of Jewish kids kind of wholesome digging you can find headlines that go as far back as 2005 regarding countless instances where violent outbreaks have occurred as we move into the tens the amount of recorded fights is almost overwhelming I mean literally just searched Chuck E cheese fight on YouTube and you'll find a curated playlist of 91 different videos this one's my favorite where the guy in the green shirt looks like he's winding up for the meanest Sucker Punch of his life but it turns out he's just applying hand sanitizer while two women go at it in the background as for the company's response to all these incidents well from the looks of it Chuck E cheese has essentially been playing PR dodgeball for the past 15 years with public statements that never really addressed the issue directly the company makes an effort to point out the 99.9 percent of guests that come to their restaurants without incident while claiming to have spent over 15 million dollars on measures to improve safety one of those initiatives included an improved security camera system and as we all know security cameras don't really improve safety they just ensure that the next ball pit RKO is caught in glorious 240p there's clearly more issues at play here it comes as no surprise that birthday parties are stressful situations for parents especially at public establishments everyone involved wants things to go smoothly and when it's every kid's special day tensions can start to rise incidents have spawned from anything as simple as disputes over tickets to a child taking too long to choose a prize Petty arguments that end up having pretty extreme outcomes but even with the hectic atmosphere and birthday stress there's one factor that rises above all else turns out Chuck E cheese franchisees have the option of applying for alcohol licenses granting them the ability to serve beer and wine to adult guests from a business standpoint it's genius sure the place is for kids but what if we found a way to capitalize on all the adults it's a no-brainer but from a liability standpoint it starts to look like a much dicier operation at least at face value CEC entertainment will say that their two drink limit on adult guests prevents the possibility of alcohol-fueled arguments well that's at least comforting Chuck E cheese has a policy of serving only two alcoholic beverages per adult but when she wanted two more she's told how to get around their two drink limits you just need someone else's ID someone else's ID and then I can order two more but just with somebody else's okay pack it up yeah we got it now we're good this kind of publicity is just another nail in the coffin for Chuck E cheese a company that has been over one billion dollars in debt since 2014. the truth is Chuck's balance sheet has never been great the restaurant has filed for bankruptcy twice once just after the video game Crash of 1983 and another in 2020 when the company was forced to close during the pandemic tack on violent news headlines accusations of the irresponsible vending of alcohol and an inaccurate yet overly publicized Scandal about recycled pizza and you've got a pretty rough brand image so bad in fact that Chuck E cheese practically changed their name during covet kind of let's just say the company took some pretty drastic measures to make ends meet when the pandemic hit to make a long story short if you ever ordered from Pasquale's Pizza and Wings on GrubHub or ubereats then congratulations you literally ordered takeout from Chuck E cheese this was all part of a temporary Rebrand to establish ghost kitchens inside of recently closed locations since the restaurants couldn't open but still had the infrastructure to serve pizza the company would simply list themselves under a different name on food delivery apps to make some extra money and since you'd have to be a psychopath to willingly order takeout from Chuck E cheese the company made a harmless little name change to appear more enticing of course you can't blame franchisees for trying to make ends meet but the company still caught some bad press for it the truth is Chuck E cheese has never been too good at finding ways to improve sales throughout the last 40 years the restaurant's knee-jerk response to slipping Revenue has always been that Chuck just isn't cool enough as a result Chuck has undergone a myriad of makeovers over the past 40 plus years going from cigars to skateboards to electric guitars spons comes as no surprise from a company that owes a huge portion of its success solely to its mascot the character has been a tried and true hit for decades and to this day kids still come to the restaurant just to get a chance to see Chuck himself originally when Chuck E Cheese's competitor ShowBiz Pizza bought out chucks in 1985 all Showbiz locations were actually turned into Chuck E cheeses instead of Vice Versa a large part of the reason was owed to the fact that Chuck was just a bigger hit with kids than showbiz's Billy Bob the bear then the company has always been looking for new ways to bring in customers from the constant mascot reworks to menu changes to even removing their entire animatronics show from most locations most recently the restaurant has been working to reinvent itself in an attempt to capture the attention of millennial parents these changes include free Wi-Fi fancier pizzas and even craft beer choices and no this is not satire in all honesty the whole thing is kind of an eye roller but it's not like there wasn't some sense to it Millennials are the ones taking their kids to Chuck E cheese so it's got to be attractive for the adults too and as a gen Z Millennial hybrid myself I had to admit those craft