Let the gaming begin!

There are 419 in the Mega Challenge and 40 teams in the team division as of right now. We probably won’t make it to 500 which was Dog of Thunder‘s goal, but it still crushes the previous record for most people in a challenge which I believe they said was around 290.

Inspired by LausDomini I started messing with using the XML feed function in Excel to pull the data from the 360voice API. Boy am I glad I did. I can’t check the Mega Challenge yet because the API won’t pull the gamer data until the challenge launches, but when using the challenge call for my previous challenges it pulls the data with no problems. The only thing I have left is to write the formula for calculating the score on the fly based on the order of the players for each team.

SPIDERMANMTL hit level 20 in the eBash Skyline Challenge yesterday. He is building today so he will need 21. Way to go Spidey. I will be building tomorrow which works out great because everything will also count for the Mega Challenge. Then on Saturday JB330 jumps into the game for his first day build. We have held him until now so that he can go after the first day build prize AND he will be scoring for our CFL team in the Mega Challenge.

At the store this week we are starting some much needed spring cleaning. ee thebum and tagcdove both worked on their sections of the store and I started to tackle mine. It is much easier breaking the 4000 sq ft down into individual sections. I spent almost 4 hours yesterday working on 8 stations. I think we are going to need to start back up the rule of only eating in the lobby because none of us wants our freshly cleaned rooms messed up!

I got a message from Psycoblast saying that he saw some of our posts and joined the Mega Challenge. I am going to try to get him to join the Buffet along with tagcdove and her husband Stinkygoat. I would like to get a core group of 10-20 from the store that participate in 360voice and other gamerscore events with me.

We are starting first thing tomorrow for the Mega Challenge. ee Speirs and ProtipsLOL are meeting me at the store at 8:30 AM and we plan to game all day and then take home a few games to work on that night and Saturday.

Customer Quote of the Day
We like to share some of the crazy things customers say at the store (especially since many of them are younger) so I will try to share some good ones when they happen. This one is courtesy of our employee Eric one Saturday afternoon. We spend tons of our time selling snacks and drinks to the gamers and the younger ones are notorious for coming up and getting one thing at a time about every 10 minutes.

Kid: “Give me a Slim Jim.”
Eric: “Give you a Slim Jim…what?” (obviously expecting a ‘please’)
Kid: “To eat.”

I get tons of inquiries from prospective owners and investors each week.  This week I had a great call with Terell Lipsey who is just in the beginning stages of researching and raising funds and during the conversation I was a bit convicted after our phone call.  As I stepped through the important factors to a successful game center with Terell the first thing I always talk about is the person running the show.

Usually the owner, founder, investor, manager and parent of the store is the entrepreneur themselves.   I have had the experience of trying to replicate our model in 4 different locations now and the key factor to success is always the person running the show.  The biggest mistake you can make in my opinion is to run your store as the “man behind the curtain”.

The relationships you start to build with the employees, customers, parents, spouses, neighboring stores, vendors are of course immensely important to your business success.  Talking with Terell that night really made me start thinking of what my responsibility is with those relationships to make a difference in those people’s lives.

Without this being a spiritual discussion I want to just focus on the fact that I feel all of us as human beings are responsible to make the lives of those around us better.   I don’t think that anyone would dispute that when Haiti experienced the devastating earthquake last year we all felt called to try and help them somehow.  But what am I doing for those people right around me every single day?

I am going to pick on a few individuals at my store because they are on my mind recently.  Some of these folks I have been friends with for the entire 6+ years we have been open but none of them I knew before I opened the doors of the first eBash.  I want to break down one individual in particular because many of these gamers are in the exact same scenario.

 

Mark Repollet
Mark came to our store for a Halo tournament I believe in our first year at 15 years old.  He was quiet and shy but probably one of the best gamers we have seen at the store.  The players immediately embraced him because of his abilities and his kind and passive demeanor.  I don’t think Mark missed a single day we were open, and almost every night I would drive Mark and his younger brother Matt home when we closed at 11 PM along with a few other younger customers.

