# Episode 23: Interview with Gar Nelson Owner and Operator of The Garcade!

**Source:** Poor Man's Pinball Podcast  
**Type:** podcast_episode  
**Published:** 2019-08-29  
**Beat:** Pinball

**URL:** https://poormanspinballpodcast.libsyn.com/episode-23-interview-with-gar-nelson-owner-and-operator-of-the-garcade

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## Analysis

Poor Man's Pinball Podcast Episode 23 features an interview with Gar Nelson, owner of the Garcade arcade in Menomonee Falls, Wisconsin. The episode opens with podcast housekeeping, discussion of their new sponsor (This Week In Pinball), and technical clarifications about clear coat issues on recent pinball releases. The main interview covers Gar's journey from basement arcade collector to operating a 7,000 sq ft arcade with 150+ arcade games and 30+ pinball machines, including discussion of business challenges, game maintenance, and arcade demographics.

### Key Claims

- [HIGH] The Garcade has 150+ arcade games and 30+ pinball machines in a 7,000 sq ft facility — _Gar Nelson directly stated during interview_
- [HIGH] Garcade opened in July 2017 with three owners: Gar Nelson, Tim Byron, and Mara Nelson — _Gar Nelson during interview_
- [HIGH] The Garcade charges $15 for unlimited all-you-can-play wristband with come-and-go access for entire day — _Gar Nelson during interview_
- [HIGH] Garcade has more games in a single location than any other arcade in Wisconsin — _Gar Nelson stated they likely have more games than Geeksmania (~130 games)_
- [HIGH] Classic games like Pac-Man, Donkey Kong, Frogger, and Galaga are the most popular on the Garcade floor — _Gar Nelson during interview_
- [HIGH] Scott Ian Haberman has a clear coat science background and has been clarifying misinformation about clear coat defects on pinball playfields — _Drew and Scott Ian discussion at beginning of episode_
- [MEDIUM] Jersey Jack Pinball was scheduled to respond to clear coat issues on September 8th — _Scott Ian mentioned 'supposedly' Jersey Jack Pinball himself was going to respond on that date_
- [MEDIUM] Spooky Pinball and Chicago Gaming Company are handling clear coats better than other manufacturers — _Scott Ian's assessment based on quality observations_

### Notable Quotes

> "I fell asleep a lonely bum and I woke up a star."
> — **Scott Ian Haberman**, early in episode
> _Opening joke/character bit_

> "Apparently I'm smarter when I don't drink. That's what I learned."
> — **Scott Ian Haberman**, early in episode
> _Self-deprecating humor about podcast format_

> "Everything costs twice as much as you think it's going to cost... you get into actually digging that ditch and you get past the first layer and you find out, oh, it's not dirt, it's clay. Adjust."
> — **Gar Nelson**, during interview
> _Business wisdom about unexpected costs and adaptation_

> "My favorite games is Missile Command. And it is literally a game that everybody asks for and nobody plays."
> — **Gar Nelson**, later in interview
> _Observation about nostalgia vs. actual gameplay preference_

> "I have a shopping addiction. It's a problem. We're glad you have that problem."
> — **Gar Nelson / Drew and Scott Ian**, mid-interview
> _Humorous exchange about game acquisition_

> "I don't know what Mirco Playfields is using... based on what was going on with the play fields there is some sort of blending going on and clearly that ratio isn't being maintained"
> — **Scott Ian Haberman**, early episode
> _Technical clarification about clear coat issues and manufacturer processes_

> "Charlie has gone above and beyond trying to make sure that their play fields are the hardest... he does use a single component so the mixing isn't even a factor for charlie"
> — **Scott Ian Haberman**, early episode
> _Praise for Spooky Pinball's quality control approach_

> "A game like Pac-Man will always have a place... as long as people still have some nostalgia for that time in the 1980s when arcades were there"
> — **Gar Nelson**, late in interview
> _Response to criticism that arcades are a passing fad_

### Entities

| Name | Type | Context |
|------|------|---------|
| Gar Nelson | person | Owner and proprietor of the Garcade arcade in Menomonee Falls, Wisconsin; operator of 150+ arcade games and 30+ pinball machines |
| Scott Ian Haberman | person | Co-host of Poor Man's Pinball Podcast; clear coat scientist/expert; provides technical analysis of playfield defects |
| Drew Boisvert | person | Co-host of Poor Man's Pinball Podcast |
| Tim Byron | person | Co-owner of the Garcade alongside Gar Nelson and Mara Nelson |
| Mara Nelson | person | Co-owner of the Garcade (wife of Gar Nelson) |
| George Spanos | person | Helper at Garcade who performs arcade game board repairs and maintenance |
| Ted Kilpin | person | Helper at Garcade who performs deep arcade repairs; formerly worked for Data East |
| Orville Albert | person | Pinball podcast host (mentioned as 'Orby'); dedicated episode to wishing Scott Ian birthday; considering attending Pinball Expo |
| Zach Sharpe Meny | person | Host of This Week In Pinball podcast; recent interview subject on poor man's podcast; experienced controversy on Pinside forums |
| Charlie | person | Associated with Spooky Pinball; praised for high-quality clear coat application and single-component approach |
| Poor Man's Pinball Podcast | organization | Pinball podcast hosted by Scott Ian Haberman and Drew Boisvert; now sponsored by This Week In Pinball |
| This Week In Pinball | organization | Pinball news podcast/media outlet; recently became official sponsor of Poor Man's Pinball Podcast |
| Garcade | product | Arcade in Menomonee Falls, Wisconsin; opened July 2017; 7,000 sq ft facility with 150+ arcade games and 30+ pinball machines |
| Spooky Pinball | company | Pinball manufacturer; praised for quality clear coat application and control over playfield finishing |
| Chicago Gaming Company | company | Pinball manufacturer; noted as handling clear coats well |
| Jersey Jack Pinball | company | Pinball manufacturer; experiencing clear coat defect issues; owner reportedly scheduled to respond September 8th |
| Stern Pinball | company | Referenced as major pinball manufacturer; Garcade has purchased new Stern games (Iron Maiden, Metallica) |
| Pinball Expo | event | Major pinball industry event; Poor Man's Pinball hosts plan to attend and potentially record drunk episodes |

