Episode 59 - How to Run an Independent Pinball Bar

Wedgehead Pinball Podcast·podcast_episode·55m 53s·analyzed·Dec 2, 2024

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Analysis

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TL;DR

Independent arcade bar operators must compete on quality, variety, and convenience—not price—with mandatory full-time techs and adaptive business practices.

Summary

Alan from Wedgehead Pinball Bar in Portland, Oregon discusses operating an independent pinball bar at Chicago Pinball Expo, covering four key competitive differentiation strategies: price (discouraged as race-to-the-bottom), convenience (location, hours, customer experience), game variety/lineup (oddball games earn well, attract dedicated players), and quality (best differentiator through maintenance and consistency). Critical operational advice includes hiring a full-time skilled tech before opening, maintaining backup games, and remaining flexible to adapt business model based on market feedback.

Key Claims

Portland metro area has more pinball machines on location per capita than any other city in the world
medium confidence · Alan discussing Wedgehead's competitive marketplace with ~2.5 million population
Oddball/obscure games earn money because they fill niche play demand and create differentiation
high confidence · Alan and Alex both corroborate from operator experience; Zespi from Logan Arcade confirms with Bone Busters example
Undercutting price on pinball devalues the game and creates unsustainable customer base
high confidence · Alan's core business philosophy, echoed by Zespi, Rachel, and Kale in seminar
A full-time skilled pinball tech must be in place before opening, ideally with ownership stake
high confidence · Zespi and Alan both emphasized this as critical; Alan notes four games going down while away in Chicago demonstrates necessity
Wedgehead switched from coin-op to free-play model as market differentiation strategy
high confidence · Alan states this was done because no other Portland location (except Next Level Hillsborough) offered free-play

Notable Quotes

“you're teaching the consumer that, hey, pinball is not worth the market rate. Pinball should be worth less.”
Alan @ ~10:00 — Core argument against price-based competition; illustrates how undercutting harms the entire industry
“it takes forever to build a reputation but you can ruin it in a flash”
Alan @ ~45:00 — Emphasizes critical importance of consistency and quality maintenance for customer retention
“If you've never worked on machines before, you will need someone who will be there full-time for tech repairs. Yeah, that's critical.”
Alan/Alex @ ~50:00 — Key operational requirement emphasized by multiple panelists; framed as non-negotiable from day one
“Pinball players are ruthless. So, and skilled pinball techs aren't just growing on trees.”
Alan @ ~52:00 — Illustrates community expectations and scarcity of qualified technical staff
“There's a lot of people that will open places and they can't even do the five minute fixes themselves.”
Alan @ ~56:00 — Criticism of unprepared operators; demonstrates operational knowledge gaps among new entrants
“don't let something sit there broken... customers don't want to come in and feel bad for your dilapidated games”
Alan @ ~62:00 — Quality control and customer experience directly linked to game upkeep
“you're not going to have all the answers, especially if this is your first time... don't be afraid to change things when things don't work.”
Alan @ ~70:00 — Emphasis on adaptability and learning; frames business as evolutionary process

Entities

WedgeheadorganizationAlanpersonAlex the WaterboypersonZespipersonRachelperson Kaleperson Logan Arcadeorganization Electric Bat ArcadeorganizationChicago Pinball Expo

Signals

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business_signal: New operators commonly attempt unsustainable price-based competition, creating negative race-to-the-bottom dynamics that harm entire industry value perception
high · Alan: 'I think this is the foolish way to try to win business... you're teaching the consumer that pinball is not worth the market rate'
?
business_signal: Limited operating hours create competitive disadvantage and prevent reaching potential customers with conflicting schedules; flexibility on hours critical to success
high · Alan: 'if you're closed Mondays and Tuesdays... there's a lot of people that work during the day and they can't come to your place. And so they won't'
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business_signal: Wedgehead's transition from coin-op to free-play model represents deliberate differentiation strategy in crowded market; successfully fills niche not served by competitors
high · Alan: 'we went from coin op to free play. That's a way to differentiate ourselves in the market. It was a way to add variety to the local scene because nobody else was doing it'
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business_signal: Multiple successful independent arcade bars (Wedgehead, Logan Arcade, Electric Bat, 81 Arcade) demonstrate viable business model despite capital requirements
high · Panel comprised of three operating independent bars sharing best practices; Alan notes more people wanting to start their own operations
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community_signal: Standing-room-only attendance at Expo panel on independent arcade bar operations indicates growing interest in operator/business side of pinball hobby

Transcript

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0:00

🎵 Hello, everybody, and welcome to another episode of the Wedgehead Pinball Podcast. My name is Alan, your host of this podcast and one of the owners of Wedgehead, a pinball bar in Portland, Oregon. I'm joined by my normal co-host, Alex the Waterboy, who's not affiliated with the bar, but is the integral half of this podcast. The backbone, shall we say, of this podcast. Alex the Waterboy, how are you doing? I'm doing great, Alan. How about yourself? Doing great, man. We want to start this episode off with a new thing we're doing. We did a Q&A episode to celebrate our one-year anniversary.

