[NotOscarWilde]

Quickly skimming it, I found no evidence of what the future actually held, from Wikipedia [1]:

> In 1981, Pizza Time Theatre went public; they lost $15 million in 1983. By early 1984, Bushnell's debts were insurmountable, resulting in the filing of Chapter 11 bankruptcy for Pizza Time Theatre Inc. on March 28, 1984.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chuck_E._Cheese

[seizethecheese]

Rapid expansion seemed to serve the owners goals (from Nolan Bushnell’s Wikipedia page. He also started Atari.)

> It had been created by Bushnell, originally as a place where kids could go and eat pizza and play video games, which would therefore function as a distribution channel for Atari games.

[lordfrito]

Little known fact, the idea came to Bushnell when he was still running Atari. He was waiting for pizza and realized these bored people would pay to pay games while waiting. [1]

Bushnell was frustrated that Atari only got money on the original sale of a coin-op machine, while the operators got continuous revenue from the machine. He figured Atari could get in on the operations game by running a restaurant.

Atari built/ran the first Chuck E Cheese and Atari engineers (and Atari think tank Cyan Engineering) designed the robots. Restaurant opening party was private for Atari staff.

The mascot was originally going to be called Rick Rat, until marketing suggested that associating a rat with the restaurant wasn't the best idea.

When Warner Communications bought out Atari, they didn't understand it or want it, so Bushnell bought it out from them and continued running it.

[1] https://www.fastcompany.com/40425172/robots-pizza-and-magic-...

[kvandy]

Rick Rat is the most programmer idea for a mascot ever

[mensetmanusman]

We will call it "no bugs games and pizza!"

[bombcar]

The doubling of restaurants in 1982 is a pretty good indicator that it was going to explode. That kind of growth is often unsustainable.

[tmpz22]

Yeah instant 2x headcount growth is a pretty blaring warning. Good thing we learned the lesson well in the 80s and haven't repeated it since.

And these lessons are incorporated into business programs world wide and taught to each new generation so that they may permeate the business landscape and prevent unnecessary hardships.

This is why I advocate advanced degrees in business for folks looking to enter leadership positions.

[dangus]

2x headcount growth without additional information isn't a warning on its own.

If I am a solo founder and hire my first employee, that's 2x headcount growth.

Between 1970 and 1971, Walmart went from 38 to 51 stores, 1500 to 2300 employees [1].

Not quite 2x, but still, not exactly a "blaring warning" or "red flag" in hindsight.

https://one.walmart.com/content/walmartmuseum/en_us/timeline...

[sverhagen]

Times of great change (that growth) are risky. Even if it is not a blaring warning in the sense that failure is then unavoidable...

[nocoiner]

OK, but… that’s a store selling anything and everything under the sun tapping into a previous untouched market. This is an animatronic rat for kids. Context is key.

[dangus]

The arcade family restaurant concept was also a previously untouched market.

I guess Mickey Mouse is just an animatronic rat too!

[bebop]

Was this comment satire?

[bombcar]

It is dripping with it.

[dangus]

To their credit, Showbiz/Chuck E. Cheese also pulled in more revenue per store than many other competing restaurants.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BbI3zOm2BkE

Skip ahead to 7:20

They pulled in more revenue than the average McDonald's and 3x more than Pizza Hut.

It does seem like the concept has always struggled to be cost-efficient but I don't know that rapid growth was a bad indicator on its own.

It's also probably worth keeping in mind that some of those restaurants may have been franchised. When a franchisor sells a franchise license to a local franchisee, the local franchisee bears most of the risk.

[chrisco255]

Pretty sure McDonald's and many other chains have seen that kind of growth at one point or another. Going from 20 to 40 or 100 to 200, in a year is not necessarily an indication of a problem.

[brewdad]

It is a sign of increasing risk. It’s a virtual certainty that that growth is financed by a LOT of new debt.

[chris_wot]

I rather like that in Australia they couldn’t call it Chuck E. Cheese because that meant vomiting.

[Uehreka]

I guess that explains why their sports arena “The Chunderdome” didn’t take off either.

[qingcharles]

My name is Charles. I moved to the USA and everyone tries to call me "Chuck", which to my British psyche is horrible for the same linguistic reason.

[arcanemachiner]

Look on the bright side: At least your name isn't 'Richard'.

[kristopolous]

As an aside, people often misattribute where that word comes from. It's from dicker - squandering time by squabbling over petty things

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/dicker

It's certainly not polite but people claiming it's lewd have about as much ground to stand on as they do with the word "pussycat"

[PhasmaFelis]

Past etymology isn't really relevant to how a word is actually used today. There are plenty of awful slurs that were once everyday words used offensively.

[spywaregorilla]

pusy and dick are common terms for lewd things. pussycat and dicker are not.

[Scoundreller]

This definitely applies if your last name is "Armey". But some people just run with it!

[akiselev]

Hey man, don't be a Dick.

[grogenaut]

I am currently wearing a "don't be a Richard" shirt which is one of my home improvement shirts. 2 different checkout folks at 2 different hardware stores were calling over coworkers because they both apparently had managers off today named Richard who were in fact "Richards".

[porknubbins]

Lol now I’m curious what is your other home improvement shirt. I could use an official way to convey to people that I may look like I’m just puttering around but I am actually on a diy mission.

[becurious]

Being called Randolph would be worse.