### Signals

- **[business_signal]** Arcade industry sustainability question: some observers skeptical that barcades/modern arcades are passing fad based on nostalgia (confidence: medium) — Gar Nelson acknowledged nighttime worry about arcade viability but countered with argument about gaming culture expansion and classic game permanence
- **[business_signal]** Garcade successfully operating as profitable arcade with 30+ pinball machines and 150+ arcade games generating revenue through $15 unlimited wristband model (confidence: high) — Gar Nelson operates thriving arcade business in Menomonee Falls with stated business growth and continued game acquisition
- **[sentiment_shift]** Pinside forums criticism of Zach Sharpe Meny's comments about clear coat issues; community divided between recognizing severity and maintaining perspective (confidence: medium) — Scott Ian discussed Pinside community backlash regarding Zach's distribution comments; explained that while issue is serious, it shouldn't overshadow other pinball enjoyment
- **[community_signal]** Strong positive engagement from pinball podcast community with dedicated birthday episode and plans for in-person meetups at industry events (confidence: high) — Orville Albert dedicated 15-18 minute episode to Scott Ian's birthday; hosts planning to meet at Pinball Expo; genuine community camaraderie expressed
- **[manufacturing_signal]** Major pinball manufacturers (Jersey Jack, Mirco Playfields) potentially using cost-cutting measures on clear coat application despite higher retail prices (confidence: medium) — Scott Ian speculated manufacturers avoiding expensive single-component clear coats due to margin pressure; suggested Jersey Jack and others bring clear coat application in-house for quality control
- **[market_signal]** Arcade operators actively purchasing new Stern pinball machines (Iron Maiden, Metallica, Jurassic Park) indicating continued retail demand for new pins at location venues (confidence: high) — Gar Nelson purchased multiple new Stern games recently; described as profitable business model supporting continued acquisition
- **[product_concern]** Clear coat defects (puddling, soft coating, hard coating inconsistencies) affecting recent pinball releases from Jersey Jack Pinball and others (confidence: high) — Scott Ian provided detailed technical breakdown distinguishing between blistering, soft coating, and hard coating issues; attributed to inconsistent mixing ratios or cheap products; Jersey Jack reportedly scheduling September 8 response
- **[technology_signal]** Multi-game kits (e.g., Donkey Kong multi-kit) allowing operators to run multiple game variations on single cabinet (confidence: high) — Gar Nelson discussed using Donkey Kong multi-kit to offer three game variations while maintaining original cabinet option