1:03

And in that episode, I said, we don't monetize this podcast. We are not run by ads or sponsorships or anything like that. But we got a lot of, or not a lot, we got a few of you reach out and said, we would love to support the show because we love it. So I decided to set up a Ko-fi account, which is, Ko-fi is a website that's similar to Patreon, but they give us a kind of a better split. and it's ko-fi.com slash Wedgehead Podcast. And what we're doing there is if you feel so inclined, you enjoy the show, anything we've done over the last year, enjoy listening and you want to support us, you can donate one time or you can set up like a monthly contribution in the amount that you choose. And what we're trying to do is we got some friends on the East Coast and they all want us to come to Pentastic New England. So we decided why not set that up as our goal? Yeah, the website is, you know, coffee. I think the intention is it's supposed to be like tipping and you go buy a cup of coffee or whatever with it. We don't waste our money on stupid shit like coffee. We're saving up to go to Pentastic and see our buddies on the East Coast. So if you want to help us get to Pentastic or you just want to thank us for the work that we do, you enjoy the show, you're one of those people that messaged me and said, hey, I would love to support you guys. How do I support you? Go to ko-fi.com slash Wedgehead Podcast. We'll put the link in the show notes. so if you just want to click on that it will make it easy and we appreciate each and every one of you for listening yeah thanks so that being said what's our episode today alex uh it's a little bit of a rerun actually we're we're begging for money and we're giving you shit that's already been talked about before because it's we're going to kind of sum up you went to expo right you went to football expo you and rosie and a whole bunch of other people it looked like a shit ton of people there and you guys actually gave a talk at Expo. So today we're going to talk about your talk at Expo which was how to run a successful independent arcade bar at Pinball Expo. We were invited to be on a panel with Zespi, the owner of Logan Arcade in Chicago and Rachel and Kale, guests of the show and owners of the Electric Bat Arcade in Tempe, Arizona. Yeah, good company. Those are both very legit places it's surprising they would associate with riffraff like yourself i know and i was also surprised we obviously like this shit people that that listen to the podcast kind of like hearing about the business side of things and everyone's curious about it but i was shocked i'm like genuinely surprised when i saw the turnout for your guys's seminar was insane like it was a packed fucking room yeah it was pretty cool to see people are like yeah people are curious about this. People like hearing this stuff. So we figured we'd get it down on podcast form as well for anybody that wasn't lucky enough to get there or, you know, couldn't fit into the room. Yeah, because it was opening day at Expo 11 a.m. So but it was standing room only. And it just goes to show that more and more people want to do this same thing. They're looking for places in their own town and they're thinking, why not me? Why not me be the operator? There's no pinball around. Why can't I do it? You know, there's some things you should know. If you listen to the show for a while, we try to talk to other operators. It's a big part of the show. I try to give some helpful advice as much as I can. I prepared some show notes that I gave because I wanted to be prepared when I spoke at this thing because I didn't really know what to expect. But my big thing is when you're thinking about running your own arcade bar, I think you've got to think about how you compete in a marketplace, right? And there's different ways to compete. I wrote down basically kind of four different ways that you can use to differentiate yourself. Some places you might have established competition, like there might already be an arcade bar. Just because there's an arcade bar in your town doesn't mean you can't do one. Many big cities have multiple arcade bars, but you have to decide how you're going to compete in that marketplace. The first way to do it is price. And I think this is what most people think of. Yeah, this is right. When you when you come to market, this is the best way to succeed is you look at people that have been doing this for a while. You go, well, I can do the same thing and I can do it even cheaper than those guys because I know more than the people that are already doing it. And so you can you know, you just go in there and you just start it up. And with pinball, you just boom, you get your sterns, you make them 50 cents because the place across town is 75 cents and you win. Right, Alan? Yeah, it's scabbing. Yeah, I think this is the foolish way to try to win business. Not only will it, you know, probably upset the other people in town, but pinball machines in particular are very expensive. They require lots of space and lots of skilled maintenance. I don't recommend trying to like really undercut people on pinball pricing because you might win that battle but lose the war. It creates a race to the bottom because what you're doing is you're teaching the consumer that, hey, pinball is not worth the market rate. Pinball should be worth less. And so you're teaching a consumer to expect less. Yeah. And you might be able to work all the time and try to win accounts that way or try to steal some business by offering plays on a pinball machine for a quarter less or whatever. But what you're doing is devaluing the game of pinball. And the problem is, is that, you know, Stern's not going to sell you a game for cheaper because you decide to charge less for it, right? Your rent's not going to be cheaper because your landlord decided, hey, well, it's cool because you're charging 50 cents for a game. Your labor in that town is not going to be cheap. Your insurance isn't going to be cheaper. So you can put yourself in a really bad predicament by setting the price low and customers expectations low. Right. That's what I was going to say. It's like once you do that, if that's how you're trying to win people over, the people you win over by trying to undercut competition will always be following the cheapest pinball. And so the minute that's not sustainable for you, you'll lose that customer base that you won by being cheap. Now, you might have other good customers that you pick up in the meantime, but the ones that you're really impressing with that aren't good customers. Because if that's all you offer, that's not much. And what happens is that you end up having to cut corners somewhere. Typically, it's labor. Typically, it's maintenance. Maybe you're not rebuilding flippers that should be rebuilt. Maybe you're not cleaning the games as often as you should be. It just cycles down because at a certain point for anybody, the buck has to stop somewhere. And if you're undercharging for what you're providing, like if you're trying to open a place and you need these machines to earn their weight and to pay the electric bill and to pay for your insurance and to pay for labor and to do all the not only to pay for themselves, you know, in your initial investment, but to make money, you're only shooting yourself in the foot. So I would say that when you go into a marketplace, you can if you want. Obviously, people do do this, but I think it's my advice would be this is the poor way to do it. And I think I got nods of agreement from both Zespi and Rachel and Kale in the sense that like we all understand the same thing. Like pinball has to cost what it has to cost. You know, like we know it because we're in the business. But you trying to break into the