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Episode 20 - Operator Spotlight: Electric Bat Arcade

Wedgehead Pinball Podcast·podcast_episode·49m 2s·analyzed·Mar 4, 2024
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claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.034

TL;DR

Electric Bat Arcade operators discuss venue-based business model, splits, and community tournament strategy.

Summary

Alan from Wedgehead Pinball Podcast interviews Kale and Rachel, owners of Electric Bat Arcade in Tempe, Arizona, about operating a flagship arcade venue plus a secondary location in Flagstaff. They discuss the business model of venue-based arcades versus route operators, tournament formats (IFPA vs. casual), revenue splits with location partners, and how their community-focused approach differs from other markets.

Key Claims

  • Electric Bat Arcade opened in September 2018 (Rachel opened it; Kale joined later)

    high confidence · Rachel and Kale stated they opened 'five years ago' (from 2023 timeline), 'September of 2018' specifically

  • Electric Bat has two locations: Tempe (flagship, ~5M metro population) and Flagstaff (~76K population, 2.5 hours north, 7,000 ft elevation)

    high confidence · Kale and Rachel confirmed both locations, Tempe is daily operations, Flagstaff a few times per month

  • Rachel was a professional oil painter and initially consulted on the arcade before becoming operator

    high confidence · Cale stated Rachel 'was doing her own thing... was a professional oil painter' and started as a consultant before taking it over

  • Electric Bat expanded on New Year's Eve (one year prior to podcast) adding 60 pinball and ~20 video games

    high confidence · Kale: 'The biggest expansion where we were actually able to put 60 pinball machines and probably around 20 video games'

  • Electric Bat and Wedgehead Pinball opened within 5 days of each other (Sept 11 vs Sept 16, 2018) and started podcasts on the same day without communicating

    high confidence · Alan: 'September 16th'; Kale/Rachel: '9-11'; both confirmed podcast timing coincidence

  • Electric Bat operates 50-50 revenue splits with some machine owners at the venue, won't go below 75-25 for external route operations

    high confidence · Kale/Rachel: '50-50 because we do ton of marketing have huge tournaments' and 'we wouldn't do anything lower than a 75-25'

  • Portland route operators traditionally used 50-50 splits; now standard is 60-40; East Coast and Midwest operators report 75-25 or 80-20

    medium confidence · Alan: 'in portland forever it was 50 50... now I think we're running at 60-40 is like the standard' and 'I hear people on the East Coast... 75, 25 or even 80, 20'

  • Sopranos pinball earns consistently high in Portland despite not being critically acclaimed

Notable Quotes

  • “I was asked multiple times until I caved and agreed to open an arcade inside of a dive bar.”

    Rachel @ early conversation — Reveals Rachel's reluctance and how Electric Bat started—shows the origin story of the venue

  • “I want to do a podcast that doesn't ever talk about rumors... I got shit to do.”

    Alan @ podcast format discussion — Explains the philosophy of Wedgehead Podcast—operator-focused, not news/rumor-based

  • “When you run into a good operator, you know it. You can see it.”

    Alan @ on operator quality — Reflects industry-wide understanding of what separates professional operators from casual ones

  • “Sopranos will just earn buckets like it just earns like crazy here.”

    Alan @ on Portland game earnings — Shows how location/market affects game performance independent of critical acclaim

  • “The community is going to play at the different locations. It's not their customers versus our customers—it's the same pool of customers.”

    Cale/Rachel @ on arcade community dynamics — Illustrates collaborative operator mindset vs. competitive venue mentality

  • “There's really great players but they are the players that don't interact with anybody. They wear hoodies, headphones, don't talk to people.”

    Alan @ on Portland competitive scene — Explains why Howdy Partner (casual format) was needed—serious IFPA tournaments had poor community vibe

  • “This is so refreshing to see serious professional pinball players playing with casuals. There's no attitude. Everybody's trying to help each other.”

    Rachel (quoting visitors to Electric Bat) @ on tournament culture — Describes Electric Bat's unique inclusive competitive culture

  • “The machines are so expensive and they require expertise to fix. It's just a lot of fucking work. To make them play right 100% of the time, you have to be motivated to fix them.”

Entities

Electric Bat ArcadecompanyWedgehead Pinball BarcompanyAlanpersonRachelpersonKalepersonYucca TaproomcompanyCobra Arcadecompany

Signals

  • ?

    venue_signal: Electric Bat Arcade expanded significantly on New Year's Eve (one year prior to podcast date), adding 60 pinball and ~20 video games. Now operates two locations (Tempe and Flagstaff).

    high · Kale confirmed 'The biggest expansion where we were actually able to put 60 pinball machines and probably around 20 video games'

  • ?

    operational_signal: Electric Bat maintains 24-hour repair standard for machines. Proactive maintenance approach sets them apart from route operators with neglected machines.

    high · Kale: 'our stuff is usually fixed within 24 hours... we do ton of marketing have huge tournaments'

  • $

    market_signal: Regional revenue split standards are shifting. Portland historically 50-50, now 60-40 standard. East Coast and Midwest operators reporting 75-25 to 80-20. Reflects increased value of operator expertise.

    medium · Alan: 'in portland forever it was 50 50... now I think we're running at 60-40 is like the standard... I hear people on the East Coast... 75, 25 or even 80, 20'

  • ?

    community_signal: Phoenix-area arcade operators (Electric Bat, Starfighters, others) maintain strong collaborative relationships. Cross-promotion, shared player base, regular attendance at each other's tournaments.

    high · Kale/Rachel: 'we have great relationships with all of the other arcades and operators... we all send customers to each other's establishments'

  • ?

    competitive_signal: Different markets favor different tournament formats. Portland scene benefits from Howdy Partner (casual, large draw) while Electric Bat succeeds with IFPA league + Chewy's bounty knockout format. Strategic choice based on local culture.