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## Transcript

 This is the Poor Man's Pinball Podcast, now sponsored by This Week in Pinball. Smooth and easy like Kavasi-A, it's the Poor Man's Pinball Podcast with Drew and Eve. Sometimes I will, then again I think I won't. Sometimes I will, then again I think I won't. Sometimes I do, then again I think I don't. Welcome to the Poor Man's Pinball Podcast, episode number 23. The only pinball podcast with a clear coat scientist behind the mic. It's Ian. Wait, what's happening? How are you doing today, buddy? I fell asleep a lonely bum and I woke up a star. We got Ian here today. I am Drew. We have a lot of stuff to cover today. Hey, man, we got a great episode for you. I'm so full of shit. Oh, I'm excited today. We are recording in the morning. Normally we do this at night. We're drinking. I am not drinking today. I am having coffee. What are you having today, Ian? Man, I finished my coffee. I am going dry. Oh, that's okay. That's okay. Apparently I'm smarter when I don't drink. That's what I learned. Ian heard that more times this week than he ever has in his whole entire life. Not since middle school, folks. Not since middle school. We have a lot of stuff to cover today, Ian. We have our first legit sponsor. Can you believe it? Who the hell's sponsoring this dumpster fire? Four Man's Pinball Podcast is brought to you by This Week in Pinball, pinball's largest and most entertaining source for pinball news, sponsoring the 10th largest and least entertaining podcast in pinball. Congratulations, Twit. Way to go. Like I always ask my wife, did you make the right choice? Yeah. No. No, I could have sponsored anybody. We're not even going to talk about the price and cost of our sponsorship, by the way. That's proprietary secrets right there. Yeah, no doubt. I think we have to pay him. But even with all that, we are very excited to have Jeff Patterson and Twip as the cornerstone sponsor of the podcast. We love you, Jeff. Thanks, guys. Absolutely. Thank you. And Kessler's, all I got to say to you. What the hell? You missed out. You better jump on this rocket soon, man, because we're not taking those calls. I'm sending him another email. Did you hear what you want to call it? Special and Lit. They were trying to get, was it Fanta? Yeah, Fanta Orange. I was like, all right, you guys, you're on our train now trying to get sponsorships because we just drink a lot. Yeah, but they at least got a response. That's the difference between our two podcasts. One, they get responses. But two, we're trying to get a real high-class whiskey in Kessler. Kessler's is like, what, five bucks a bottle? Yeah. And they're just trying to get orange soda. So that's a clear difference, right? Well, and knowing Ken. He probably had a really nice, well-written message where we say, Drew drinks a lot of Kessler. Please sponsor us. Did you see what we drink? Knowing those guys, they probably use it as a mixer for something. I love you guys. We're just giving you shit. Awesome, yeah. So I just want to really quickly explain to everyone how you pronounce our names. This isn't really a segment. This is just a little thing that's kind of bugged me because everyone in the podcast world and a lot of people have been talking about Ian, which I think is awesome. So let's just go through really quickly. It's Ian Haberman, H-A-B-E-R-M-A-N, and Drew Bovert, B-O-I-S-V-E-R-T, from the Poor Man's Pinball Podcast. Not Ian Haberman or Drew Boisvert or Boisvert from Loser Kid Podcast. I just wanted to let everyone know, once again, just real quickly, Ian Haberman, Drew Bovear, Poor Man's Pinball Podcast. It's funny, but you sound a little touchy. You know what? Honestly, it's because my whole life, no one has ever gotten my name right. One time, I called this customer service line for whatever it was, and she happened to speak fluent French. She got my name right. I was so excited. Right, right. And she's the only one in the history of my life that has ever gotten it. Yeah, my whole life, even with the first name Ian, it was over. Like, I am so numb to it. Yeah, no, it's all in good fun. And most people aren't doing it out of spite or anything. I just want to let people know, you know, this is how you do it. I think I named my daughter, my daughter's name is, I think I named it out of spite because her name's, you know, I pronounce it differently than my wife even pronounces it. Yeah, that was a big thing when she got it. Her name is Vera. I like it. It sounds better. Vera, even though the German background to that is Vera. So, yeah, my wife goes, oh, Vera, and all the grandparents, Vera, Vera, Vera. And I'm like, Vera. And that girl's going to have a complex just like I did. Yeah. Passing it on. Passing it on. Way to go. Way to be a great dad from the get-go. Love you, Vera. We do love you, Vera. Are you listening, Laura? We love you guys. Vera Haberman. Vera Haberman. So anyways, but all that to say, we were on the Twip podcast this week, this week in Pinball Podcast with host Zach Menny. He invited us on. He was pretty cool, man. Yeah. It was very nice to talk to him. Zach, I don't care what they say about you. You're an all right dude. Yeah. Did you read anything on the pin side as far as? I did. There was quite a few. You want to talk a little bit about that, Ian? Yes. Just touch on it. I'm going to just touch it. Just touch it a little bit. Just kind of dip about an inch in, and then that's it. I'm out. out yeah because we've been for the last week it's just been well go ahead well just pin side being pin side right they're just yeah just they find the negative and fucking everything so they were giving zach a hard time yes there there was a lot of hate about the zach china spun it where hey man it's pinball's pinball it's not the end of the world we're to survive and people are like oh if my distributor would have said that about my games oh that's awful and how dare he and it is a huge deal and you know fire and brimstone again and i'm like man it is a big deal for those sucks for those who haven't heard that i'm just going to reiterate those last couple of minutes of that conversation right uh you know we were just kind of talking we said yes it is an issue yes it needs to be addressed but at the end of the day there are more important things in pinball and and there still are a lot of people i know i know i just i just broke the internet in the world Yeah, the smallest section of the Internet. You know, we all kind of agreed that, yeah. Right next to puddle jumping and skipping stones, right? Oh, don't say puddles when we're talking about puddling clear coat. That's a no-no. You know, games are fun. They're meant to be played. There are going to be some, you know, small imperfections. You know, this is a pretty big defect, and we're, you know, saying as much, but they're still games. Let's play them. Let's have some fun playing pinball. Buy some used pinball. There's a lot of good used pinball out there. you know inspect the game you know another good uh couple words of advice people were spouting out there was uh you know buy a show game buy a game from the showroom floor you can look at it before you buy it you know so call your distributor and get that taken care of don't piss on zach nah you know what though i mean people that already have it are shit out of luck right we we established that on the podcast shit out of luck and i am so sorry to hear that and that blows ironically enough i played a wonka a couple days ago and i did have a little bit of that around the star post and i was like oh this is bad oh yeah yeah so son of a bitch it didn't ruin my enjoyment i mean it's not my game so all right speaking of clear coats i just wanted to kind of reiterate some things there's some things that are getting a little murky out there um when the other podcasts are kind of reporting on this i feel like they're kind of misquoting me a little bit i gave a one-to-one ratio as a very easy way to explain it i do not know what mirko is using i have no idea oh well it's been reported that mirko is using a two-part epoxy and they're not mixing it correctly no i didn't say mirko's using i have no idea what mirko's using it if i was going to guess just based on what was going on with the playfields there is some sort of blending going on and clearly that ratio isn't being maintained and very consistent at all it could be also just a cheap product man where the blending was fucked up from day one so yeah i'm sorry guys but yeah that's that's just i wanted to clear that up right there i have no idea what they're using no clue um yeah you're just giving your knowledge on clear coats in general yep and what the basically what's going on with these playfields we have three everyone's kind of reporting all three of them being kind of related but i'm trying to explain that blistering a soft coating and a hard coating are three very different things based on the ratio of the mix based on what's going on with the mix yes so that is why and then then there's some playfields that are pristine so that's why that inconsistency goes all the way back to the clear coat so inconsistent people inconsistencies that's that's why um you know i was talking with charlie i'm not going to give out any anything we talked specific but i'm just going to say in general uh charlie has gone above and beyond trying to make sure that their playfields are the hardest uh it's something he took very seriously and uh he tests the hell out of these clears so i will say this though he does use a single component so the mixing isn't even a factor for charlie so god bless you charlie thank you for stepping it up i bet he pays a fortune for it but you know what if it's gonna work and it's gonna last good for you charlie good on you yep so for spooky pinball and it seems like chicago gaming company they're uh they're doing the right things with their clear coats yeah i mean my main suggestion for stern and jjp specifically jjp because it seems like this is a bigger issue um take control of what you're putting on your playfields you know how much does it cost to set up a spray booth it's not much to be honest and then test the clear coats out and you find one that works for you. You're already putting how much money into mechs. You're testing mechs, right? You're putting mechs through the ringer to make sure they're going to work well for location and home use play. Why aren't they doing it for their clear coats? Let me ask you a question. Sure. If JJP decided to bring this in-house