business, you might not know that you might be like, this will be easy. I'll undercut it. And then you'll find out what we already know, which is you can't do it for 50 cents a play, right? Like you can't buy brand new games and do it for 50 cents. I think the other thing you can compete on is convenience. So a lot of people make decisions where they go out to eat, where they go out to hang out or whatever is based on how close they are to something, how convenient it is. How easy it is. And some of that is just location, location, location, right? Like the old business adage of like location super important. you can't really control whether you you're close to them or not but what you can control as far as convenience is not only make the way you do everything convenient so if it's they need to get coins or quarters or tokens from you make it so where you have a change machine make it so where you have two change machines make it so where the change machine doesn't take forever to kick out coins like make it so where if they need cash you have an atm in the building like make things convenient because all of those little pain points will cause someone to go to somewhere else rather than you. So if you're, if you're doing all those things, consider the customer experience. And the other thing I would say about convenience is be open as much as you possibly can be. Like people work different days of the week, but what happens is you run a business, especially if you're like, Hey, I'm going to be the only one here. I'm opening up an arcade. Like, and I'm going to be the only one there. Okay. You need days off, right? Like you're a normal human being, but if you're closed Mondays and Tuesdays or Monday, Tuesday, Wednesdays, or you're closed Sunday, Mondays, or you're closed, whatever, whatever it is, or you're like, I only want to work during the days. Cause my kids are in school. I'm not going to be open at night. Well, there's a lot of people that work during the day and they can't come to your place. And so they won't, you know, like there's lots of places that do that and it's fine if you're running it as kind of like a hobby business, you have a little plot of land, you can kind of open up a collection every once in a while and it's fine. But if you're trying to make this your job. Yeah, if you're trying to be like a legitimate location, and it's something that we touched on when we did the Mega Locations episode a while back, but it's like it can really be to a place's detriment, like the limited hours thing. Yeah. Because there's a lot of really sick locations that had limited hours. They're too limited. We didn't include them on our list. But even some of the ones where it's like if they're open just two days a week or something, it's like that makes it really difficult to come visit that place. Yeah. When you're that scale. And on a smaller scale, like your local place, it'll still be difficult for locals to come visit you if it doesn't work out. You know, if it's the night that they have trivia at their normal bar or whatever. Yeah. And that's like that's the night they would be going to play pinball and you're closed or, you know, whatever. It's just one of those things that. Yeah, it's something you should be considering. So it's like everything should be as easy as possible for the customer. So if you're running a spot where it's on coin drop or tokens or whatever, or even cards, make that experience of buying the cards, buying the tokens, getting the quarters, whatever, make it as easy as possible. Like, go out of your way to make it easy and then be open as much as you possibly can where you're not actively hemorrhaging money. And, you know, play with your hours and stuff. But, like, think about the convenience of everything you can. You can't really change your location once you're in it. You can try to choose the best location you can when you get in, but even then, the best locations have higher rents. So there's a balancing act of all that kind of stuff. But you should be aware of it. It's very, very important. Yeah. Next bullet point, I'm going to change the title. You have this title somewhere, but I'm going to just say game lineup. Game lineup. I labeled it variety. Because variety is what I think – because game lineup is one of the ways you compete, but variety is the way you should compete, I feel like. That's what you're saying, right? I would say, like, essentially, like in a marketplace, you can have multiple, say, in your town, you want to open up a place because you're not happy with X, Y, or Z that's in your scene. Maybe there's one big brewery. They've got eight machines, but they're all modern sterns or they're all half working, half dead Bally Williams games from the 90s. Yep. Whatever the case is. Right. Like, for some reason, they're not filling the niche. They don't have the brand. They're not buying every new game as it comes out. Like X-Men comes out, this place doesn't buy it, right? You look at that and go, this is my niche. I can do this. I could be the person that makes sure I get to the new games. Like I can do that. That's how I offer variety in this marketplace. That's how I separate myself. When we do it, we do it with different eras of games because in the city of Portland, we have more pinball machines on location than any other city in the world. So we're in the most competitive marketplace and the Portland metro area is about 2.5 million people. So it's a very small metro area and we have more machines, not only per capita, but also just in sheer number of machines, volume on location. So how do we compete in a very crowded marketplace where so many bars, so many coffee shops and everything, laundromats and that stuff have pinball machines here? What makes us unique? So we thought about this was like Frank Thomas is big hurt. It's something that it's just that's a funny example. It's one that just left the floor at Wedgehead. But that's a good example of just being like, this is something that you can't play anywhere else. And you're going to have the best, most dialed example of big hurt for baseball season or whatever. Yeah, now it's gone. It's baseball season's over. But I think that's just I kind of messed up your you're talking about because you want to talk on variety and all aspects of the business. But the variety of the game lineup as a customer is a huge way for places to you know give themselves a distinction from other spots in town So for Wedgehead it like there are some solid state games out in around Portland but not a lot So we were always going to do some kind of classic solid states There was pretty much no EMs. Now there's a couple, but still not a lot. So we're making sure that we're always going to have Wedgeheads and other EMs always as part of our lineup, and we will put oddballs out there. I did find it interesting during this seminar is that Zespi from Logan also kind of backed it up and we both talked about it in our seminar that oddballs earn like you talked about frank thomas yeah we have it now with tag team those games do very well they get played a lot his is uh bone busters right now gotley premiere bone busters it's a game that's rated pretty lowly but also when i went there i was there for expo and i went to logan and i played the shit out of that game and he's like yeah these oddballs can earn i like they can earn because there's no other place to play them and they're unusual so variety helps you as a business the oddball games are interesting because when casuals show up they don't know that that game's bad they just know like well this is a like a funny game you've had if it's like one of the got leaves that has like a bizarre 90s movie tie you know theme it to them that's just as alluring like if you're someone