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.147

0:00
🎵 Hello everybody and welcome to another episode of the Wedgehead Pinball Podcast. My name is Alan, the host of the Wedgehead Pinball Podcast and co-owner of the Portland Pinball Bar Wedgehead. I'm joined today in the basement studio of my co-host, the Waterboy. Hey, how's it going, Alan? Today we're joined by our friends down in Tempe, Arizona, the owners and operators of Electric Bat, Cale and Rachel. Hello. Hey, what's happening? Good. It's an absolute pleasure to be here. Thank you for the invite. We are big fans of the podcast. So we've been looking forward to this. And of bar. We appreciate that. I actually haven't been, but Rachel has been. Yeah, I went shortly after you guys opened. Nice. I remember that. What show were you up for? Must have been Portland Retro. That's what I thought. Yeah. I think so. That's a fun show. That's not really like for anybody not in the Portland area or doesn't hasn't heard of it. It's not much of a pinball show, but it's a really cool show with just a good variety of stuff. Yeah, it's a fun one. You were there a couple of months after we opened and then which will lead me to the first question I have for y'all. It's what made you take the plunge and open your own arcade and what year did y'all open? I was asked multiple times until I caved and agreed to open an arcade inside of a dive bar. and I opened it five years ago. So that would be 20, well, this would be the sixth year. So 2018, September of 2018. She did this before we were together. So this was her thing. Oh, really? I didn't realize that. Kale got sucked into it. Yeah, hoodwinked.
2:08
But y'all used to work together at Marco, correct? Or is that not correct? Yes, that's where we met. But Cale physically worked there in South Carolina, and I traveled around to shows, so I was still based out of Phoenix. We didn't actually meet in person until, well, a couple of weeks before we got married. Right. Well, that's a true story. We actually met on Zoom or Slack or something, one of those. Whatever video conferencing stuff Marco was using back then. I was under the assumption that you were both in South Carolina and then relocated to Arizona, but I guess you were already in Arizona, Rachel. So you got Cale to move out and open up this arcade, which is you actually now have two locations. You have the flagship one in Tempe, just outside of Phoenix, for those listeners that don't know where that is. And then you have another smaller one up in Flagstaff. That's a couple hours away, isn't it? Correct. About two and a half hours and 7,000 feet to the north of us.

medium confidence · Alan: 'sopranos will just earn buckets... every time we move a fucking sopranos out we hear about it'

  • Electric Bat Tuesday league night regularly draws 100+ players (113 last night mentioned)

    high confidence · Kale: 'it was last night we had 113' players for Tuesday league

  • Electric Bat maintains machines with 24-hour repair standard; fixes are done promptly to keep games playable

    high confidence · Kale/Rachel: 'our stuff is usually fixed within 24 hours' and they take 'very good care' of machines

    • Cale @ on operator economics — Justifies why higher splits (75-25+) are necessary for route operators to maintain quality

  • “We're all snowflakes. There's no two arcades that are alike.”

    Kale or Rachel @ on venue differentiation — Emphasizes that each arcade has unique character; supports collaborative rather than purely competitive model

  • “We're just trying to get people to play pinball at the end of the day... We're all into this weird, arcane hobby, playing pinball, which maybe shouldn't even exist anymore, but it still does.”

    Alan @ on core mission — Articulates the fundamental ethos driving community-focused operators and venues

    • ZapCon
    event
    Portland Retroevent
    Starfighters Arcadecompany
    Markperson
    Chewyperson
    Marcocompany
    Waterboy, theperson
    Howdy Partnerevent
    Electric Bat Podcastcontent
    Wedgehead Pinball Podcastcontent
    WPPRorganization
    IFPAorganization
    Scooby-Doogame
    Sopranos, Thegame
    Galactic Arcade Tank Forcegame
    Popeyegame

    high · Alan: 'I felt like I had to do a different format... I couldn't get that [vibe] with the IFPA tournaments here'; Kale/Rachel emphasize six-week league + monthly bounty tournament

  • ?

    content_signal: Operator-focused podcasts (Wedgehead, Electric Bat) launched simultaneously by different operators without coordination, both finding strong audience demand for business/operational content over news/rumors.

    high · Alan: 'I saw that you guys had released yours. And I was like, oh, shit... But we were like, well, I guess we'll keep going'; audience response: 'people are so interested in it'

  • ?

    venue_signal: Electric Bat operates secondary location in Flagstaff (2.5 hours north, 7,000 ft elevation). Different operational cadence (few times/month vs. daily). Leverages elevation/climate differences for seasonal flexibility.

    high · Kale/Rachel: 'Phoenix area... 110, 120... drive two hours north and it's like a 20, sometimes 30 degree difference... Phoenix needs us basically every day... Flagstaff... a few times a month'

  • $

    market_signal: Game earnings strongly tied to local culture/history rather than critical acclaim. Sopranos earns consistently high in Portland despite not being highly regarded; Scooby-Doo earns well at Electric Bat.

    medium · Alan: 'sopranos will just earn buckets... every time we move a fucking sopranos out we hear about it... game can earn because it's good... can be a total shit show and still make ton of money'

  • ?

    operational_signal: Both venues host machines operated by third parties (collectors, enthusiasts). Allows boutique/experimental games without full operational burden. 50-50 splits for in-venue machines.

    high · Kale/Rachel: 'we have couple machines that are just people in the community who buy something... they want to stick their toe in the operating pond and it's a win-win'

  • ?

    community_signal: Phoenix area has IFPA-dominant tournament culture (tournaments every day, sometimes multiple/day). Portland has weekly casual league (Howdy Partner) plus IFPA events at other venues. Different scene philosophies.

    high · Alan: 'in Phoenix... tournaments every single day of the month, sometimes multiple on the same day'; Kale/Rachel: 'Tuesday nights get 100+ people'; Portland has weekly casual + IFPA at partner venues

  • ?

    business_signal: Electric Bat uses single lease with Yucca Taproom covering entire arcade space. Separate rent payments, synced operating hours (365 days). Clean partnership structure.

    high · Rachel: 'I pay our rent check to Yucca every month. It's one big lease and separate spots within the building... No [different operating hours]. They're open 365'