and maybe they order their own playfields, they get them printed and brought in, whatever. How much training do you need to be an expert to actually apply that clear coat would you say oh it's tricky but once you get it down it's like that's all you do but i'm saying you'd hire someone maybe who's been doing like automotive paint stuff like that yeah yeah you could do that factory finish work lacquer finish work okay uh cabinet shops i mean it obviously is like a specialty sort of thing but but you could feasibly hire someone and it wouldn't break the bank to have them do that in-house right right like that's their job they just the main cost isn't the actual product it's the labor so paying somebody to do that is a lot more expensive than just purchasing but there is very expensive products that maybe these companies aren't willing to spend right they don't want to push they don't want to push that margin even more so but there are clear coats out there that are single component that are pretty idiot proof but you're paying for them is that and are those better than mixing or is that just kind of it depends on how much you want to pay okay yeah so you get what you pay for yeah it's one of those things yeah if if like i said if your margins are razor thin and i'm talking about miracle if they're razor thin yeah you're not going to be able to afford you know so it sounds like clear coats automotive clear finishes for two thousand dollars you're not going to put that much it just seems like that's what we're coming back to those the cost in a lot of these cases cost man yeah yeah spend more save jjp a little money and saves miracle a little money and they can both make more money and their profits are bigger but then you have issues like this shit and then boom you're sol again people are sol sure sure you're wondering why you have to send a bunch of washers out oh man whatever dude it's crazy well supposedly uh jersey jack himself is going to respond on september 8th it sounds like that was the date yeah it's the big day there's a big day he's he's going to have a big press conference and point zero zero zero zero zero two percent of the world will be watching is that the like the scene in willy wonka when he comes out like in the very beginning they had a band playing yes and he limps out and then he does a little somersault and that's exactly it and there's gonna be like six people there like with with a microphone it'll be it'll be me you ken i'm not going i just think sorry jack i just think it'd be funny if there was like three people out there like the whole world's waiting to hear yeah what does jersey jack have to say jack go for it uh now am I hear for now we're gonna get hate mail oh you guys are making light of this clear coat issue again dude I'm sorry so guess what it does suck it you know it does suck and like I said I played that I feel the other day I had it it's it's awful I've changed my tune I you know spending that much money to have that kind of defect but um but once again I'm gonna reiterate what I said on the podcast you know I'm I still like pinball man and you should still like pinball and Charlie thank you for my alice cooper it's pristine there's no puddling there's no uh thanks charlie yeah yeah there's no chipping no puddling my alice cooper is flawless yeah it's a beautiful game beautiful game thanks charlie and company again now i'm just rubbing it in everyone else's faith four-man style um what else we got today drew we got uh orbital albert orby our buddy yes he dedicated an entire episode to wishing ian a happy birthday seriously oh you didn't see that No, not yet. Oh, you're going to love this. Guess what we're listening to on the car ride to the arcade. Yep. So a couple days ago, he released an episode, and it was titled, Happy F-ing Bunch of Expletives, Birthday Ian. And it was like he was traveling with his wife, and it was like a 15, 18-minute episode. And it's really good. So Albert, we love you, man. This guy is so genuine. I don't know him, and I can't wait to meet this guy in person. It's happening. Hugs are going to be thrown around. I'll tell you about that in a second. It is. So he sang happy birthday to Ian. He had his wife wish him a happy birthday. This whole thing, she was like, I don't want to be on here. You're going to love that. Just like every other pinball wife. She was as nice as she could be. But, you know, behind the scenes, she's like, what the F are you making me do here? anyways um it was great and then he was talking about the um blushing over here the poor man and how he wanted to meet us and then he was like doing the math and how many hours it would take to drive here and uh anyways at the end of the uh towards the end of the episode when he was doing the math he was talking about expo and he might he's trying to make it to expo so i sent him a message today i said i said albert i love your podcast you know your content's been great we've been listening and uh you know we're gonna be at expo so if he's there it's gonna be a good time oh yeah absolutely so i'm i'm excited about that expo is gonna be a lot of fun yeah we're gonna finally uh we're gonna finally teach these guys how to drink and party and there's some pinball in there i'm sure yeah maybe we're gonna bring our uh our recording gear and uh we might record some some real drunken episodes at expo that'd be kind of fun it would be fun yeah hey do you know who we are no no okay next person till we find the one person that might know who we are thanks jeff teolis i appreciate that mr and mrs pen hey you know who we are no idea no all right we'll go to the next person so anyways uh albert thanks again for always being you uh so excited about pinball all the time i love it and uh he's just just an all-around good dude he's so excited all the time i love it absolutely and he uh so a little bit of a bromance there uh we uh we love you we love you orby all right so drew what do we have in store for the listeners today we got something special for him we recently visited gar nelson from the garcade in menomonee falls wisconsin here for you guys who don't know uh he opened up an arcade a couple years ago and now he's at 30 plus pins 50 plus arcade games um he's talked about possibly opening a second location um he does tournaments uh it just this great arcade experience and he pinball kind of taken over there now because he started with almost all arcades and like it was like four or five times there wasn many pins it wasn at all but he soon realized that it's been growing and now he's been buying new sterns i mean yeah he got iron maiden right after it came out um he recently put a metallica in there monster bash monster bash most recently he just bought a jurassic park excellent excellent so we're gonna play that interview yes and we're going to learn a little bit about the arcade business because you know what? Who doesn't want to turn their hobby into a career? This is a man who did it, right? He's living the dream. When people say that, he is really living the dream. I know. Here we are just spending more money on podcasting. Yes. He's like, well, I bought another pin, and now I'm making more money because of it. We're like, how does that work? Buy another microphone? Wait, what are we doing? All right. Well, without further ado, here is the Gar Nelson Garkade interview. Enjoy. Well, here we are at the Garkade, as promised. Yay! We're at the Garkade. To the listening audience, we are here with Mr. Gar Nelson, the owner and proprietor of the Garkade in Menomonee Falls, Wisconsin. Welcome, Gar. Thanks, guys. Thanks a lot for having me. Oh, well, thank you. Thank you very much. So kind of explain who you are and what is the GARcade? Well, I'm Gar Nelson. I'm one of the owners of the GARcade. Myself, along with my business partners, Tim Byron and my wife, Mara Nelson. We started the arcade here back in July of 2017. We're in a facility that's approximately 7,000 square feet in the arcade proper. we have 150 arcade games another 30 pinball machines we do a $15 unlimited all you can play wristband allows for come and go access for the entire day and we absolutely love what we do like we just have a great time hanging out at the arcade and meeting new people playing games We play a lot of games. Gar is living my childhood fantasy right now. Gar is living his own childhood fantasy. Oh, man. Gar, it's so awesome. It's so good to be here. We've come up here several times. We've known Gar a while now. We've bought games from him. We've sold games to him. Yeah. So Gar has kind of been a little part of the poor man's pinball family for a little while now. So what do you like best about doing this, Gar? You know, this started as a hobby for me. I started out like a lot of guys, collecting games. I had a small arcade in my basement. I had about 25 games down there at one point and another 20 out in my two-and-a-half-car garage. Wait, that's a small arcade in your basement? Yeah, well, it was only about 600 square feet, so it was definitely packed. It was very tight, tough to move around in if there were a bunch of people. But we really had fun with it. It was really cool. And at one point, we just kind of outgrew the house and had a lot of people asking if they could come and check out the arcade. I'd be like, I don't know you. It's my house. But we wanted to be able to have those people out and meet new people. So we decided one day to open a business. I had wanted to do it for years. My business partner has been a really close friend of mine for years. Our families have gone on vacations together. We bowl together. We do leagues. We bowl state. We bowl nationals. nationals. And so with our friendship, we were both kind of always looking for a business opportunity. And there wasn't an arcade of this type here in Milwaukee. I felt like we had a really good audience here. A lot of people motivated to be able to play games. And so I went to Tim one day and I said, hey, you know, you want to do this? You want to open an arcade? And he's like, are you serious? I'm like, yes, I'm serious. He's like, can we make it work yes we can make it work all right i'm in like and that's all it was it was really easy at that point and um i had been doing research for about three years on the feasibility i had written up a business plan thinking i could get a loan and figured out that doesn't actually happen that way um no no banks want solid concrete yeah they're they're not really on the arcade trained yet. So we wound up, you know, but we laid it all