that's a complete casual that is just as like tempting like that's going to get a play as much as a brand new stern that has an expensive license and everything right yeah potentially and then when you have experienced players they've already played every other game in your place except for that one oddball so they're gonna go put a like a buck in it no matter what so it's always kind of interesting to see operators talk about this because i'll always browse like the what games are earning threads on pin side and stuff and operators will have the best luck with the shittiest games yeah and it's just it's just because it's filling that niche and i think filling people can't play water world somewhere and you have a nice dialed water world or a bay watch or any weird game like that yeah that does well on the floor it adds variety it also will be people now use like the pinball map yeah they will plan their trips based on your lineup if you're a pinball spot and pinheads you're trying to draw pinheads to your spot they're going to look at what games you have on the floor what kind of weirdos would plan trips are around what games they see on the pinball map. So we regularly, prior to starting this podcast, I guess a little bit of overlap, we would regularly go on road trips, me and Alan and a couple other buddies, Ty and Jay, who've been on the show. And we would only go to locations that had at least two pre-alphanumeric games, ideally, so solid states. No, we do alphanumerics. Pre-DMD. Yeah, pre-DMD is what we would do. And so we'd have to make sure, because it got to the point where it's if we went to a place and they didn't have what we call solid states but not necessarily a strict definition if they didn't have enough old games we couldn't play multiplayer games together because it just annoyed us because it's like we're going on this trip like we're going on a little road trip to play pinball if they don't have old games so it's funny like having two old games at a place was enough to make us stop there yeah and we checked out some really cool places as a result of that and we probably passed over some what would be cool places because they didn't have anything except for modern games. Yeah. It's a way you should never discount that variety helps and variety is important and an important way to differentiate yourself in a market. Yep. If you have the exact same lineup as the place across town, why do you expect people to choose you? Yeah. It's just one other way that people make decisions on where, whether they go to your spot or to their spot or whatever. Again, it's also kind of, it's like when you're competing on price, it's kind of a move to the other business to just start buying up the exact same games as them if you're in a small town they will notice immediately when a new place opens and if you've got you know if you got a deadpool a jaws and a godzilla at your place in a new place across town opens and they have a deadpool godzilla and a jaws you'd go what the fuck man it's so just don't do that it's also not fun when you're a customer you're like we want to support more places customers like to go from different place to different place everyone likes to play at different places so they're going to go in and out but the reason why they're going to come to you is because you offer them something that something else doesn't offer yeah you know and we also do things like we do food and we you know we offer extra things as well that maybe some of our other arcade competition maybe they do offer but they don't offer at the same quality yeah other variety is like your tournament formats and stuff yeah wedge obviously has had big success with howdy partner and you don't necessarily run a howdy partner, but you can fill the niches and all sides of the hobby like that to set yourself apart from the competition. Yeah, there's a million IFPA run tournaments. There's a bunch of launch party tournaments that happen all the time in town. That's why we don't do those, because, you know, there's like eight or nine places and how they get a launch party for the same game. And you're like, OK, well, why are they going to come to us? You know, they're going to go to the places closest to them or is the earliest or is on the day that's most convenient or whatever, right? So it's like you have to offer something that other people don't offer. I think that's very important. And the last one I said is quality. That's the other way you compete in a market. It is the best way to compete in any market. It doesn't matter what you're doing. Quality is always the best way to compete. You differentiate yourself from the pack and, you know, pinball's best and worst qualities are that they require constant maintenance and repair to be at its best. It sucks for obvious reasons because you're always going to have to be fixing, cleaning, and maintaining your games. And the more they get played, the better you are at doing that. And the more they get played, the more you have to do that, right? But this also helps you. This helps you in a way too, because you can always outwork your competitors and you can give them a better quality playing experience. Prioritizing quality builds an immense amount of value for your customers the pinball players are very very anal and picky we're all like this is a little sticky it's a little this is a little that all those little things is a little dirty uh some of the gi's a little bit out if you're that person that's a player and goes in and does that extra work your competitors won't and you can stand out so it's kind of like a good and bad thing about yeah always needing constant maintenance it's bad because it's work but it's good because it's just work like it's you can work your way into a good reputation and the thing is is you need to make sure that you're meticulous about your maintenance it's super important takes a long time to build a reputation but you can ruin it in a flash dude it's amazing how that's the sad part about how fast you can ruin a reputation if you because if you go into a place like people will judge a place on one visit and they will never come back based off that visit if it goes poorly and like the how the games play and just the overall quality of everything you're delivering the food you're doing the service at the bar every piece of it if it's a bad experience that customer you might lose them forever forever they might not come back all of their friends yeah like it can play sucks yeah and so it's just like it's it's nuts how how consistent you have to be to get the good reputation you know i love the quote is basically that you are what you do every day you know that's what makes you what you are you're not what you say you're gonna do you're not what you do one time you are what your habits are so you need to build good habits building habits is very very important like i said it takes forever to build a reputation but you can ruin it yeah be over in a flash so dedicate yourself to it and you know look around you and see what's around because that's the bar whoever runs the best quality shit around you that's the bar you have to be you have to meet them there or exceed them yeah some places that'll be easier some places that'll be harder, but no matter what you're thinking about doing, you should be focused on your quality first and foremost. Okay. That's the four ways you compete. Now we got into some more just general advice. It looks like I have some general advice here. I do know that I know that Zespi brought this up from Logan and I have this in my notes too. This is very important. You're about to start your arcade bar. If you've never worked on machines before, you will need someone who will be there full-time for tech repairs.