beer options did sound pretty good so I decided to do some field work I was on a mission a mission to find out how Chuck E cheese had stood the test of time and if it really had devolved into the violent alcohol-fueled mess that the media made it out to be and my first order of business was to get me a beer question um do you okay I was just wondering thank you so much bye now and with that we hit the road eager to play some games eat some pizza and hopefully crush a few beers turns out Chuck's has no problem with letting an entire group of adults walk into their restaurant so we were let right in where we promptly learned that they had run out of alcohol that's right either some manager did a really bad job at keeping inventory or Chuck E cheese really did have a drinking problem I have to admit this moment was a little discouraging did I maybe lure the majority of my friend group to Chuck E cheese with the promise of free alcohol yes did I let that stop us from having a good time hell no so we ordered an extra large pie loaded up on some credits and hit the arcade while we waited for our pizza and here's where I hit my first Nostalgia Crush of the day turns out at some point in time Chuck E cheese opted to use play cards instead of coins kind of like what Palladium or Dave and Buster's does now what does that mean exactly coins gone tickets gone patience after tapping the RFID reader six times just to play skeeball gone now listen I understand this is a much more sustainable option but the fact that kids today will never know the feeling of running wildly from cabinet to cabinet with a stack of tickets falling out of their pockets is kind of depressing or how about when you find that one lone coin some kid left behind because he was too jacked up on Orange Crush to notice now everything's just been reduced to ones and zeros you tap to play and the tickets you win are transferred onto the card you play with bummer as for the games themselves things had certainly changed you see this was my first time to Chuck E cheese since the Advent of mobile gaming and it really showed in the selection of cabinets they had you had a lot of touch screens a lot of one button Mashers and not a whole lot of long-lived fun I guess these games are a lot easier for younger audiences to latch onto and understand but at the same time I can say without a doubt that the games they used to have were objectively better in almost every way in 2004 at this exact same location they had Star Wars Pod racer A Turtle's in time cabinet and a game called Brave firefighters where you literally manned a light gun in the shape of a hose and dove into blazing buildings clearly a lot was lost but thankfully the location still kept some of the classics there was ski ball basketball a few good Racers and Simpsons soccer which has literally been operational at that location for over 20 years at this point moving on to the rest of the venue I am glad to report that this location still had the decency to keep the animatronic band at least for now you see another part of cec's big Rebrand involves the removal of one of the restaurant's most distinguishable features munches make believe band in its place restaurants are installing interactive dance floors where kids can jump around and be treated to special appearances by Chuck's walk around as it's dubbed In The Biz as for the band well only the shadow of their Silhouettes remain painted on the walls to serve as a constant reminder of what once was eerie after we explored the venue and played some games the pizza showed up at our table and I can say with full confidence that it actually wasn't that bad I can also report that there was no evidence at all of reuse slices which for the uninformed was quite the Scandal at one point but regardless of whether or not the rumor was true it seems Chucks took it to heart and now all of their remodeled locations include open kitchens coincidence hardly when we finished with our food and our 30 minute all you can play card had expired we decided to pack it in turns out we actually racked up a half decent amount of tickets and went to cash out there were a couple items that caught my eye but the one I wanted more than all the others was a little too expensive we were about to settle for something cheaper when I learned that you can literally just buy the items with real cash and that was all I needed to hear it okay do I you're not just saying that okay overall my experience at Chuck E cheese was actually pretty Pleasant yes the games may have been subpar and the play cards may have been a little bit more than disappointing but the food was good and I didn't find myself in any sort of violent altercations would I have enjoyed myself a bit more with a couple of beers probably but the trip down memory lane was enough to keep me occupied and that's why I'm giving my experience four rats out of five or is it mice is he is he a rat or a mouse do we ever we ever clarify now I know Chuck E cheese has been getting a bad rap these days and I know in a weird way this video may have contributed to that but no matter what we think about the direction Chuck E cheese is headed we can at least remember fondly about where it's been yes the companies had some rocky moments and yes you have an incredibly slim but still slightly possible chance of being shot there but for the most part it's just how we always remembered it as a place where a kid can be a kid or at least in my case pretend to be [Music]

Channel: slow start

Views: 415,823

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Id: bsld6wQad78

Length: 15min 15sec (915 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 07 2022