    • 3:04
    7,000, yeah, in elevation. Yeah. Well, north both, like up and there are two norths. Yeah, it's pretty crazy because in the famous Phoenix summertime, we can get into 110, 120, no big deal. But we're kind of lucky because we can drive two hours north and it's like a 20, sometimes 30 degree difference. That's pretty sweet. That's cool. That brings up an interesting point of like, if you have a secondary location two hours away, is how often do you have to go up there? And what's that commute and work schedule like to maintain all the games up there? I guess luckily Flagstaff is a much smaller town. So the Phoenix area is about 5 million people and Flagstaff is 76,000 people. So the machines down here get a lot of play and we need to be at the arcade basically every day. And in Flagstaff, we can go a few times a month, and that's plenty. The commute is awesome. We listen to podcasts and go on a little road trip. It's a beautiful drive.
    4:09
    Yeah, Flagstaff is beautiful. I mean, Flagstaff is a beautiful – you start getting into northern Arizona, and that's like an entirely different state that I don't think a lot of people realize. You have mountains, you have snow, and it's different than the desert and the cactuses that people think of when they think of Arizona. I figured the elevation is, what, like 2,000 feet higher than Denver, so that's... See? That's getting pretty thin.
    4:33
    Arizona's a wild state. You think that affects the pinball physics at all? You think the ball goes a little faster up there? Not as much air resistance, you know? I'm sure some players will say that. They'll be like, oh, the ball's fucked up, Bill. They should mess the ball up.
    4:48
    I'm sure that's something I need to adjust. Yeah, you need 6.4 degrees. The bubble levels are going to get affected.
    4:55
    So I have, you know, both of your locations are tied to old school bars and venues. And I just want to know a little bit. I think you alluded to it, Rachel, is how does that work on the business end? Are y'all subleasing from Yucca Taproom themselves or do you have your own leases on your space? How does that collaboration work? It's a lease. I guess I pay our rent check to Yucca every month. So it's one big lease and separate spots within the building. I guess that's the easiest way to explain it. Sort of subleasing then. Do you have different operating hours than Yucca then? No. Oh, they're open 365. It's a contiguous thing. Oh, that's, yeah, Alan had told me that in the past. Yeah, so this is how it started, the guys from Yucca five years ago, actually probably six years ago, they started noticing these, you know, the, I guess we shouldn't say a barcade theme coming around. You know, there was one very cool arcade bar called Cobra. Yep. Oh, yeah. Yeah. In the valley here. And so they're like, man, we want to do that. So they actually approached the owner of Cobra and he said, you need you need to talk to Rachel. Oh, no, really? And yeah. And Rachel's doing her own thing. You know, she's a professional oil painter. She was doing a lot of other stuff and had no she didn't want to get into this space of running arcades. They had to track her down at ZapCon, which is the big arcade and pinball convention here in the valley. and they finally cornered her while she was working on a machine and she was like who are you guys and she's like oh yucca yeah i used to go there in high school what's up and they were like we want you we want to partner with you on an arcade and she's like uh you know i'm kind of busy right now let me come and then i'll we'll we'll set a date i'll come talk to you she was originally just a consultant i see she met with the owners of yucca and laid out everything she's she's hyper organized she laid out everything and told them i mean down to the the final nut and bolt what you need to do to run a successful arcade and they were like yeah that's too much what do you need from us for you to do it well that was very wise of them too yeah that was probably the best thing they could have done was get somebody that actually knows how this shit works 100 so she started out they cleared out their office, which was right next to the bar. She put machines in there, and over the five years, it's kept growing, and she's had to have two expansions. The last expansion happened New Year's Eve, I guess. A year ago. A year ago, and that's the biggest expansion where we were actually able to put 60 pinball machines and probably around 20 video games or something like that. Yes. Yeah, so that's how that whole thing happened. That's pretty cool. And Rachel, did you own the games that you put in there first, or how'd that work? Yeah, I owned a bunch of games. Okay. So you were a collector? There were a few from a friend, but I already owned plenty of pinball machines. Gotcha. And yeah, that's kind of like the biggest step, is it's like not having to put all the capital in right up front for something like that makes it so much more plausible, I guess. Definitely. If you had to open up just a from-scratch arcade, that would be... It's so much. insanely expensive and overwhelming and you would have no idea what you don't know i mean you all know because you know the people oh yeah you know this is not something you have been doing for a little while it's it's a big learning curve there's a learning curve when you know what you're doing oh 100 we'll get into that i mean but it's i get asked and i'm sure y'all do all the time because i hear you answer it on your own podcast which we should mention already the electric bat has their own pinball podcast so if you're listening to this episode go check out theirs because yeah a very fun podcast from obviously other operators which alan and i are always interested in so we both listen to your guys's podcast quite a bit yep thank you likewise yeah this is really a cool thing that i think we we both kind of started at the same time but we released i think earlier than you did yeah i'm sure you guys are hearing the same thing as soon as we started releasing these podcasts we didn't expect you know so many people to be into it but there's just there are no podcasts talking about you know operate the business side of this and people are so interested in it and we always hear you know i'm sick and tired of news and rumors podcasts yep that was the biggest goal i think when alan approached me about it he's like i want to do a podcast that doesn't ever talk about rumors yeah i'm not plugged in i don't want to be plugged in it's Like, I want the games to come out. And we got on our hate run, man. Like, I just, I got shit to do. Like, and I'd wanted to do a podcast for a while from the operator's perspective. And I remember I bought the mics and we had recorded our first test episode and I was editing it. And then I saw that you guys had released yours. And I was like, oh, shit. Well, I guess we don't even need to do this no more.
    9:54
    But we were like, well, I guess we'll keep going. And I'm glad I'm glad you guys did. We seem to be on the same trajectory. Yeah. And we opened our arcades very close. I mean, we opened the same year as the Electric Bat. You know, you were there. I think you guys opened like in July, was it, or something? No, we opened in September. 9-11. Oh, gosh. Yeah. So we opened September 16th. Yeah, so we were like a week later. So we were five days apart. Wow.
    10:21