22:23

Yeah, that's critical. Like, seen a couple places open and immediately start, like, panicking and looking for a full-time tech. You got to have that lined up before you open. It's just what we're talking about with quality, and it's about your reputation. Ideally, this person that'll be there full-time will have an ownership stake because maintenance is by far the most important piece to operating pinball machines, And it isn't something that's best learned on the fly once your doors are open. Okay. Like you've figured out later. No, no, that's not, that's not acceptable. Yeah. Your customers are not going to be like, they're not going to be waiting around to give you another chance to see if you figure out how to make pinball machines work. Like, well, they tried. No pinball players are ruthless. So, and skilled pinball techs aren't just growing on trees. So you need to have one committed and on staff right from the beginning. Yeah. Right. And more so if you're going to run certain arcade cabinets or if you're going to run Japanese candy cabs or whatever differences of the machines you're going to run, you need to have someone that's on it, that's going to be with you. You can't have just a friend that, hey, I have a buddy. He's real handy. He'll swing by once in a while to check on the games. Like once a month, he's got a real job and he's going to swing. That's not good enough. And I see that happen a lot too. That's just not good enough, man. Yeah, don't abuse your friends in the hobby. like that stuff cascades fast too like i work on machines every single day we were gone in chicago i was giving this seminar giving this about how important it is i come back there's four games that got turned off four games and you know like all those fixes because roads was gone i was gone we're never gone at the same time yeah you know so it's usually either him or myself can come by and fix something. So games are never down like that. We had four games down. I had to come in. Three of the four were five minute fixes. But they still have to happen. They have to happen. Yeah. And that's the part I think it's there's a lot of people that will open places and they can't even do the five minute fixes themselves. And then it's like, dude, you got to think this through a little more. It's super important. I mean, Zespi hammered at home. I made sure, you know like i hammered at home it's having a skilled tech from day one or you're cooked from the get-go i'm not sure if it's in here but i think it's also really nice if a place has a bank of backup games so if you do have something that can't be fixed while it's on the floor if you're waiting for like a long board repair you're hunting down a rare part or something you can rotate the game and get the broken game off the floor i know that's like something that like my buddy errol that runs 81 arcade in sioux falls south dakota the best arcade in the entire midwest probably but he has a whole bunch of backup games and shit does not sit broken on the floor for more than a day it's like okay if a monitor dies in a game we're not going to sit here and repair the chassis on the floor we're going to cart the game out of here and get a new arcade swap something in that's i think most places do we don't have the room to do that but we do have a storage space yeah roadsy has that and we will do that and like that's not i just mean like don't let something sit there because there's other places you go into where a game might be down and you go back a month later and the same game is still waiting still down they're like oh yeah we can't find a new trunk for theater of magic and you're like well then get that fucking eyesore out of here yeah customers don't want to come in and feel bad for your like dilapidated games absolutely so that's just my always i'm like just even if even if you're an operator and you have four games at a bar your buddy's bar across town or whatever try to have a fifth game in your garage at home just in case you should always have extras i've talked about this on the show before but yeah you you need to be prepared to swap something in for when big repairs happen or you need to get specialty parts or whatever yeah you know swap it out and put a working game on the floor right away um the other thing i would say general advice is like just be able to be flexible like what you go into your business as and what it ends up being you need to adapt to your surroundings you're not going to have all the answers, especially if this is your first time, your first arcade, your first business, first bar, whatever it may be. I hope it's not your first bar if you're trying to run a bar, but I understand people get into these things. There's a lot you need to know. There's also different scales of businesses. Some of them are easy. But you're going to have events and things that happen to you that can and should change how you do things if you want to survive and you want to be successful. We changed our hours of operation We used to be open from noon to midnight every day of the week, and we just did not get the traffic in the daytimes to justify it. We were just hemorrhaging money, and it just didn't make sense. You know, then we had COVID, and we had a short staff, and we changed all these things. But the key is not to be stubborn. We changed our payment method. You know, we went from coin op to free play. That's a way to differentiate ourselves in the market. It was a way to add variety to the local scene because nobody else was doing it. The only other place that does it is at next level that's out in Hillsborough, not in the city of Portland. So don't be afraid to change things when things don't work. You need to adapt to your situations. And even big things like that you need to be able to not be stubborn and to be flexible this is a big one too is like i say to be aware of the concept as a business of diminishing returns For example you run a tournament and a lot of players show up The night's a big success. There's lots of people in your bar. Everyone's excited. It's really busy in there. Like, oh, my God, there's people on every machines. This is great. The night's a huge success. So it's not unreasonable to think, well, why don't we just do this every day? we want to be busy every day right but the reason you don't is because less people will show up if you do a special quote-unquote event all the time you know why go tuesday when they also do it thursday and they also do it saturday you will probably just end up with the same amount of business stretch across three days instead of one yep and remember if every day is a special day then no day is a special day exactly and i think that's key you see i don't want to like kick anyone while you're down but you see struggling businesses a lot suddenly pivot and bars you see this with bars constantly and not just pinball bars just bars across america when things start looking dire they start making posts on instagram about how like oh it's two for tuesday oh it's like wacky wednesday oh it's like drag bingo thursday oh it's like karaoke friday if every fucking day first of all it's exhausting if you just wanted to go there and get a drink and there's all this shit going on and second of all it's just like it's fun when it's a rarity and it's like an occasion and a reason to come out and you know it's going to be something like actually special it's not fun when it's just like oh this is just your daily schedule like it's not noteworthy it's chaotic no day is a special day if every day is supposed to be a special day yeah that's diminishing returns yeah that's diminishing returns and you need to be aware of it as the business owner you also need to preserve time for people that don't want to be around an event yeah whether it's trivia it's karaoke it's whatever it's a pinball tournament even if you're a pinball bar there's lots of pinball players that just want to show up and play by themselves and play whatever machine and not have to be roped into a tournament or not be crowded out by a tournament i mean this even happens on our howdy partners you know they're sometimes people show up and they're like oh man you know like the whole room's packed and like i'm not here for this like that's the trade-off but that's why we don't do two or three howdy partners a week right now it's one day a week it's four times a month that's the special and we don't do a lot of other tournaments we do one women's tournament every month and that's it you know like that's all we do you because you there's a balancing act you have to be careful you have to have times where there's not an event you have to just be a spot that people can go to without having to like plan around it yes because again like going back to how you can ruin your reputation in one night if you go into a place it's like if you go into a place and it's just slam packed speaking from personal experience with just standard bars if you go into a place and you're like oh shit it's you know drag bingo night or whatever yeah you just run into that a lot in portland for some reason yeah and you go and you're like oh shit okay and then you go back another week and you run into another event where it's like i'm never going to go to that bar again and that's just the reality of it and that can happen to pinball play like that can happen to serious pinball players and that can really happen to casual customers that a pinball bar