out. We knew what we wanted to do. And then, you know, we got to the point where we found the location. We wanted to open the place. And then we took that business plan, threw it out the window and figured out whatever each small business owner learns. Everything costs twice as much as you think it's going to cost. No, actually, the costs were right where we figured they would be. The reality was you take everything that you learn and you know and you research and then you get into actually digging that ditch and you get past the first layer and you find out, oh, it's not dirt, it's Joshua Clay. Adjust. And so it becomes all these adjustments along the way and you just kind of figure out how to make it work. So what are some of your biggest challenges starting this bad boy up? Really, you know, the maintenance of the games, Just being able to do the larger, deeper repairs where you have to get in, not just necessarily always swapping a board out, but figuring out how to repair a broken board. And eventually learning, is it worth repairing the board or buying a modern replacement in order to be able to keep that game running longer and more reliably. So there's a lot of that. Who's doing most of those board repairs for you then? I have a couple of friends that help. I've got my buddy George Spanos. He's actually sleeping in the office right now. He was doing night shift last night. He just worked until he couldn't stand up any longer. So he's taking a siesta. I also have a friend of mine, Ted Kilpin. He comes out. He helps me out with some of my deeper stuff. These guys are experienced in arcade stuff. Ted, for example, worked for Data East back in the day. Oh, wow. So, yeah, he's got a lot of experience. and he can actually go through and do a lot of those deeper repairs. And like anybody else, there are times I just send my boards out to various specialists that know hardware really well because at that point it becomes more cost-effective to go to a specialist. Awesome. So we were trying to think on the way here. We were talking about how large this place is. Are you the largest arcade in Wisconsin right now? It depends on how you decide to slice that cake. Yeah. You know, we may not necessarily have the largest square footage, but I believe at this point we have more games in a single location than anybody else. That is awesome. I know Geeksmania is pretty close. They're at about 130 games or so. But we just went crazy. I have a shopping habit. It's a problem. We're glad you have that problem. He's trying to get help for it, but we're telling him, no, you're fine, you're perfect. It's tough to find a support group. Yeah. Did we talk about the number of games you had yet? We've got basically about 150 arcade games on the floor, 30 pinball machines. We also have our jukebox, which is on free play. We've got a couple of air hockey tables, a foosball table. So we try to find something for everybody and have a nice mix of things to do here. You hear that, guys? You get free music with admission to the Garkade. There you go. That's awesome. And the jukebox is really good. Like, it's very classics-oriented. It's a lot of classic rock. We remember it's very dated to the nostalgia that we're trying to put together here. Talk to our audience a little bit about the demographics and the people that are coming in and out of here every day. Man, it's crazy. You know, we have people of all ages, literally from, you know, three years old, running around, loving the games, having fun, teenagers, young adults, the middle-aged adults like us. And then we actually have older adults that come in. We have people that are easily into their 70s and 80s that come in and want to play pinball. And they'll go on the EM machines. They'll go on the solid state machines. They'll play what's comfortable to them. and they'll let the grandkids run around and play and find what they really like. Super cool. So we get a very wide-range demographic. We have a lot of kids during the day, a lot of families during the day, and then about dinner time, that demographic starts to shift over more towards adult date night. All the kids go home for dinner and start getting ready for school. The adults come in, and it becomes a very adult-centric audience. What do you say to all the, you know, there's some critics out there that say these barcades and arcades, they're kind of like a passing fad, and it's just nostalgia, and it's not a here to stay. You know, I'll be honest, but there's a part of me that worries about that when I go to bed at night, and it's definitely a possibility. But during my lifetime, what I've seen happen with gaming culture is it has been nurtured from the 1980s until now. Now it's a multi-billion dollar industry. We're offering basically a hands-on museum here where people can go and play games from the 1980s, from the very young time when you could only go to arcades to get a game with halfway decent graphics. The home consoles were not at that point yet. And so that was the tip-top experience at that time. And regardless of where we move on to in the future, you know, games like Halo may not necessarily be prevalent 10 years from now. But a game like Pac-Man will always have a place. And as long as people still have some nostalgia for, you know, that time in the 1980s when arcades were there or an appreciation for gaming, I think we'll always have an audience to be able to cater to. So you mentioned that all ages kind of come to visit the Garkade. What are you finding are some of your more popular games? You know, really, it is the hardcore classics. It is the games that everybody knows and everybody's played. Games like Pac-Man, Donkey Kong, Frogger, Galaga. You know, those are games that are, I have a lot of adults that ask me, you know, are kids really going to get into this? Like, you know, graphics just aren't the same. And I look at them and I'm like, you know what, everything that's on my floor is pretty much the exact same thing as what kids are playing on their phones nowadays. It's a game that's really easy to pick up and extremely hard to master. and so the approachability of games like pac-man and donkey kong they they reach out to everybody and everybody can give them a try and kind of at least get through the first board and feel like they can do something and then where they go from there is up to them but those are definitely you know i've got even here at my own arcade two miss pac-man's on the floor two galagas I've got three Donkey Kongs and it's because those games people want to sit and play and try and master and so I've got to be able to have them available for other people even though we wanted to have so many unique titles there are some games we really do have to have multiples that's interesting to have the duplicates on the floor you have all these games here and the modern solutions nowadays have made that a lot easier for me because now I can have two Donkey Kongs on the floor, but instead of having both of them being dedicated to Donkey Kong, I can run a Donkey Kong multi-kit in one. So I've got Donkey Kong, Donkey Kong Deranged, and Donkey Kong Remix, where you can choose which one of those three you want to play, or you can play original two-board Donkey Kong on an original cabinet, original controls, everything all the way, like ready to go for world record attempts. Awesome. So, go ahead. No, do you have a favorite? Because I always remember this topic comes up and it always cracks me up. But do you have a favorite game of your childhood that you think is just great, that you have out on the floor, and all of a sudden nobody's playing it, and you're in the corner, and you're just like, why doesn't anyone like my game? I go through that a lot. One of my favorite games is Missile Command. And it is literally a game that everybody asks for and nobody plays. They just want to see it. They just want to make sure that it's here to feel better. They're like, oh, yes, no, it's legit. That's it. Honest to God, I see that a lot. At one point I had gotten rid of my Space Invaders at home because nobody played it in my home arcade. You play it once and you go, hey, Space Invaders, and you walk away and play something else. It's not something that a lot of people are going to sit down and play for an extended period of time where I had my Area 51 in the basement and it was click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, for an entire party straight. Because everyone wanted to be able to play it all the way through and they could and it was unlimited continues. It was a game that was engaging and it kept them active. And those people are cheaters, by the way. We actually don't take high score on a lot of those games. If you do, you have to have it certified as a one credit game. Oh, good for you. Way to keep the integrity. Yeah, there are games that we do force people to say, you have to go up, you have to say, this is my run, you get one credit, that's it. And for the people who maybe don't know, explain your high scores here and how that works, and you have it on your website. We do. We have it on our website for most of the games, the pinball machines we're still working on right now. We do have a high score displayed on a card above every single machine that's eligible for one. And there's some really good scores here. It is incredible. We've got a couple of guys that are just amazing in this area. Yeah, I see some of the scores, and I think there's extra zeros added on. Yeah, I thought I was good at time pilot. Turns out, not so much. Apparently, everyone can beat that game and cycle through it a couple times. It's incredible. I thought I was special. We've got guys that can kill screen Pac-Man on a whim. We've got guys that can kill screen Donkey Kong. We've got one of the contesting world record holders for track and field that comes in on a regular basis. Oh, man. I mean, some of these guys, their skill levels are just amazing. It's so much fun to watch them do what they do so well. Yeah, that does sound cool. Do you hold any high scores here, Gar? Currently, I'm the grand champion on Jurassic Park, the pinball machine. Oh, right. How long have you had that machine? That's been on the floor for all of a week and a half. I'm the same way. When I see a new pinball machine go somewhere, I go there. Opportunity. Grand champion. Absolutely. The next day, it's long gone. Absolutely. I was actually crushed up until recently. I had the grand champion score on Monster Bash. I had held that for about seven months, and somebody