Mark worked for us for about a year at eBash while he was in high school.  He was late a few days and eventually our manager of the store at the time had to let him go.  Mark also attended youth group meetings with us at church while my wife Janean and I were directing the program and we also took him to church camp where we were counselors in the summer.  Mark has even house/dog sat for us when we go on vacation.  Needless to say we have grown very close to him over the years.

Mark made it through high school and got started at Ivy Tech Community College but didn’t go to class and I believe didn’t make it through one semester.  In 2008 when the flooding hit the Midwest his home was one of the many that was hit and I believe that set him back quite a bit as it did to all of us.  Last year he finally got started for awhile at a call center in town and worked for about 3 months before missing too much work had them let him go.

Now Mark seems to to be standing at a crossroad.  My personality is in-your-face with many of these guys and I constantly am yelling at him to GET A JOB.  The problem seems to be that he is just sitting in this “limbo” time in his life and waiting for something to open up to give him a sign on a direction to take.  He told me this week that he has put at least 5 job applications out there… but when I asked him where he said they were all at Best Buy. 🙂

So after my conversation with Terell I am feeling convicted about Mark and many other people around me at the store who seem to be in similar positions in their lives.  I wouldn’t feel so responsible except that there seems to be 10 people just stuck in a rut for every 1 person who has their act together.

What can I do for the other folks in similar situations?  In every case Janean and I have a great relationship with these individuals but yet I feel we are failing them by not helping to influence them to move onto bigger or better things.  Not as a parent which would (or should) be telling them forcefully to go to college or get a job, but just to help them decide on ANY type of goal and then help them make decisions that move them towards their final destination.

I want to make a difference and I am going to try to help (if they will let me) move them onward in their lives.  I feel that it is my social responsibility as a game center owner to invest my time and efforts into making these guys max out their potential.

So as a call-out to some of you other gamers out there.  Let me know what your life-plan might be and help me see if I am missing something OR how I can help you guys get to the next stages of your life.  People like:  Nate Utt, Zach Rainbolt, Kyle McCormick, Matthew Repollet, Cliff Harrold, Jesse Bridges, Logan Abbinett, Danny Elkins, Ian Bohnsack, Hobie Pyle, Skylar Long, Lloyd Vermillion and Vick Boyer.

Obviously from my terrible lack of posts this week things have been a bit upside down at the store.  I thought it would be applicable to do a quick post on the effects of bad weather and mainly school cancellation with the operations of a game center.  Let’s go through a day-by-day synopsis for the week (**note – customer count each day is gaming customers, not retail customers):

Our local "Super" Wal-mart's milk section during the ice storm.

Monday – 18 Customers
All day everyone is running around scared of the upcoming storm.  Our particular area is in the “Ice Zone” and we are being told there will be up to an inch of ice on everything.  All of the local grocery stores are packed and empty of nearly all bread, eggs and milk.  I included an awesome picture the Shawn took when he was at our super Wal-Mart looking for milk.

School finished as usual this day but all teachers were instructed to go home no later than 4 PM and all evening activities for almost every single business and organization was cancelled.  I opened that day and Tucker was closing and we saw VERY few people all day.  In fact that night, for the first time that I can remember, we shut down early and Tucker went home around 10 PM.  The freezing rain started about 6 PM

Tuesday – 19 Customers
School was cancelled for everyone including Indiana State University and the other local colleges.   About 10,000 homes in our county were without power from the previous night’s “first wave” of the storm.  Nothing really happened with the weather during the day this day.  I loaded up the family, picked up Didier who needed a ride to the store, and we headed in to help Dustin get opened at our normal time at 2 PM.  Nearly every business in the community was closed and many were without power.

The center had power and today was the release of the First Strike map pack for Xbox 360.  We had around a dozen people show up right away, some to play Black Ops, but others just to get online or maybe just get warm and charge their cell phones.  The weather started getting bad later in the afternoon and Ashley and I decided earlier in the day to close at 10 PM.  Sales were low on game time but we did about 300% better on weekday retail sales.

