Chuck E. Cheese’s looks to draw a new generation of kids
Tom Leverton is trying to teach an old mouse new tricks.
Since July 2014, Leverton has been chief executive of Irvingbased CEC Entertainment, parent of the Chuck E. Cheese’s kid-themed chain of restaurants/ indoor theme parks.
Last year, a period filled with rumors that the chain might return to the public markets, Leverton was busy making the brand more appealing to kids and the parents who tote them around.
The chain has revamped some of its nearly 600-plus locations to make room for an interactive light-up dance floor. That has meant removing the signature animatronic animal bands that have inspired TV and video game parodies and some childhood anxiety since the earliest days of the brand.
The company has updated the menu to be more chef-driven and thus less of a sacrifice for mom and dad.
And a chain that counts “to-go” as less than 1 percent of overall sales, has launched a test to take its new menu on the road, via delivery from GrubHub, Door Dash, and starting this month, UberEats.
It’s all part of a renaissance for a brand that’s been a birthday haunt for generations, following its creation by the founder of video game pioneer Atari.
“We have changed a lot at Chuck E. over the past several years,” Leverton said. “We have invested a great deal in the food. We launched a brand new menu. We have enhanced the in-store environment a great deal adding Wi-Fi, improving the overall look and feel.
“We’ve improved things dramatically. We are working to re-energize and reinvigorate the overall brand,” he added. “We are at a place now where we are really proud of a lot of these accomplishments.”
Born in 1977 in San Jose, Calif., as Chuck E. Cheese’s Pizza Time Theatre, the brand has undergone a metamorphosis more than once since inventor Nolan Bushnell looked to merge family-friendly food and nascent video games.
After a 1980s merger, the brand became ShowBiz Pizza Place. It moved to Irving in 1982, and in 1998, the company changed its name to CEC Entertainment.
It is now majority-owned and controlled by investment funds affiliated with Apollo Global Management, which took the company private in early 2014, in a deal valued at about $1.3 billion. Also in 2014, the company purchased rival Peter Piper Pizza.
In recent times, the mouse-cot at the center of the brand’s marketing has gotten a dramatic makeover.
Chuck E. was once a bowler-wearing adult rodent with buck teeth and a prodigious snout.
Today’s Chuck is a jeans-wearing, teen-ish guitar player who is significantly thinner than his rotund predecessor.
What remains to be seen after all of the innovation, is who, outside of the company, will bite.
For Lake Highlands resident Nancy Ferry, visiting a Chuck E. Cheese’s after a decadelong absence was a revelation.
“I grew up going to Chuck E. Cheese in the ’90s,” she said. “It is very different now.”
She was “hesitant” to visit a year ago, for her son Davis’ second birthday but ended up being “blown away.”
“It was so clean, and the food was actually pretty good,” she said. The experience prompted her family to host their son’s third birthday party at a Dallas location last month.
Annual sales for CEC Entertainment, which seemed stuck at plus or minus $810 million for years, jumped by more than 10 percent to $922.6 million in 2015, and were $923.7 million in 2016, according to Bloomberg. Of the 2016 total, Chuck E. Cheese’s consolidated revenue was $852.1 million.