just beat it, and they destroyed it. It went from $200 million up to $350 million. It was like, okay, that's going to be really tough. But we've got a couple of guys. We've got one guy that comes in, Brooke. He's unbelievable. He probably has 80% of the high scores here at the arcade. Does Mr. NHL come in here? Yes, he does. Sheldon's a regular. He's a really good guy. I chase him around town. He's a really good player in our area, and he has high scores everywhere. And I had the grand champion at Wonka at one of our local pubs for a while, and he obliterated it. Certainly happy. His skill level is amazing. He understands the games. He's really good at executing. He's a lot of fun to watch. He's actually a really nice guy. He's more than happy to sit down with you and tell you how to score points in it, how to accumulate those kinds of points, what shots to go for. He's really good with bestowing that knowledge upon others. Awesome. It's a lot of fun to hang out with him. So speaking of pinball, So I know Drew and I were here from like day one. So we seen the progression of the pinball The pinball when you first opened now Drew and I were also trying to figure out how many pinballs you started with We wanted to say four Yeah we opened with four pinball machines So we went from four to thirty pinball machines. So why the growth? Pinball's really popular. You know, the thing is, is with pinball, number one, they're not out at a whole lot of locations anymore, especially like David Buster's and Chuck E. Cheese and all those real corporate places. They've kind of gotten away from pinball and moved more towards the ticket games and the redemption stuff. So kids are growing up without the experience of pinball. And A, it's a culture that we really like, we really embrace. I have a lot of friends that are really into pinball, like you guys. And so we wanted to continue trying to do more with pinball. So, you know, we added a few more machines. And there were days where literally every machine was played all day long, nonstop. And so we kept adding, we kept adding. We got to about 10. We were like, hey, we've got enough machines where we can start doing tournaments. Let's, you know, keep trying to, you know, nurture this culture in this area. And so we started doing tournaments about a year and a half ago. They've done really well. The attendance has been great. And so now we're starting to look into other options for tournaments. Now we're going to be doing a pin golf. We're going to be doing pinball leagues. And because now we have 30 machines to choose from, it's not always going to be the same experience, which is great because there's still that variety. Playing the same pinball machine nonstop over and over, That's the only machine you have. It gets tiring after a while, but having the variety there to be able to host some of these larger events, we have an opportunity there, so we want to take advantage of that, and we want to, like I said, help nurture that community. So for our tournament listeners, are you doing FPA? Everything here is IFPA-sanctioned. We purposely design our tournaments to make sure that we're getting 100% points payout from IFPA. we're also involved in Stern Army so we have Stern Army giveaway items we're doing the release parties we're doing a release party for Jurassic Park on September 21st that's included with the arcade admission all of our tournaments that we have other than the special pinball event it's just the admission to get in and that includes your entry into the tournament, registers you to win prizes, points it's a really good time for our pinball tournaments, we offer free pizzas from Topper's Pizza. So it's great. It's a really fun experience. It's an all-day event. It's very affordable at $15. Yeah, for a tournament, all you can play and food, that's a deal. How do you make money here, Gar? It's from getting those guys to come back often. Do you find now with all these increased pinball machines that you're getting just pinheads coming in here now? We do. We get a lot of guys that are really dedicated. We've got people that were recently out at Pinsburg doing that, that travel long distances, guys that regularly go up to Titletown up in Green Bay to peer. And it's amazing. The community around pinball is great. And that's part of the reason we started doing kids' tournaments. We actually were having kids that were in the adult tournaments. They really don't care about the IFPA sanction points. All they really care about is winning a trophy. And we wound up after month after month after month of tears and broken hearts because these kids are trying to go up against adults that have a significantly better skill level. And so we wanted to give them an opportunity to be able to, A, win the trophy, and, B, really nurture their love for pinball so that they have something that will, you know, translate into something they can do when they're an adult and be able to transfer from the kids to the adult arenas and go for points if they decide to. Darren Nelson cares about the kids. I love it. That's awesome. I do. Well, you know, I mean, I'm not, I am a businessman. You know, for me, I look at it kind of like the cigarette company looks at it, get them while they're young. We might edit that out. I hope for life. Love it. But if you're going to wind up hooking somebody into something, Pinball's a great thing to do. It's competitive. It's such a great thing. The community's really good. People know each other, and they support each other. When you're having a bad day, no one's going to throw a game, but they're going to try to help you to elevate to the next level. Yeah, we're making jokes, but no, that is cool. You're right, enough kids aren't exposed to pinball. That's the big thing for us is having the kids and giving them a place where they can experience these things. It's phenomenal. to be able to do it affordably at $15, and they can try things, and it's not going to cost them a quarter every time. And if they don't like it, they can move on to something else. And they can find what they like here. That is the best part of your business model. I agree. Yeah, I don't like it. I'll move on to the next one. I play all day. I've got choices. Yep. Yeah, you can get frustrated with something and be like, I'm going to go over here and play this for a while. Yeah. Yeah, Asghar was saying that I was just watching this kid play Metallica and he was flipping the hell out of those buttons and at the end of it he just flipped the machine off so it was perfect. Asghar's talking about the kids. It was really awesome. The new streams actually have an auto-punch function so we set it that way so in two minutes you'll see the game will play itself off. Oh, cool. That's awesome. Yeah, it's really nice. Good job. That probably happens a lot. People just get frustrated, they give up and they just walk away. Yeah. Yeah, you know, it's nice that they're catering to that free play environment. Chicago Gaming has the same thing in their code, so we utilize that. And those are two companies that we're starting to buy a lot of machines from. The quality, the reliability of the machines, especially in my environment, they just get beat. Let's talk just for two minutes about Clear Coat Gate. Oh, my goodness. Have you had any Clear Coat issues? I do. I've got a bunch of them. Okay, because he has several newer sterns here. I do. I made Metallica, Jurassic Park. My brand-new stern has, my Metallica has chips around the mystery hole where, like, whole chunks have come out. Really? On the Metallica? Because that hasn't been on those. That's brand-new. We bought that at MGC this year, so that's April. Okay. That one's got some issues. There's some problems with some waviness on Black Knight where the ball kind of hang up a little bit in the R-drop lane. which is a known issue. There was one at MGC that the ball would literally stop every time it hit that hole. And that was from the clear coat. And it was from the clear coat. So, I mean, you know, it's tough. They're mass producing, and literally they're doing it cheaper than anybody else. And so you're getting a lot of variety. They're coming out with machines every couple of months. You're not having to wait a year for a new title to come out. The clear coat's iffy. at times, but from what I've experienced, they stay behind their product. So as an operator, you haven't had issues that they won't take care of? No, actually, from what I understand from other people that have jobs similar to mine, Stern is really, really good. It's the sort of thing where if I've got an issue with my clear coat on Metallica, I could probably call up Stern right now, show them pictures, and they would probably send out a new playfield. So that's the kind of customer service they really do have. And with them being down in Illinois, it's great because a lot of the turnaround times are a little bit quicker. Same thing with Chicago Gaming. They're just south of us. But I have yet to have an issue with my... Actually, I just had a flipper assembly. One of the screws backed out on my Monster Bash. That's been on the floor for nine months now. So as far as routing games, Chicago Gaming Company has been really selling. I cannot believe how well-built that machine is. And I've heard horror stories. I've seen Drew play mine, and one Drew equals about ten kids. Yeah, I heard horror stories about Medieval Madness, and we stayed away from that title. But they changed a lot of things going into that transition from their first game into their second. So Attack from Mars is really, really good. is built off of the same electronics and everything that Monster Bash has done off of. Attack from Mars is one that we're actually looking to purchase new within the next couple of months to be able to add to the collection. Awesome. Because we really do believe in Chicago Gaming and what they're doing. Proof is in the pudding. I can't believe how good it is. That's a huge endorsement because these games get played. I can't say it enough. Like, they are, right now, I would put their build quality up against Jersey Jack. Wow. Like, it is that good. I'm really excited. Poor man's pinball exclusive. Yeah, I'm excited. I believe the rumor mill is they're going to wind up doing, what is it? They're doing Cactus Canyon. Cactus Canyon. Cactus Canyon. Yeehaw! I'll be curious to see how that one comes out, how it's going to look, If they're going to be able to do anything with the code, that's the big question with that game. Rumor