Wednesday – 32 Customers
Once again everything was closed in the city.  State of Emergency called for only emergency travel.  I saw as high as 20,000 homes without power during this time on the Duke Energy website.  I opened the store at 2 PM that day.  I wasn’t sure if we would see many customers, but I also thought we might see more than usual as some people had been out of power for 2 days.  There were still around 12,000 homes without power all day.  I thought we might jump out this day because everyone would have a couple of days of cabin fever, but honestly I was disappointed.

One thing to note also on this day as well as yesterday EVERYTHING was closed.  The mall, city offices, movie theater and pretty much everything but gas stations and hotels.  I thought that maybe as the only place in town with the lights on we would just get people stopping because nothing else was open! 🙂

Thursday – 93 Customers as of 9 PM
Well today (as of 9 PM when I am writing this) the store was a complete madhouse.  A few things are back open today, but school is still out today and again tomorrow for the grade schools.  The universities went back today and finally most of the businesses in the area are back open.  We did our Facebook day today instead of our normal day of the week which is Tuesdays.

I really am baffled by the changes from day-to-day during this time.  I wish we would have ran our Facebook special all week long so that I could have compared the day’s traffic with the same special offer.  Would I have been able to bring out the bigger numbers on the previous days with a “deal” or special offer?

The worst part about the week is that everything seems upside-down.  It seems that everyday could not be planned out because of the uncertainty with the weather.   I feel at the end of the week that nothing much was accomplished at all when it comes to the store.  We were able to get a jump on some outside consulting projects but gaming wise we took a few steps backwards.

My first store location opened in 2004 in an old warehouse as part of another business I was operating at the time.  In 2006 I moved the store about 150 yards away to a new location that we custom built.  Since that day we have opened 3 more locations and then proceeded to shut down 2 of them.  To this date we have not yet been able to duplicate what we have created in Terre Haute, IN.  I thought today I would try break down exactly why this location works.

Location – I know that this seems obvious, but I have seen 1st hand in 5 locations the difference this really makes.  In our first location we were set back off the road in an old warehouse building.  Not appealing and also not visible.  When we moved to the new location we are 50 feet from busiest road in the city (40,000 cars per day).  We were in a stand alone building that we built a brand new brick face on the building.

How do I know location is that important?  We have tried other locations.  Obviously this new location was 10 times better than our old one.  Our sales jumped 35% the first month we moved into the new building.   When we created our Clinton store it was actually a very good location in a new building beside the county BMV (Bureau of Motor Vehicles).  So every year we would see every single person in that county renewing their licence plates.

Also I know location is important because we struggled in our 3rd location in Bloomington, IN.  We were in a relatively busy shopping center, but WAAAAAYYY off the road and not visible at all for people driving.  Also they had no street sign available for the tenants.  There was a busy Subway next door and quite a bit of foot traffic but I know from experience that the location was not ideal.

At eBash we make relationships with each customer.

Community – We focused on the people from day 1 at our facility.  My wife and I want to invest in the players lives and not just their wallets.  From the very beginning I was giving players rides home, taking them to tournaments in other cities and inviting them to activities outside of the store. When we moved to the new location in 2006 and did most of the construction work on our own and these players were all there to help.  Seven years later we still have a solid group from the beginning that come and play at our store.

This community aspect is what builds your regular customer base.  Players just come by the store to meet up with others to go to the movies or the mall.  Our store is literally the main meeting place for hundreds of gamers throughout our city.   I think this applies to all sorts of entertainment based businesses like bowling alleys, skating rinks, bars, pool halls, etc.  There are tons of choices when it comes to a place to hang out but you only go where you friends are going.

Layout – Once again we have found this out from experience.  So many video game LAN centers take a strip mall location and just line up tables in rows in one giant room.  This does not work long-term and let me explain why.

