Is Chuck E Cheese a restaurant or entertainment center with a restaurant inside?

Dr. Coomer@lemmy.world to No Stupid Questions@lemmy.world – 68 points –
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I would say the primary reason for going there is the entertainment center, not the food.

And if you took the food away kids would still want to go there. If you took the entertainment away nobody's going there for the pizza.

Its right there in the name. Charles Entertainment Cheese. Yes that's his canon name.

I don't know who you're trying to impress. Most of us have been deeply soaked in the Bushnell-verse... I'm looking forward to the upcoming origin story movies.

That said, my kid got invited to a Chuck E Cheese's birthday party recently, and the pizza was a hell of a lot better than I remember it being 15 years ago

Not going to win any awards, but definitely edible

The initial pitch was an arcade with a restaurant to feed guests. Since video games were at the core of that strategy, I would expect it should be classified as an entertainment center first.

It's a barcade, like Dave and Buster's. Just a kid's barcade.

Entertainment, nobody goes there to eat pizza.

They're apparently decently popular on online delivery apps, though they sneakily go under "Pasqually's Pizza and Wings"

Is it sneaky though? Pasqually is one of the animatronic characters names.

"Pasqually" is also a slightly unusual (but very Americanized) misspelling of a very popular Italian name, evoking a first or second generation Italian-American immigrant from the early part of the 20th century.

And the average person probably doesn't know the animatronic characters' names.

I think it started out the former and evolved into the latter. My source is like 3 neurons in my brain that were last accessed 15 years ago so pretty sure it's accurate.

Chuck E Cheese was founded by Nolan Bushnell — the same Nolan Bushnell who was one of the co-founders of video game company Atari (at one time, the biggest player in the home console industry). He started it in part as a way to promote Atari games and cabinets.

So it was both — and the “entertainment centre” part was always part of its “core mission” from its inception.

Fun fact, they used to serve beer and wine (red AND white, out of a tap!)

What do you mean? It's a restaurant, they serve pizza and have a salad bar. I've been there a bunch of times as a kid. It's a restaurant man, what are you talking about?

IIRC, the original act for the animatronics had a bit about not calling it a restaurant because it was primarily an entertainment venue, it just also served food. There's a few documentaries about the rise and fall of the place that are pretty good and would be more informative than me trying to remember every detail lol

There's extra steps that have to be taken in order to serve food so they're probably officially classified as a restaurant

Restaurant with a few overpriced arcade games in there.

Basically a 7/11 with a few arcade cabinets in it... but all they have is pizza and cheap beer.

Yeah but 7/11 has the magazines to ogle while your buddy is playing his turn on the r-type machine

As a kid it was an entertainment center, as an adult the pizza isn't bad, but you get funky looks when you go solo XD especially if you want to play the games :-( don't even go for the ball pit (this is for adults and kids)

Don't they turn you away if you are not accompanying a child these days? Other than food delivery/pickups, of course.

My friend had a hard time getting in, like 20 years ago. But he just wanted to play DDR.

Could've been that the hosts recognized me from having gone with the family a month prior? And I asked them if it was weird that I was just there for the pizza and they agreed that it was remarkably good compared to the other chain options around, but no, no discrimination for food purchases.

If you call what they serve food, then I guess there's a restaurant with the video games and ticket machines.