has it they brought back the original coder. He's going to finish his code. And, you know, if they're able to do that, that's phenomenal. I know at one point there were some rumors about Monster Bash having an alternate set of code that was going to be able to be developed and that kind of got squashed in production, potentially due to copyright, intellectual property rights. So if they can actually get that to work, like I'm going to be an early adopter on that. But that's, you know, again, you get the color DMD. I really believe in getting the standard edition. It's so cool, the bigger DMD, the color. Oh, the SE, the one with the, yeah. Yeah, it's worth the extra money on that one. Like I said, with the build quality, I'm sold. And surprisingly enough, they're using a lot of stern parts. Sure, sure. So, you know, again, that goes back to how good, you know, a lot of stern stuff is. Absolutely. I mean, you know, my games and my environment, they give me, it is unbelievable. Like, you know, for me to log in a thousand plays or more in a month is not unusual. Oh, okay. That was going to be my next question. So, like, Iron Maiden's been here for a year now, maybe? Yeah, over a year. And it's held up pretty well? It's held up pretty well. We've had to go through and, you know, like I said, we've got to rebuild some of the flipper assemblies to tighten things back up again. Yeah, but that's basic maintenance on any machine, really. Yeah. Yeah, well, we're at the point where that maintenance needs to be done. Yeah. You know, and I mean, to say, you know, if you're looking at 10,000 to 12,000 plays on the machine before you literally have to go through and rebuild, you know, the flipper assemblies in it, it's not that bad. Because the recommendation is like 5,000 plays or something, right? Yeah, so I mean, you know, we've gotten a lot of play out of it. You know, in my environment, you saw with the kids, they just did that. They machine gun the flippers a lot. So does my wife. Yeah, my wife's the same way. You see that in a free play environment, but that goes back to these kids not being exposed to pinball previously. So they come here and they've got to learn how to play. Yep. And a lot of times those kids, when they start out, they're machine gunning the flippers, and by the time they leave, they're actually starting to put shots together and figure out. Have you thought about having any pinball tutorials, some classes? That's part of what we do with the juniors tournament. When the kids come out, we have my tournament coordinator, Joe. Her and myself will kind of guide the kids, show them how to do it, give them some ideas on how to play. And then we have kids that are more experienced in doing the tournaments. My daughter does all the tournaments, so she acts kind of as our ambassador and shows the kids. and she loves being able to kind of teach a lot of the younger kids how to play and what to do and show them etiquette and things like that. So it's really neat because they're learning from another kid at that point. Cool. That's very cool. Well, I see you do have a lot of nice new Sterns. One of the newest, Jurassic Park, that was just recently released from Stern. How's the reception been on that? How do you feel about the game? And why don't you give us a little GAR review real quick. Well, the gameplay itself is really good. The code is very young. There's been a lot of things that have been kind of polished and some bug fixes in the new .87 code. So even in the last two weeks since we've had the game, the game's already gotten better. The gameplay itself, the shots are really tight. It is very reminiscent of Iron Maiden. so you can see that influence carrying over into Elwood's second machine. The shots, like I said, are very, very tight, so you are going to have some brick shots where they're just not going to do anything. As a home-use game, it's going to be phenomenal. There's going to be a lot of gameplay. You're going to be able to play the game for years and years and never finish it. on location I can see it kind of causing some issues just because with the shots being so tight and some of the types of shots that they're using the flippers are going to have to stay really strong they're going to have to be adjusted in the right position at all times to be able to give people an opportunity to be able to get the entire gameplay experience out of it So it's definitely going to be a challenge to keep maintained properly, but when maintained properly I think it's going to be a great game. Awesome, excellent. And how's the reception been? It's been one of your, I guess since the honeymoon phase isn't over yet, I'm sure it's getting played quite a bit. No, it's been really good. We've had people that have come out just to play that machine. There are very few machines that we get on site that translate into direct dollars. Usually we're just adding to a large number, and so it's just more value, more value, more value. Well, you were one of the first adopters of the game. I actually have a screenshot on my phone of a pinball map for the entire region, like Chicago, Madison, Green Bay, us, and we're the only pin point that has one. Oh, that's awesome. So we were literally, my distributor got it in early. He got it in on like a Tuesday night, and we picked it up Wednesday morning. Had it on the floor for open Wednesday that day. So it literally was a very quick whirlwind thing to bring in. We played it for the first time that morning. My wife and my daughter absolutely fell in love with it. They thought the gameplay was great. It was very approachable by people of all ages, which is good in our environment. I personally was still leaning towards Attack from Mars. We knew we wanted to add another pinball machine. We weren't sure which way to go. You have more space, Gar. Don't worry. It will happen. I'll make room. I'll figure out ways. Trust me. That goes to my next question, though. Favorite game right now on the floor, then, pinball-wise? Pinball-wise? Yeah. I'm still just stuck on Metallica. That's my favorite. The luster has not wore off on that game. The gameplay is really that good. Such a good game. I've been playing a lot of Stellar Wars that we were talking about. It was available at an estate sale locally. I've sat out there for a really long time. I was surprised it lasted as long as it did. And I decided to just kind of go out there and take a look. And the machine's in phenomenal condition. But it's a wide body, and I took one look at it, and I was like, oh, my God, it's going to be a dud. Like, this is not good. and then I sat and I played a game and I was like, for a solid-state wide-body, this is a lot of fun and it been a surprise on our floor The kids have been having fun with it the adults have it been reviewed really well It amazing that a game that that old and that primitive is still getting some recognition by the masses. It's not just a number to add to our overall number. It's getting gameplay. It's great. I see it's in a prime location too. It's like one of the first pinball machines you see. It's beautiful. It's gorgeous. It leads into, because we've got couple of older machines kind of off to the sides as you approach the new sterns. And so you kind of see that progression of you know what pins were and how they come along and then you see like all of the brand new machines and it's beautiful. It is really nice. We go through, we do upgrade stars, we do some modding. So like all of our new sterns we've got shaker motors in all of them. We've got light up on them just to kind of help draw the eye polish them off a little bit our black knight has a custom 3d printed black night in the back corner yeah we do some fun modifications to our machines having the 3d printer is nice it gives us a few more options we do buy some of like the mental mods and things like that still toss them in. Sure, very cool. So in the beginning of the interview, you spoke about your business model being kind of like a day pass versus tokens. Was there a reason why you decided to go against the tokens and went with the pass? You know, originally when we first opened, we thought that if we went the free play model that it would get us around taxes, and it actually didn't work out that way for us. The city ordinance for the village that we're in is written really smart. It says nothing about quarter drop. It just says amusement device. So, like, literally, if it's standing there and it makes you happy, apparently I have to pay a tax on it. Yeah, that's about right. That sounds like our government. You know, we thought that was going to be the way, but as we got to our open date, it just became one of those it's a value thing. you know we look at other places like Dave and Buster's we mentioned them and the redemption and we actually have a place that's like three blocks down that is solely redemption games and they compete against us for business and we hear from our customers all the time like it's really nice to know what my day is going to cost me sure you know with 180 games on the floor the the ability to come and go for the entire day. You can really get a lot of value, and that's great for families. We do cater to the family business. We have party rooms. We do corporate events. So, I mean, we do stuff all the way around in the spectrum. And so by people knowing what their day is going to cost them, they can utilize their time better and take some of the money that maybe they're saving and go out for a nice lunch at one of my neighbors. and my neighbor loves me because I send business to them all the time. I've got several really good eateries within walking distance. So instead of trying to compete against them, we lean on them and we send our customers to them. And then it allows us to be able to figure out what our monthly costs are, how much we're bringing in per person is a hard number. And so we know where our profit margins are a little better. versus a business that's going to fluctuate with how much money somebody's willing to spend. That's an interesting point, yeah. And then, you know, like we don't do anything redemption here, nothing. We have a couple of games that are on quarter play. You can win prizes directly. They're skill-based. There's none of this ticket stuff. We stay away from ticket games. No kids casino here, folks. And that's literally how we look at it, too. We call them kiddie casinos. you know we break it down to parents that you are literally going you're exchanging money for a card you're swiping your