    And then we started our podcasts on the same, basically the same day. Without even communicating, which I think is interesting. Yeah, very in sync. but i want to talk to you about speaking of things that people don't know i think there's a big one that i always hear about with people operating games and there's two main types of operating there's what we do and what you do which is like you have a flagship arcade you own and operate your own machines and then you you know you take all of that money whatever comes out is for the business now you have higher operating costs because you have a lease and you have insurance you have all these business expenses but then there's also the old school version which is like a route my business partner has been pinball operator for about he doesn't even know when he started but it's like 16 17 years maybe even longer i think longer than that he still has a route so like he still has locations all over the portland metro area um and then wedgehead's like our flagship and that's what we're partners on but that's a whole different thing and when you're doing a route whenever people go to a place and it's just a regular bar or pizza shop or whatever and somebody has pinball machines in there there's some operator that owns those games it's very unusual that like a pizza shop owner would also be the operator i'm not saying it doesn't happen but it's rare so it's usually an operator running those games on our route and then the reason why the bar would agree to have them there is that they get a split of the coin take right what i've realized is with the rise of new arcades and new pinball operators i've been hearing from talking to other operators is that the splits have changed so in portland forever it was 50 50 like operator to location owner, which is low. And now I think we're running at 60-40 is like the standard Portland split, more or less. And I heard you mention on one of your podcasts that it was that you don't really do it, but that you wouldn't do it for less than 75-25. Do you feel like that a normal split in your region Well I honestly have no idea what other operators are getting i i think 50 50 is still pretty much the standard but for kale and i like we have a couple of people that have some machines inside electric bat that is a 50 50 split and we do 50 50 because we do ton of marketing have huge tournaments you know you're not just going in there oh for sure you're a pinball dedicated location like the games are actually going to get played there and taken care of right so we're also oh yeah i didn't even think about that you can get the ball zone stuck and stuff like just from an earning perspective that's huge to have people there right if you know rubbers break or whatever happens then we will fix it so it's not just going to sit dark in a corner until somebody decides to let you know but i just think the reason for us not wanting to do anything lower than a 7525 is just because it's a lot of work and we don't really, we're already really busy. Yeah, totally. We take very good care of our machines. So we wouldn't be the type of operators, you know, where you go to the bar three weeks in a row and the machine is dark, right? It's our stuff is usually fixed within 24 hours. Oh, totally. Yeah. I experienced that when I was at your arcade. I was very impressed. I mean, I didn't get to meet y'all there, but it was right before your expansion. So it felt very Wedgehead-sized at the time, and now it's massive. And I haven't been back yet, but I'm looking forward to it. You can tell when you walk into a place, every time I travel, I'm looking for... And honestly, I'll play Broken... Because I'm just interested in just seeing pinball machines in different locations around the wild. But when you run into a good operator, you know it. You can see it. And that makes sense. If it's just, if you guys aren't looking to pick up more work, then it's like, it would have to be worthwhile to do it. But it's always just kind of different, I guess, based off of. Oh, I would be clear. Like, I think 75, 25 is the way. Like, I agree with y'all. Like, I do. Like, we, in the Portland market, there's such an old pinball market and there's so much competition that like, it'll, I hear people on the East Coast and they're saying 75, 25 or even 80, 20. You know, I hear some places in the Midwest where they've had a similar thing where business owners approach them and they're like and they've reached out to me and they're like i think that they don't even want to split as long as i work on the games and i'm like wow i can't even imagine that out here but you know yeah it's the machines are so expensive and they're they require expertise to fix and it's just a lot of fucking work that to make them play right 100 right all the time to be motivated to fix them you know it's got to cost something you know it's not free the shop you know, doesn't want to pay that split, then they can go spend $9,000 on a machine and then figure out how to fix it. It's 100%. Yeah.
    15:02
    And after you spend $2,000 breaking your machine. Right. Suddenly the split doesn't look so bad. Not to mention the soft cost of like having people like yourselves that will promote, like if you were operating somewhere else, you'd be like, these are our machines. They're here. Go check them out at this pizza shop or whatever. It's like you're bringing extra value because you're the type of operators that will throw events and events that people will come to. So like you're bringing not only the machines and making sure they work, but you're also bringing, you know, excitement and a community to it. So speaking of the you guys mentioned that you have some games that you don't own in yours in your place. Do those guys do they operate anywhere outside of the bat or is it just kind of some regulars that have some, you know, boutique games or whatever? there? Both. So we have our friend Mark and he has some machines at the bat and he also operates out of a brewery and he's had some machines at some other locations. I don't know if he has any more right now, but he does. But then we have a couple of machines that are just people in the community who buy something that we think would be interesting or at least interesting for a while. maybe don't want to buy it ourselves that person would like to stick their toe in the operating pond and it's a win-win i think that's awesome i mean i really i think that as a fan of i mean if you've listened to the podcast at all you probably know alan and i's respective feelings on boutique games and i love playing them and i love seeing them on location and alan fucking hates working on them so i love seeing like that kind of relationship where it's like hey here's something niche it might not be worth it from a business perspective but if you're like an enthusiast and you just want to get it and you want to get some money back to kind of offset the depreciation of the game that's a it's kind of a win-win yeah so mark owns all of the spookies yeah and he is on his third scooby-doo board yeah oh really god that's encouraging but i did hear on your podcast for people that haven't listened to it i did hear that scooby does very well for you as far as it earns very well on the floor does earn very well huh i forgot that i must have just chose to omit that i listened to that list of you guys talking about your top earners but no i like listening to your list because if for anyone that's interested the a lot of what y'all do is you'll go through your top earning games and i feel like when i'm talking to people they're always interested in like when i'm like oh that game fucking earns or that game's a dog like that game won't earn anything right like yeah and people are like oh really oh really and you know especially when you get into the stuff that's like surprising like everyone knows godzilla earns like uh you can go to anywhere and see a godzilla and there's people playing it all the time you know attack from mars or you know like people know kind of the basics but then when i'm like you know what earns like crazy sopranos like sopranos will just earn buckets like it just earns like crazy here you know we have a couple and every time we move a fucking sopranos out we hear about it like we just hear about it instantly all the time and i think people are like really that game's not even considered good is it and you're like come to portland man it earns like crazy yeah yeah game can earn because it's good and the game can earn because of the title and it can be a total shit show and still make a ton of money yeah like galactic tank force yeah right now galactic tank force is working ish nice and it is earning very well that's cool right at least that makes it we talk so much shit about them on the podcast people want to see what it's all about yeah Yeah.
