Not your childhood Chuck E. Cheese

After filing for bankruptcy in 2020, Chuck E. Cheese, birthday-and-pizza-party host extraordinaire, is mounting a comeback.

• CEC Entertainment, which owns Chuck E. Cheese, Pasqually’s Pizza & Wings, and Peter Piper Pizza, has experienced eight straight months of same-store sales growth, CEO Dave McKillips revealed in a recent CNBC interview.
• CEC has seen its annual revenue increase from $912 million in 2019 to roughly $1.2 billion in 2023. And that’s with fewer open Chuck E. Cheese locations.

Key to the turnaround: Chuck E. Cheese dipped into its fresh bucket of cheddar secured from raising bonds post-bankruptcy, spending $350 million to give its locations a new look for a new era.

Gone are the animatronic singing performances, SkyTube tunnels, and physical tickets of millennial childhoods. Instead, they’ve been replaced by trampolines, a mobile app, and floor-to-ceiling JumboTrons.

The company also unveiled a subscription (because why not?), which has turned into another arrow in its growth quiver. Last year, Chuck E. Cheese sold ~400,000 subscription passes, up from ~79,000 in 2023.

🐭 Bottom line: Mr. Cheese has come a long way since this infamous 2008 Wall Street Journal report about the unusual number of adult fights that took place at his establishment.