would obviously want you need both of those customers you do things to engage the tournament players in the base it's a great way to to draw them in if you have a regular kind of event whether it's a league or just a regular kind of weekly tournament or something like that, or monthly or whatever it is, they will come in and they will come in beforehand, maybe that same day or a day before to practice on the machines or whatever. That is good for your business. You just got to be careful. You can't do it all the time. You know, the other thing we do is like we do, we get businesses that want to host private parties at Wedget. They want to buy us out. Right. And those are great. You got to do the hosts, right like you have to as a business you have to do those but you have to make sure you're making money to do those like so we quote a minimum that people have to spend that's more than we would make on an average night of that week so that i'm going to guarantee myself that i'm going to make say 20 more than my average night because that's because every time someone shows up and there's a sign on the door and i post on it and i put it on our google page you know but you have regulars They're like, hey, let's go to Wedge. They're open. They show up. Oh, they're closed because they're hosting a private party. That's going to put them off. So you better be damn sure that if you're closed, you're making money because you're turning away your normal business. Yeah. I think that's the thing about all of the events is that they have to be worthwhile because otherwise it's risking like ostracizing your normal customers. Branding. How do you feel about branding independent bars? I think branding is super important. obviously, for an independent bar. I said this at the seminar, and I'll say it again. The world has enough corporate chain arcade bars. That might be the only arcade bar you have in your town. Yeah, and some of them might be good. Some of them might be fine, but you want to make sure that you stand out. Again, you have to stand out in this. So make sure your bar has a distinct flavor. It's hard to stand out from the crowd if your spot looks and feels like everywhere else you don't want people to be like oh is that the spot with the mario jumping on the mushroom mural no no no it's the pac-man getting chased by the ghost mural right like oh is that one up level up coin up coin one ready player what like you know what i'm saying like those places have very generic names and they may or may not be good places but the you need to stand out against them not doing them any favors. Yeah, because they're creating their own market confusion amongst themselves. So you need to figure out a way where you're not going to be confused with them. Yeah. Cultivating the vibe of being a Dave and Buster's junior isn't the goal, I would say. No. Dave and Buster's is going to squash you like a bug. So it's like you need to figure out your own niche. Yeah. You know what I mean? Yeah. So you need to go out of your way and you need to think about it. Don't contribute to market confusion and malaise and give yourself a unique name at the very least give yourself a unique vibe again look at your market and go here's what's there how do i create something that's not there but i know these people would appreciate variety and i don't know if it's a separate point on here or if you didn't want to get too into it on this presentation but i'd say part of that branding is to just pay fucking artists that are professional artists to make art instead of expecting someone you know to make a cool t-shirt for you that you might think looks great or you might be too scared to tell your nephew he's dog shit but guys if you have a business and you have a hundred thousand dollars a pinball machine sitting there now is not the time to save three hundred dollars when you're designing a t-shirt that you're gonna you know be selling for the next fucking 10 years please please pay artists this is one thing that wedgehead did that really uh made it stand out to me i mean there were a lot of reasons when i moved to portland that I kind of honed in on Wedgehead, but they have phenomenal merch, and that's all part of the branding, and it's all done by actual artists. Alan's a talented, you know, he's done some graphic design in the background. He's done some really good stuff for Wedge, but he's not trying to do all of it. Even if you are a very talented designer, even if you do have a background doing commercial artistry, if you're running a barcade, you're wearing so many other hats. Take one off. Let artists be artists. Pay artists. Just do the art. First of all, art, the world is better with artists making art. No matter what art you subscribe to, whether you watch movies or television shows, you listen to music, you just like to look at something that's pretty or cool. Hey, artists, that's how they get to keep making art. Yeah. So, like, you have a business. This is a great way to commission art, and it's for your business. It'll help your business. It'll help them. You'll supply an artist. They're going to give you something that's way better than what your nephew who kind of learned Photoshop kind of does. Nobody's going to tell you it looks bad, but they're just not going to buy it. The best advice, yeah, is you should absolutely hire artists. It's like short cutting to making shit look good. It's comical to me in this one that I really wanted to hammer up because I didn't see it in your list. And just from like a customer, like a customer side, it sucks when you go to a place and you're like, I like this place. I like the owner, you know, especially if you're like visiting and you're like, I want to support the place. I've already dumped all my quarters and I've already bought food and beers from them. I would love to buy a shirt, but their shirt looks like dog shit and they only have one. And I don't want it. Like I, I've been there where I've bought shirts and they're just sitting in my closet because I wanted to support the place. I never wear the shirt. So I'm not really even supporting them because I'm not even doing the advertising bit of that deal. Yeah. That's the other thing is like your merch is an advertisement. Anytime someone pays you for it and they wear it around you also want people to not be like that's the place that makes the ugly shirt you want it to be cool you want it to be the reason why bands hire artists to make their merch is because they want people to wear it around to go oh that's a cool shirt and you go hey it's this little band they're called metallica you know like you should check them out right like that's what you need to do so that's something we do it's just not that hard i feel like to find a really cool artist on Instagram and reach out and ask if social media makes it easy and just look for stuff that other people do that's cool and then find out who the artist is yeah or just hire them you have someone that you've been if you have social media and you're not following any artist that's kind of bizarre to me because it's a visual that's psycho shit and it's like a lot of the time these artists are not above like doing commissions like no they thrive on commissions some artists might be way outside of your realm or your pay range or they're too busy or whatever, but you will find somebody out there who's talented that will take on your job, you know, and just, you know, know what you like, know what you don't like, and just try to be a good organizer of thoughts because this will be your first time art directing. You are an art director when you commission art, so you have to... Yeah, you're Greg Freris now. You are exactly the same as Greg Freris. that responsibility is on you for your business now so anyway that was my one thing i wanted to add to the add to the notes yeah i just want to hammer home again like i said earlier you are what you repeatedly do not what you do one time or what you do occasionally excellence is not an act but a habit so make good habits roads and i always joke about this because whenever we have a really busy night or a really busy week, we just joke that we're a six-year overnight success. You know, six years later, overnight success. Just came up out of nowhere. Just out of nowhere. Creeps up out of nowhere, but that's not how it goes. You start with a really small snowball at the top of the hill, it gathers steam, gets bigger and bigger and bigger, but only if you do it well, because people have to have good experiences and they'll tell more and more and more people, but it can go away fast. The other thing I said in the seminar was I mentioned just sort of the size of the markets. We were in Chicago. Chicago is a really big city. There are almost 9 million people in the metro area of Chicago. For the majority of time, almost every pinball machine was made in the city of Chicago, but it still doesn't have a ton of machines on location. They have 145 locations with a total of 516 games in active operation. Pinball machine for every 17,400 people. Phoenix, where the electric bat is from, they have 81 total locations with a total of 488 pinball machines. The Phoenix metro area has 4.7 million people. That's a pinball machine for every 9,800 people, right? And in Portland, like I said, we got 293 locations, almost 1,200 pinball machines in active operation in a population of 2.5 million. That's a pinball machine for every 2,128 people.

