How David McKillips is transforming Chuck E. Cheese
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Few stories are more fun to tell than the tale of an underdog who makes good through wile and will . So, when I met David McKillips several years ago and learned how he was trying to turn around Chuck E. Cheese, an operation that’d gone bankrupt just months before, my interest was piqued.
So were my sympathies. He was trying to turn an operation founded on 1970s technology into an irresistible draw for youngsters who’d never known life without computers. Its big wow was a bunch of animatronic animal characters who sang woefully un-hip songs in the herky-jerky style of a 1950s robot. Was any kid really going to put down a video-game console for that?
I didn’t know whether to ask for an interview or start a GoFundMe page for the guy.
Then we ran into one another again, and now he had some results to share. His moonshot appeared to be working.
The third encounter was the charm. I caught McKillips’ presentation at the Texas Restaurant Association’s annual convention in July and got the full Monty on Chuck E. Cheese’s comeback. Here was a guy seemingly unafraid of killing what had become hallmarks of the brand: He had even literally dismantled the robot band.
David graciously agreed to cooperate on a combination profile and corporate status piece. The process revealed just how extensive the rebuild has been. At times I wondered if McKillips should be checked for performance-enhancers.
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Chuck E. Cheese isn’t out of the woods yet. But this far into its comeback, there’s no denying that it’s a different concept and its parent, CEC Entertainment, is a different company with a stay-young attitude.
What else can you expect from a guy who was once associate publisher of Mad magazine?
Read Peter’s full profile of McKillips and Chuck E. Cheese here. For a free month of RB+ premium access, use code RBPREMIUM24.
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