card you have no idea how much each game is per credit because there's no direct relation from money to cost so you don't know what your spending is going to be or how fast you're going to go through that money usually you wind up getting a nominal reward back it spits out a couple of tickets, you save up your tickets, you take them to the cashier, you cash out, and you go home poorer than you started because the house always wins. My wife should listen to this. My wife killed my power card. Killed it. She didn't get shit. Junk. It's garbage. It is unbelievable. You can spend $50 really fast. When you figure out your true cost of what I started with and what I ended with, like I said, it's always a losing proposition. And we didn't want to run a business like that. We want people to love what we do. We don't want people to have a knock against what we do. Sure, you want them to leave happy instead of feeling broke and regretful. And honestly, there are people that come in here and the place is really not for them. And we understand that. We get that. But at $15, it's no worse than going to a movie and finding out it's a total dud. Absolutely. You don't feel really any worse. Like, well, it was only $15. It wasn't like I spent $50 on an experience that didn't pan out. No, that's true. So it becomes a very easy risk for people to take to give us a try and see what we're about and how we do our business. So the future of the guard cave. what are some of the plans here? Because you are a little tight on space. You keep buying. So what's kind of the plan? What do you see? We have bought a lot of games, like I said, to try to add value. And so there still are some games on my floor that don't get as much play as I would like. Those games are slowly being upgraded into games that are going to get more play, that are going to wind up getting more recognition. there are things still out there that we haven't gotten to that we would like to be able to bring in, like Dragon's Lair and Burger Time. We've got them on emulators and things like that, but we want to bring a real one in. And so we have games that we know we can pull off the floor to backfill with something better. So the immediate future is going to be to take what we have and just keep making it like being able to walk around and not be able to point out a bad game. So that's the immediate future. We are looking a little bit more long-term. One of the things that myself and my business partners have been talking about is what the next big step is. For us, obviously, it's going to be more space. But the question is how do we allot that space? And so for us, what we're kind of looking at doing is we would like to create additional revenue streams, which is in a business sense instead of just continually adding games that increased cost that also reduces profit margin so you get to a point where you're comfortable where your profit margin and your cost for this piece of business is good and then you want to bring in a second revenue stream so what we would like to do is we'd like to do something like maybe an indoor mini golf course or you wind up doing you can have like Knuckleheads in Wisconsin Dells. I don't know if you're familiar with them. They've got a similar idea where they've got indoor rides, and they've got a bowling alley. So you've got all these various revenue streams. So if this doesn't necessarily do it for you, this will. And then you can start doing package deals where, well, if you want to do the free play in the arcade and you want to have unlimited mini golf, then you can take the two admissions, get a discount, and just have a larger ticket price. So instead of $10 per round and $15 for free play all, you can do maybe it's $20 for both activities for the entire day. And so it gives people a little more flexibility in how they're going to spend their money and what they want to do and kind of give them those all-in-card options or something where you can kind of package everything together. And that helps us as a business because that takes that per person cost and helps to kind of elevate it. And you can take activities that may have a larger profit margin, put them with activities that have a smaller profit margin, and they kind of even themselves out. So we're definitely looking at trying to do more of that kind of stuff in the future, whether it's mini golf or go-karts. That would obviously be another space. Yeah, I mean, right now we're looking at, do we want to buy a building? Do we want to build a building? Do we want to find another lease somewhere else a couple years down the road? We've got some time to think about it, but a lot of that stuff needs a good year, year and a half lead time to be able to get all the pieces in place. So it's definitely a challenge within itself to figure out how do we want to handle it. we've thought about opening a second location, but it's going to be easier to keep everything under one roof. Well, that's all the questions I had, Drew. No, I think we covered a lot of good stuff today. Yeah, we did great. Anything else you want to tell our listeners about the Garkade or about you? No, probably just plug some of the things that we have going on here. We wind up doing air hockey tournaments the first Thursday of each month. That's included, again, with the admission. Do you have hardcore air hockey people? We do. We got guys that come in and just thug. It is unreal. You know what? I want to see that. I need to see that. It's cool because we've got, like, eight-foot tournament quality tables. So, like, it's a really cool experience. We're listening to it in the background right now. Yeah, you will hear it. And I'm just thinking of these guys coming in here with, like, the fingerless gloves and, like, just going down. The headbands. Yeah. Yeah, the sweatbands. It's crazy. Like, it's a lot of fun. Like I said, first Thursday of each month. Second Sunday of each month, we have our IFPA-sanctioned pinball tournaments. Again, free included along with your admission. You can win trophies, prizes, free pizza for everybody that participates in the tournament, all included in your $15 admission. In September, we are starting up twice a month pinball leagues. Those are going to be on the, I believe it's the second Thursday of each month. I'm sorry, second and fourth Thursday of each month. You wind up doing seven rounds on one day, seven rounds on the other day. So it's a quick hitter tournament. It usually only lasts about two hours, two and a half hours. Again, that winds up being $15 each day. It includes the admission for all the games. It is IFPA sanctioned again. So $30 a month, you can play in a cool league. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Accumulate more points for IFPA. Right now I have like two points. Congratulations. We're all proud of you. But that makes you legit. Yeah, no, I'm on the list. That's right. I'm on the list. We do have our Jurassic Park release party coming up. That's coming up September 21st here at the arcade. There's going to be a tournament around that. We're going to have probably cookies and lots of prizes to give away. That's a Stern Army sanctioned event. So we're going to get some swag from Stern Army. Where can people find you? Where can they find out more about this? Best place to find all of our events, all of our information, everything is on Facebook. It's The Garkade. Otherwise, you can check out our webpage, thegarkade.com. We are on Instagram, kind of. Garkade 2012. We've been trying to do more with it. We've got to get better. Facebook is really the key hub for us. All of our events are listed there. We do fighting events, which is really cool. We have guys that bring in consoles and run tournaments for, like, Street Fighter V, Tekken 7, Mortal Kombat 11, Samurai Shodown. Those are really cool events. That's usually, I believe, the second Friday of each month. Yeah, we've got tons going on here. It's always something going on. I think our world combat got to 11. Yeah, that's the latest release. So, I mean, definitely check out our events page on Facebook. It's got everything that we're doing. We're promoting some tournaments for Titletown Pinball up in Green Bay. We're doing some partnership work with them, trying to do more within the community, give people more opportunity, and get some more visibility for organized pinball. So definitely, if you've got a chance, check out Titletown Pinball up in De Pere, Wisconsin. Eric Thorne is amazing. He's a great guy. I've known him for years and years. Awesome. So much stuff packed into one episode. Thank you so much, Gar. We appreciate the time, definitely. And folks, it's better seen than believed. So come on down to Menominee Falls here in Wisconsin and check out the Gar Cake. Well, Gar, thank you very much. Thank you, guys. I appreciate you having me on the podcast. Thanks, Gar. Yep, and we'll make sure to put this on our Facebook, and we'll point everyone in the right direction. So thank you again, and we love you. All right. And that was the Garcade interview. How did everyone enjoy that? I hope you guys enjoyed it. We had a good time talking with Gar, and we'll see you next week. Yeah, we're going to wrap it up here, and good luck with your playfields out there. Don't get too angry with Zach. Nope. Buy a new game. Flip N Out Pinball. Flip N Out Pinball. He does good shit. He's a good distributor. And we will see you next week where we will probably, I don't know. I don't know what we're going to do next week. Probably talk pinball. I think that's a good plan. Yeah, let's do that. Let's get drunk that time, though. Because I feel like we haven't drank in a while. No more coffee for us. Yeah, all this podcasting sober is like, it's kind of like I'm feeling a little vanilla like everybody else out there. I'm feeling like it's a job. Yeah, this is like we got to up it to an 11 and start swearing some more just for Orby, okay? Oh, he talked more about that. You have to listen to those episodes. We're going to listen to it now. Perfect. All right, well, thank you again, Orby, and thank you everyone out there for the birthday wishes. I appreciate it. Thanks for the warm response on Twip. And Jeff, Zach, we'll do Twip whenever you want it, buddy. We loved it. Thanks, guys. Thank you. Bye-bye. We'll be right back. We'll be right back. Outro Music

_(Acquisition: groq_whisper, Enrichment: v3)_

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*Exported from Journalist Tool on 2026-06-06 | Item ID: 10cc02dd-21b8-4d22-a2dd-b2066905d519*