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So it's kind of nuts. It's way different. It's a way when you're competing in these markets, they're different, right? Yeah. Every piece of it's going to be different. Your competition is different. Your rent price is different. Your labor price is different. Your food and supplies. the competition for beer in the area is going to be different. Yes. So it's what works for any one of us might not work for you in the exact same way, but the overarching compete on quality, try to be as convenient as possible, have a skilled technician, bring value to your customers, give them variety, offer them something that they can't get elsewhere. All of those things still ring true. Yeah. No matter what you're doing. But the individual like, hey, you run an IFPA event on this day of the week or you run multiples that works for you. That wouldn't work for us here in Portland. It just wouldn't. The market's too saturated. So we all run successful arcade bars and we all do it a little bit differently. But, you know, the electric bat is rad and Logan Arcade is rad. So you can do it different ways, but you do have to be, you know, it's a hard business. Yeah. You know, it's a hard business to compete in, for sure. And then we also took some questions from the audience. You want to ask, I paraphrase these. I get to be, I get to play audience. Oh, so I got a question right here. Why don't you guys do free play? Isn't the free play model a good way to introduce new players? Why doesn't the free play model work? So this happened because, you know, I think Zespi started off the seminar. he was just talking about he on coin op because he likes the he thinks it better it makes you more engaged in the gameplay We covered this in our payment systems He his argument is that, you know, it's, I like paying per play. That's nostalgic. That's the way it should be, you know, the electric batter on tokens. So they kind of agreed. So this person asked, you know, what about free play? What about free play? They didn't realize that like we do free play. And yeah, I do think it does help get new players interested. I mean, we did this whole episode on payment methods. You should go back and listen to it. That's why I told the people in the seminar, I was like, hey, self-promotion here. We got a podcast. We did a whole episode where we deep dive into payment methods. Really, really good podcast. A really good one. Top of the heap. But we talk about every one of these because they all have pros and cons. There is no one perfect way that has that comes with zero cons. They all have pros and cons. Yeah. And I think this is also like the variety in the market. And like you said earlier, this is an example of something different that Wedge offers that nowhere else in Portland proper does. We already did an episode on the actual payment, so I don't need to keep reiterating that. We don't need to jump too much into the points of it, but it is one of those things where in Zespi's market, I guess there are some really shitty free play arcades. Yeah. And he's like, hey, we're differentiating ourselves because those places are shit. I had some people come up to me after the seminar, and they're like, wow, he's dogging on you. You just let him go. was like i mean i he's not talking about me like i mean he's talking about the shitty free play arcades like there's like that's not me yeah you can do it well and i do think that it has unique advantages and one of the big advantages of free play aside from like labor and stuff uh saving lots of labor is that you it does get new people in yeah it's it's easier to get people in the door people that haven't played before they prefer it yeah it's super nice when you're playing with someone that's just starting out and you just be like oh no man it's 12 bucks i'm like that's it yeah they're like oh really and even if they would have only played four games with you if you had been at a normal bar this will be a better experience for them like just 100 because it removes that pressure and fear always something to think about okay next question all of you guys are sponsored by or have very close ties to stern so when you speak about sterns how are we supposed to believe what you say isn't directly influenced by them do they give you talking points does this affect the way you view other manufacturers and their games? Why don't you guys run JJPs or spooky games? So this was, I remember this being like an, like a very pointed question that somebody in the crowd asked all of us was basically like looking at all of us and being like, you guys are shills. Like you guys are like stern shills, right? I had to be like, well, you know, we're not like, we're not a part of the Stern Army. We don't host launch parties. We run EM games. I named ourselves after single player EM machines. We offer that and whatever. But furthermore, I don't think that the Bat or Logan are shills either. Now, Logan has, they're like kind of a test location. So manufacturers in Chicago will bring them games and, you know, test out code and all that kind of stuff. So it's like, yeah, that's natural. Any arcade would do that in that position. Even the opportunity. If you're opening an arcade bar listening to this and you have the opportunity to be a test location for like any manufacturer, you should do that. I think that they trust Zespi and Logan to give them good feedback to make the games better. I don't think he's just like, yeah, you know, this game's the best. Like, I'm sure that they there's a there's a give and take. And he's probably doing a lot of work to help make those games better when they come out as a test location. I'm also curious, Bat and Logan's and Wedge, you're not trying to sell people anything more than the first, like, being accused of being shills, even if you were being given these games for free, let's say. Like, absolutely, you're like, what are you trying to get out of that besides, like, a dollar to play them? Like, you can make up your own mind. You're not, none of these, none of these, it's a weird thing to kind of be like, well, how can I trust your opinion on this? And you're like, well, why do you need my opinion at all? come in and play it i i included it because i remember it being a very pointed question i think it's i do remember that that's also sort of like how people that's a common internet sentiment right is like that's but that's what i'm saying like why do people think like people always like look at operators and arcade owners with this like predatory mindset and that's what we always joke about that you guys are all just diving into your scrooge mcduck fucking uh pool full of quarters i will say that if the games didn't earn none of us would be running them yeah so it's like it's not about being a shill or whatever and like i said like we don't run leaderboards we don't do the army like we're you specifically being accused of being i was like hey man we are not shills dude you how dare you being accused of like being a stern simp is the funniest shit possible because there's like zero stern branding inside of wedge head at all there's not any extraneous stern anything there no leaderboards no unnecessary toppers no promotion on instagram of the new games the games are good and they they you know they do it on their own i always say this like we talk about it on the show all the time i love sterns they make great products great price points they're super reliable and players play them that's why we buy them we always get all the new ones when people ask what game should i buy i will say you need to buy a stern that's what you need to do i'm not a shill dude i'm not getting paid to say that we're not sponsored and even when like you know like the bat has a great podcast that y'all should check out they're sponsored by stern but they they run sinbad and they run eight ball and they run these old games and they run other games from other manufacturers they run jersey jack and they run spooky games so when this guy was stepping up out of the