    18:34
    They got to check it out. That was a good move. That's going to be, yeah, if Rhodes ever picks up a Popeye for Wedgehead, I assume it would do pretty well because everyone would want to see it. Yeah, people would want to see it. I'd rather play Galactic Tank Force than Popeye. Agreed. You guys make me want to play Popeye. I think I've only played Popeye once at like a convention somewhere. But yeah, you guys make me want to play it again. I'm definitely going to check it out if I can see it. You got to play it again. You got to see it for yourself. I mean, that's what the Die on the Hill segments are for. just see for yourself right like because somebody out there likes it no matter what you think of it and that's what i think makes them fun but yeah i was gonna say so it sounds like mark you have a good relationship with and he operates some games in your own establishment and he also has some technical know-how right because he's operating in a few places and he's had pinball machines for i don't know 30 years or something and but then we have some other people that like the people that are new to this they don't really operate and we really help kind of maintain their games if there was like an expensive part that need to be replaced then we'd probably split costs on that or something but yeah but all of the normal wear and tear stuff and all of the just keeping it clean playing all the stuff that you do often kale and i take care of that's cool so what are your like other relationships with the other operators in the region do you have mostly good some bad like i don't want to get into the bad and we're not here to trash anybody or anything like that but just do you have other friends that are operators in the phoenix region and yeah no yeah we have great relationships with all of the other arcades and operators and in the valley here i think that's what makes it such a good community i mean we we send i think we all send customers to each other's establishments like year-round i mean that's awesome you can see it when i follow you guys or you see it on social media, it's like, I think the time when I was visiting, you couldn't go because you were at another arcade, Starfighters, is that right? You were there for a tournament? Yep, we play their tournaments. They're the arcade that is most like ours, where they have a nice mix of modern and classic games. So we really love playing there. And they're not open all the time like we are. They're only open on the weekends. So they do one tournament a month and we always try to make it that's cool that's awesome i mean we have pretty good relationships with most of the operators in portland i mean there's it's we all know each other it's like sometimes you need parts or or just even like hey i'm it's doing this weird thing have you ever seen this on indiana jones or whatever and you know and then somebody else is like oh yeah yeah like we are you know so all of the texts all i think we all talk with each other anybody that's working on something we all do the same thing yeah yeah and most importantly i mean we send people to the other tournaments it's going to help everybody out because as soon as somebody gets into playing a tournament at one arcade they're like i wonder what it's like you know add electric bat or danger zone or star fighters you know we're all snowflakes right there's no two arcades that are that are alike and that's where you're going with the snowflake and it's a scene you got to realize like when you're building a scene and making a place a pinball city the community is going to play at the different locations like it's not their customers versus our customers it's the same pool of customers that kind of populate you know kind of go from one to the other for sure and the valley is every player even casuals are focused on whopper points like there are no you know non-ifpa tournaments that are successful around town which i do find interesting i um we have that you know portland's a big scene so we have weekly we have tournaments every day of the week i'm sure you guys are probably close to that at this point right in the phoenix area oh yeah we have them every single day of the month sometimes multiple on the same day yep yeah so we have that in portland a big difference between the r2 arcades is that you guys do a ton of ifpa events and do a ton of like big tournaments and your weekly league that you do on tuesdays is you know you get 100 people or more to show up to your tuesday nights which is yeah that's massive that's awesome unreal kind of bananas it was last night we had 113 wow yeah that's crazy i mean in it yeah it's scary it's like in portland you get that on the big you know like big quarterly tournaments or something you'll get something like that but there's only a couple places that can even host something that big you know yeah there's a couple arcades that are big enough to do that portland has a ton of pinball players it's obviously a big pinball city but it really doesn't seem to perspective for its player base doesn't seem like that big of a tournament scene compared to some other towns it's a big tournament scene i think it's just we have so many casual bar players yeah because we there's been pinball machines on location here like and lots of them for 25 30 years like so it's you get a lot of people that come in that they play one game like they played theater of magic since it came out and so they know that one game and that's the one game they play right like or sopranos is another one that's why it earned so well it's like for whatever reason like there were sopranos around town and it's like they fucking earn in portland like we as wet chat like we don't really host a lot of ifba tournaments which i think is interesting we found greater success because other arcades already do them in town and it's just easier to let them do them and so we run our own casual event howdy partner but which is massive and regularly out draws like a blast i've seen lots of um photos of that it's a raucous time i had a friend of mine come in on my birthday and we were running howdy partner and i got to play in it and uh because i'm usually the mc he came in and there was just you know we were packed like sardines in our small little space and everyone like chanting my name and he like what the fuck is going on dude like he like like he just like what is happening i was like it's howdy partner man like it's it's crazy like it's pretty it's pretty funny when you have people that don't know what to expect with a howdy partner like a friend brought them or something and i feel like it's probably one of those things that may be a little overwhelming at first but it's such a friendly crowd that everyone seems to enjoy it i hope you guys get a chance to see it what Rachel has built at the Electric Bat, these tournaments. So it's not like, I mean, it is a big party, but you still have top 100 players there. And so many people from out of town have come in and said, this is so refreshing to see like serious, you know, quote unquote professional pinball players playing with casuals. You know, there's no attitude. Everybody's trying to help each other. So it's a very unique situation. And it feels it sounds very similar to what you guys are doing, except these guys are just fighting for points instead of giant hats.
    25:32
