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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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".
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.
oh by diy shirts I mean all the shirts that I have oil stains on or paint... that I wear when I just don't give a f or hwne I know I'm going to get more dirty. I have one that is an old mozzila appu shirt... with a sweet gtradient on it. The gradient came from me usinga circular slot cutter on a mill that tossed metal and oil at my midline and taperd off as it fell.
> 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