crowd i was like dude, they run those games. Yeah. Like we're not all shills, dude. We're just saying like, hey, Stern is the 800 pound gorilla in the industry. They are the ones driving the bus. If you're going to run an arcade bar, you're going to have, you need to have Sterns. Yeah. Those are the games you need to buy. Yeah. There's no shilling about it. Like that's just the way it is. They're just objectively like you should get these. Yep. Okay. How many games do you need to get started? That's actually a good question. So someone asked this and... It depends what your intention is, huh? Well, so we were given, And, you know, the conceit of our seminar was how to start an arcade bar. But I really think like better than that is that it should be whatever you already have is enough. Find a location, start a route. If you have three machines, find a spot to put two or three of your games and then get more. That's how I got into pinball. You started off right away. You bought a high speed. To put into my buddy's arcade. Yeah. Then I bought a Hobbit to put into the arcade. And then at that point I had an EM at home and I was just like, okay, I really like pinball now. And it spiraled from there. Now I live in the most saturated, as we've kind of discussed, the most saturated location pinball market in the entire world. So I'm not super eager to get into routing at this point, but that is the perfect way. If you're thinking about opening an arcade bar, go run a route first. You'll get a lot of experience with the maintenance stuff, infinitely cheaper and less of a risk to your life. You can keep your regular job you can go check on them after work uh you don't have to pay the rent you don't have to pay the insurance you don't have to start an llc you don't have to sign a lease like there's no commitment you can go put a game in and you can have them sign whatever papers you want to have them sign or whatever promise to keep it there for a year if it all goes to hell in two months you could just go get the game back out so i was trying to be like guys you don't need there's no magic number you don't need 15 you don't need 20 you don't need 50 you don't need 70 whatever you have i would start a route first honestly this is that's also good advice good advice to answer the question real directly i'd say like we've been to spots like when we were going on our trips to look at spots to go you know specifically to play pinball we went to places that had 10 games that were fucking awesome and i would love to go back to and we went to places that had 50 games that were dog shit and you'd have to pay me to go back to and we've been to like remember we went to that little brewery and they had four pins and one of them was turned off, but only because they didn't have enough outlets. Yeah. And we plugged in their rollercoaster tycoon after asking the bartender and then we're playing no fear rollercoaster tycoon in a brewery. And we're like there for longer than we've been. Oh man. That was a blast. Yeah. Right. Like that was super fun. So it's like, you can get started that way. And I think you should, you know, that's, that's the big thing. Absolutely. Okay. Last question here is how do you advertise? Is it worth paying for Facebook or Google ads? So this is one of the questions that Kale took. I remember Kale taking the lead on and I think he answered it the best. The Electric Bat and Kale are extremely active and effective in getting their name out there. They're great at social media and meeting new people. I mean, super friendly guy, very excitable, very cool. Like he's exactly what you think you would be, man. He's a great cheerleader for the hobby and for arcades, and he's great at social media. And then he said to this person, do all of them, do all of them that you can do them as much as possible, but don't pay them a dime to advertise. Like do not give Facebook, Instagram, Google, any of your advertising money, use their services for free and whatever reach that gets you do that, but do not pay. And I will say that in my experience, when we ran social media ads and Google ads, didn't move the needle at all. I'd spend five, $600 in a month. I didn't see an extra five or $600. It would just be the same as the month before. It didn't move the needle. That's what I've heard from 81 as well. Yeah, it's just, it doesn't work. It's just like, it was absolutely indiscernible. You can't tell. I mean, maybe somebody saw it and came in, but maybe someone that normally comes in twice a month didn't come in that month so they just kind of washed out you might get a handful or a dozen or so new followers but that doesn't necessarily mean that they're new customers it's kind of like speaking from the customer side i've only ever seen sponsored posts or like paid posts on instagram and facebook for arcades that are like completely across the country they've never actually managed to target any that i have any chance of going to and i also kind of always think less of the place if i see them doing sponsored ads i'm like what's what's the deal here like it's probably something corny and it kind of always is it's like an arcade you know it's like a chain opening up a new branch in new hampshire and i'm here in portland oregon getting an ad for it and you're like okay that's where your money is going is so i can look at it and laugh at how bad the place looks yeah i would say kale would know they're very good at marketing and social media so yeah you would know and that's that was his advice so i like it because it agrees with what i thought whether or not that's what you think you should take it from someone who's an expert in the field and that's what they found that's what i found that's what your buddy errol's found at his arcade and uh do with that what you will i would try doing some other things to get your name out there i would not pay for the internet ads and the social media ads they don't seem to move the needle at all yeah pretty much the end of the seminar more or less i talked to lots of people through the rest of the show uh lots of people that really enjoyed the seminar recognized me from the seminar so that was cool meeting and chatting with all you some interesting people trying to open up arcades around the world and i wish you all the best of luck if you ever get your spots open we would love to come visit like we said at the top of this episode we're doing a new thing we don't want to take any sponsorships i don't want to read ads mostly because i'm lazy and we don't want to become shills we can't become shills dude you're a fan of the podcast you've made it this far in this episode hopefully it's not out of spite and you want to toss a few bucks to sponsor an upcoming trip to hopefully uh fantastic here yeah you can go to ko-fi ko-fi coffee ko-fi.com slash wedgehead podcast yep and you can leave us a donation one time or set up a monthly donation if you like the show we're going to be using this as a way for our fans the show will always be free but if you enjoy the show and you want to support us You want to send us to your town? You want us to check out your local scene? Donate. Leave us a message. Say, hey, come to Cleveland. Hey, come to Tampa. Yeah. That's what we're trying to do. We're not paywalling the show. We're not just trying to get money to buy Alan or Road Kings. God, no. We're trying to justify making some more trips to see more awesome pinball people and pinball places across the country. So if you want to see more of that content, it's a good, you know, good chance to make it happen. Yeah. Yeah, so follow the link. I'll put the link in the show notes. Again, it's ko-fi.com slash Wedgehead Podcast. Leave a note. Send a donation. We appreciate you all for listening. Until next time, we need you to go out, play some pinball on location, support your favorite local independent arcade bar in your region, put some quarters in, some tokens, pay by card, buy a free play wristband, whatever it is that they do, play some pinball on location. And until next time, good luck. Don't suck.