    Yeah. Yeah. I think what we're doing is the same yet different, like different sides of the coin, which is what I think is interesting. Because I started Howdy Partner and all that stuff and it's taken off and I get a lot of people that are like, oh, you're anti. And I want to say this is like they're like you're anti tournament. So you're anti FBA. that is not the case like at all like it's just people already do that well in town and the problem with the portland scene as i saw it was there's really great players but they are the players that don't interact with anybody they wear hoodies headphones don't talk to people not collaborative don't share their strategies and not all of them are like that yeah i'm saying they're all of them like but there's a lot of them and so the serious tournaments get a very weird vibe. Especially when you get down to like the top 16. Yeah. And there's, there's these great players, but what you have in your scene is what I wanted or what I saw in LA when I went to visit LA, they have a very similar, very fun scene where people show up and they're drinking and they're having a good time and they're talking to each other and like they're competing and they want to win, but if they don't win, it's not the end of the world, you know? Right. Who cares? Who cares? Yeah, exactly. And so I wanted to, I felt like I had to do a different format to get that in Portland because it's just, for whatever reason, I'm not quite sure why, but it just wasn't, we couldn't get that with the IFBA tournaments here. Well, the Howdy partner looks like a blast. So you're doing something right. Yeah, we're just trying to get people to play pinball at the end of the day. What anyone's ever doing is like, you know, the whole point is to get people to meet each other. We're all into this weird, arcane hobby, playing pinball, which maybe shouldn't even exist, you know, anymore, but it still does. So it's like, you know, and I love playing with other people. So like, that's a big thing. It's like, I love playing with other people. Absolutely. This is a dumb question because I should know from following you guys. But what do you, do you have your weekly league nights? Do you have weekly, like, Whopper tournaments there? Or what's the schedule like usually? It's a six-week league, so your best four nights count, and you have to go to at least three to have your points submitted. Gotcha. So there's a winner every Tuesday, and they get some prize, and then we have finals based on the top 24 out of the six-week series. Okay. Yeah. And every the last Sunday of every month, our friend Chewy does his world. Chewy's world famous bounty knockout tournament. It's a four. No, it's a five strike, four strike, four strike knockout tournament where you can actually get bounties. So when you knock somebody out, you get a poker chip that's worth five bucks. Oh, that's cool. Yeah. You can actually not win and just win a bunch of money. I've actually gone all the way to the finals and not won any money.
    28:20
    yeah that sounds fun that's fun yeah i can't believe i can't believe it's interesting we do um we all we have like 17 machines that are on stern insider connected and we do what we pick a the winner of that across all machines it gets to pick a stern translate or a stern banner and then we also do the the cash tournaments on the stern machines where you know you install the little tournament button yep and uh those are always fun too yeah yeah so we we have all that going on but if i'm coming down there if i want to buy a cheap ticket to phoenix while it's still cold here what day of the month do i want to hit what's like the one tuesday tuesday you want to be here on a tuesday night you can play in the leagues drop in yeah yeah oh certainly that's good okay i'm just saying alan tickets are very cheap to phoenix right now and i know i don't want to go to the bounty tournament i like the gambling part of it i do too well do both maybe just show up for the last sunday and then stay oh yeah stay through tuesday yeah okay that's true yeah okay we've also started having people like players want to get into hosting tournaments so we've had a few people hosting just some very casual tournaments like you know they want to do it for their own birthday party or some kind of celebration or people wanting to try more complicated or interesting formats just like hey let's let's see how this works and we've got the machines and we're we're happy to help you you know navigate running something as long as we think it will be fun or yeah we do that too i mean the the tournaments that we do run the ipa tournaments that happen once a month or uh we just started a women's tournament by some regulars that wanted to host women's only tournament and yeah it's the same thing regulars that want a space to do something i was like absolutely you know 100 yes and it's been good you mentioned because you just have the machines or whatever which just made me think the games that you guys have I think that's a big part of why your tournaments actually look fun to me is because you have a huge variety of games and you have a lot of classics and stuff how do you kind of maintain that balance I don't know what I'm specifically asking just are there any kind of like surprises or lessons learned from having that mix and I know it's kind of a common knowledge that the classics never earn as well but are there any big surprise earners or anything like that yeah well I mean Caleb and I both love playing classics so we have them there whether they earn or not because we like them yeah sir yep but then like eight ball not even eight ball deluxe for some reason i think just because of the brutality of the play that game earns better than twilight zone wow yeah i would say that i will agree that when we were on coin play twilight zone doesn't earn i for as much as people say that they love that game like um any like wpc era like this game a ball just happens to earn a ton relative to games that are most people would consider better or certainly much more popular games we did a whole episode on the bally williams super pins and we covered them and it's funny we're asking people around and pilot zones the best rated of them the one that when we were reached out it's you know everyone's like yeah twilight zone's the best one and i think it's so funny because the casual people or the average person that comes in is going to put their quarters in the machine. You know, we changed our model. We're a free play model now. But when we used to do a coin op, it was hilarious. You know, I was just like, this thing is it's not earning for its reputation, for how expensive it is and how cool of a game it is, because I think it's an excellent game. I think most people think that, but it just didn't earn. When did you guys switch over and why? Yeah. So we switched over in COVID. We did, you know, our municipality, our county was really aggressive, like really aggressive and shutting all business down, which was so we did a private thing where they, you know, like we can only have like 20 percent of the people inside. And so we had we did private rooms for a little while and we did that with we're like, hey, come in for an hour. You'll have a private room. We'll sanitize it in between guests and all that kind of stuff. And we'll put a couple of pinball machines in there and they're on free play. So as long as you spent a small minimum during that hour on food and drink while you were there, pinball was all free. Like true free play. Like we weren't even charging for it. That would be sweet. Yeah, that was an interesting setup. And then when we got kind of out of it and were able to open, I was pushing for it. There's only one next level out in Hillsboro, which is a mega location. They got like 250 pinball machines. It was just something that we do so many events at Wedgehead. Like people want to have their company parties, their birthday parties, graduations and all that kind of stuff. And every time we do a big event, everyone wants the games on free play because they want to be able to be like, hey, come on in. Just play. Right. Like lots of like super casual. And as you know, as an operator, it's like, man, if you had to go through and like turn all those games on and off free play. Fuck that. Like forget that. Right. Yeah. It's that's a lot. Horrible. Yeah, we made the choice to move, which I have on this list. I'm glad you asked because I wanted to talk about the different ways that arcades charge for, you know, their games. And so y'all do token play. Can you explain why? Tokens and quarters. And quarters. How does that work? Yeah, the mechs take both. Oh, wow. Oh, shit. I didn't realize that. What's the incentive for getting tokens? Do you do tokens at a discount or something? Tokens, you can win a 25 cent beer in the token machine. Okay. So people do that. Also, people just like tokens and don't often have pockets full of quarters. So it's much easier to convert your $10 bill into some tokens in our token machine. Oh, yes, I see. You only dispense tokens, but you will take quarters as well. Correct. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. We did tokens over quarters for a bunch of reasons. One is I didn't want to have a bunch of quarters sitting in machines. just that seemed like a little bit of a target. And then also I didn't want to have a quarter dispensing change machine because I didn't want to be the way that people provided like their laundry money and just me having to go to the bank every day and get quarters. It was like a pain. Everyone walking out with like five bucks of quarters in their pockets that you have to go exchange for them now. Exactly. And then also whenever I opened the arcade, tokens were much cheaper than they are now. So basically, a token cost me at the time like 12 cents each. So if you're paying 25 cents for it, it doesn't necessarily matter if it leaves the building.
    34:52
    Yeah, that's what I was going to say is like you can buy tokens for less than the face value of a quarter as a business operator. But to the customer, it doesn't cost them any more money. So it's like a win-win of the pricing thing, right? Because the customer, it doesn't matter. They're like, okay, one quarter, one token, whatever. and so it's a great way to get because these games are expensive like we need to clarify this to anyone that would ever be listening it doesn't realize it but i mean i know that i put in huge parts orders every every week or you know twice a month and we work on the games and that was my big thing with the model that we chose was like we were on coin play like quarter play and i was telling my business partner i was like we either gotta do tokens or we gotta do free play we gotta of figure out a way because then then the other way is a card system which i'm sure some people have seen um i think is the least popular way to do it like my personal nemesis is card systems yeah same the ones that convert it to credits and it's not a direct one to one so credits per it's like you put in like it's like twelve dollars for eighteen thousand well that would actually be pretty easy it's like some arbitrary amount of money for an arbitrary amount of credits and then the games are all odd numbers of credits and it makes it genuinely impossible to sit there and do the math and figure out how much you're paying per game which is yeah it's obfuscating it and it's very expensive to start up i will say that you know if you're kate it does give you some flexibility i know there's an episode that y'all did on your podcast where you covered this in depth so we'll just point the listeners to check out your back catalog if they want to learn more about the card system because you did a deep dive on it how much it cost and why you would or not want to do it. I don't personally have anything against the card system. I'm here to play whatever. However a business wants me to pay, I don't really care. You know I do wish that credits would be to the quarter I mean just make it obvious Like make it to the quarter I just want to also say before I get done hating on them is that the card readers are always ugly And I don't know why they have to have them strobing RGB and have like a big backlit screen. But it really ruins the vibe of like a classic arcade look. Yeah. I cannot stand seeing those on a classic ballet. I want to pull out a crowbar. what in the Dave and Buster's fucking hell is this shit on my valley like I just that it yeah I know there's like there's some great locations that use them and sometimes it does fit in with the vibe if you got a very like bright neon kind of place but I just they get under my skin so I'm always happy to see tokens but the one thing that neither of you guys I'm surprised I've mentioned is that the card readers and free play you don't got to deal with coin jams yeah we don't have to deal with coin jams yeah so i want to get into this next question which is what are your operator pet peeves from customers from players or just from owning an arcade my number one pet peeve is people using other other arcades tokens in our machines yeah because that's it's that's just shoplifting yeah yeah but but the you know we we did like a whole episode on this and the This was one of the first episodes we did. And the funny thing was, after we did it, we stopped getting so many foreign tokens. There you go. That makes you – people must not realize. They really don't – they don't know. They think, okay, I just purchased something that is a quarter. Yeah. To them, that's a quarter. That's 25 cents. That represents a partial credit on some type of amusement machine. They throw it all in their pocket. and when they leave, they probably put it in the console of their car and it's mixed up with all other stuff. It's nothing malicious, but they don't realize, and it's not just us. Oh, yeah, for sure. If there are machines in an arcade where someone else is operating them and there's a split, if they come into an arcade and they use somebody else's token, we're literally paying for their game. Because I pay the, yeah, we pay the operator based on audits. so i yeah that comes out of my pocket so that yeah that's like you said this is generally not malicious it's just that people don't really think about it but i um i would love for them to think about it and not do it yeah that's actually it's impressive that it went down after your podcast episode that's kind of encouraging because you're like okay at least people it's like ignorance then well i think a lot of these things are the same way it's why people as dumb as this is but putting drinks on the glass people don't think about it they're not like hey let's fuck this up or let's throw my coat over this machine or whatever it's they're just ignorant they're just they're not thinking they're in an arcade it's loud they're like excited probably and they're just they're not using 100 of their brain all the time yeah i think our other biggest pet peeve is abusing the machine we are very we have uh liberal tilts and we don't mind you know you could move the machine a few inches but just like like after you drain banging the glass like something like that like we you know these machines can take a little beating and and we're totally okay with a heavy slap save or what have you but just like a just smacking the lockdown bar after you drain just stuff like that totally uh yeah just like rage raging after you drain yeah it's the same i don't know that's always been the same it's like i grew up playing like online video games right and it's like you'd always have one friend that would just lose his shit when he dies in call of duty or something and you're like 12 broken controllers yeah and you're like exactly the ones if you it's like is one thing to like it's like we're all human and you you have emotions or whatever but it's like once you're breaking controllers you're like going too far you're like hey buddy you gotta like think about this and it's like the guys that get that mad like playing pinball you're like man we're playing pinball yeah it's supposed to be fun and you're ruining the vibe as much as like whatever it does to the machine. And then there's also just like, people don't want to be around that, man. Like people are here to have a good time. Like chill out, dude. Like, and I would just want to bring this up because we spoke about it off the air and we alluded to it earlier in this episode, but we did an episode and some of our advice was, hey, don't complain about setup. Like that's a big one to us. It's like the way somebody sets up their games is the way they set up their games. And I think we, you reached out. And the reason why we're doing this now is you were like, hey, thanks for saying something about the pitch level. because we get we hear that shit all the time and like it annoys us too and i heard that from a lot of operators so funny here's a good one that you will appreciate we have a like a clipboard where you can write down if you notice something not working on a game and someone wrote down that our medieval madness was at 6.8 degrees and it was i may have the numbers wrong but they gave me a specific like this is the something point something to go inside her yeah they didn't say per what we all know and and it should be at what you know 6.5 degrees please change it and i'm thinking number one there's no fucking way you could have yeah did you measure the glass because there's you did on the glass you did on the glass probably on your phone on an app yeah he's trying to do right yeah and number two you're just wrong yes i want to squash that that one was funny because it was so specific and and there was like the tone of of the note was like you need to fix this now how dare you call yourself a pinball arcade it's like in your you know 0.3 degrees to see it's like a little kid trying to lie and they get really specific with like the numbers or something yeah you're like you know you're just making this shit up right now right they don't this is why i could not make the ramps in front of my girlfriend yes we're gonna do another episode on this but there's another one and i heard you guys mention it one time you answered a question and i this was my moment to y'all which was i was like yes they said it like and i hear about flipper fade on sterns and just the utter bullshit like of like what people are talking about Like, people come into this and are like, I can't make that ramp. The flippers are fading. You need these $300 fans on them. And I'm just like, that's insane, dude. You got to put a whole mini split on the side of, like, get a whole AC unit on the side of Godzilla. It's crazy because it's like, man, they are the biggest manufacturer. Those mechs have been more or less the same since the Data East days. And they're super snappy. Like, if anyone's complaining about stern flippers of any flipper, any flipper, you're complaining about stern flippers is crazy. I mean, right. And they'll just they'll talk to you. And when people start, I was just like, just hold on. Like, you know, like, don't ask me. We don't need fans, dude. You ever watch Keith Ellen play on a stream for an hour and a half? He has no problem making all those shots. You know what I mean? Like, anyway, the flipper fade, man. That's why I'm embarrassing myself in front of all the girls. Yeah. And that's why you guys, I'm sure, also get the one where your game is not level because the bubble is not in the middle. yeah like that's not even the bubble levels that's not that's not how that works yes that's how what it's even if it was precise that's not what that's for yeah people will people will say all kinds of stuff and again most of it i chalk it up to like we did that episode where it's like hey you're new to pinball like here's some stuff that we were probably very annoying about when we first got into it and we don't want you to be those people that right on the clipboard at the electric bat hey it's just that 6.8 degrees please make it 6.5 like don't do that you know don't be that person like it's just like because especially when you're going to the bat you're going to a world-class pinball location you know you're going to a place where you have great machines of all eras and you guys take great care of them and you foster a great pinball community so it's like if you're going to go into a place like that and be like these games are set up wrong you're you're out of your mind you know what i mean it's like wait till you play some real hard location stuff You've got to go play some shit, and then you'll never complain about any of the actual pinball locations again. Yeah, any of the real ones. It's just great, though.
    45:06
    I think we covered it pretty well. This was just an operator spotlight series of some cool operators that we respect and follow, and that if you're ever traveling through the Phoenix area, make sure you stop. Or if you're in Flagstaff, stop at their other location. But in case we didn't cover anything, what do you feel makes the electric bat so unique in the Arizona pinball landscape? Kale Hernandez. He's there all the time being funny and awesome and doing all of our social media. Thank you. Kind of on that note, I think really our personalities come through. We are there all the time. We were there playing with, you know, we came home from playing Jaws. We just set up Jaws today with some friends. It's our home, too. Yeah. And that's that's the thing. I mean, this this is our job. We are 100 percent into this. This isn't something, you know, we just set up and then we go to some, you know, desk job somewhere else. We truly care about this. And like today, you know, we got the call that Jaws just came in. So we got in the truck, went, set it up for our friends to play, and then, you know, came back home to do this podcast. You know, we didn't do it for us. You know, we're doing this so everybody can enjoy this wonderful hobby and sport. That's definitely what separates us from the big box arcades. Yeah, I agree. And to be clear, our distributor would have come tomorrow or the next day and dropped it off and set it up for us. It would have saved us a lot of labor. But we wanted to go. We were excited to play it and see it and share it with everybody. So we made the drive out there and did the heavy lifting so that we could all enjoy it. Yeah, you guys clearly love pinball and the place reflects that. And I think that's what makes it so special. all and i think that's what we're kind of seeing recurring with the operators and the locations that we love and we want to go visit or have visited it the people that love pinball make good pinball spots so just love to see it yeah i think we're in a renaissance period of really cool arcades across the country and across the world and you are definitely one of them and i love the electric bat and i think you guys have like a crazy following i mean everyone knows who you are so you guys are doing a great job down there and you're doing something right and i think that's a big part is like you build a great community and they support you and they're ride or die so well thank you and we see wedgehead shirts you know our players wear wedgehead shirts too so right back at you yeah well they uh it's it's funny we do a lot of merch so the merch is it's a trip to see it i'm sure you even with as well as you know people i still see people i'm there every day like you guys are i'm opening games and playing games with regulars and all that kind of stuff and i still will see people at the grocery store wearing a wedgehead shirt and I'll be like, I don't even know who that is. Like, and they don't know who I am. Like, it's such a trip. Like, it's so weird. Yeah, I want to thank you all for joining us on this episode of the Wedgehead Pinball Podcast. It was a pleasure having you on the podcast, and hopefully we'll get to speak again in the future. For everyone listening, go out and play some pinball. That's what I say at the end of every episode. Go support your local operators. If you live in the Phoenix area, you already know about the electric bat, but just go there again. You know you need to go back. It's probably been a few hours, right? So go back and support them. Put some tokens in. Yeah, the right tokens. The right tokens. Leave that other trash at home. And for everyone else, go out, support your local operator, have a good time, play some pinball. Until next time, good luck. Don't suck. I'm Batman.
    48:45
    We'll see you next time.