To get the community aspect you have to appeal to different peer groups that DO NOT mix well together.  These centers that have one big room might get a base of 25+ year old gamers that enjoy it darker, quieter and play PC games.  If a group of middle school kids come to the store and start playing Xbox both groups will conflict with the normal group of older players.  Neither will have fun and the atmosphere will be strained.

We have 9 private rooms in our Terre Haute store.  In the back of the store we have a section of 3 rooms that are for ages 17+ only.  We have divided the 4000 square feet of store space into a family friendly zone, a professional zone and a mature zone.  This has allowed us to build a community of players from each type.  Youth groups from churches feel comfortable bringing their kids for events and we have birthday parties in the front of the store.  In the Pro Zone we run big $1000+ payout tournaments for serious competitors and players can play higher rated games.  In the back it is more quiet and the older crowd has two rooms of PCs and a room of Xbox stations that all have doors on the rooms.

The key to the layout is something we missed out on our other designs.  We tried some new things to cut down on A/C problems by doing fewer rooms and open ceilings.  When we did this basically we could not create these zones like we have in the Terre Haute store.  One group of players can dominate the center and make it uncomfortable for the other groups.  A big group of middle school kids are annoying for the older customers.  A group of college guys swearing while playing Halo or Counter Strike makes the parents and family groups uncomfortable.

Our $3k Master Chief suit waving at 40,000 cars per day driving by our store.

Atmosphere and “Feel” – I think the community and layout add to this tremendously but there are other things to take into consideration when we formed our atmosphere.  One thing that many game centers struggle with is the flooring for their store.   We have used carpet from the beginning at our store and in our other locations did not repeat this because of cost and cleaning.  However that hurts tremendously in forming the COMFORTABLE atmosphere that makes people want to stay for longer periods of time.  It also helps a TON with sound dampening for the store.  Our old Bloomington, IN store had concrete floors, wooden walls and a metal ceiling.  It was terrible for atmosphere as one Guitar Hero player could annoy everyone in the entire building.

Another design factor is the lighting and music.  Combining our layout with lighting and music changes works perfectly in our Terre Haute store.  The front of the store is well lit and has music playing.  The middle of the store (Pro Zone) has Bose speaker systems for game sound ambiance and medium lighting.  The back of the store (17+ zone) has no music, headsets and is dimly lit.

Once again with atmosphere you can only serve one type of customer if you only have a large open space.  If you cannot divide up these smaller community groups then one group will ruin the experience for the other one.

Management – This has to be the most important of all.  You can overcome problems in the other areas I have listed somewhat with excellent management.  I am not only referring to the way the store is “managed” but more how the store is “led”.  There are many good managers out there that can direct employees, pay the bills and control expenses.  But there are very few that can connect with the customers to make them feel welcome and pass that direction on to the other employees.

I feel like the manager/owner is also responsible for the community, layout and atmosphere.  You might be restricted on the location but as the one responsible for the store all of the other categories can be changed as you feel is necessary.

Constantly Evaluate – This is basically what I am doing when writing this article.  I am going back through our history and thinking about what makes us successful and what we can do to be even more successful.  History is so important when looking back at what has worked and not worked in our store so that we can make better decisions moving forward.

One thing I would suggest is to look through your current customer base.  Do they all seem to be of one certain genre?  That isn’t a bad thing, but don’t stress yourself out trying to figure out why you are not booking any birthday parties for middle school kids if your entire center is PCs, dark and full of bearded World of Warcraft players.  You just need to focus on making a better experience for the genre you are serving instead of trying to bring in customers who will never be comfortable in your center.

My opinion is to divide up your store so that you are able to serve more than one community in the same building.  Instead of making an all-kid friendly location or an all-adult location you can serve multiple groups just like we do at eBash Terre Haute.  If your store is only seeing 5-10 customers total on a slow weekday then it is time for you to get to work and build up that customer base!

One thing that I am terrible at remembering to do each month is update the top 10 on our homepage (www.ebash.com).  I run a report from Smartlaunch to show me the top 20 (in case an employee cracks the top 10 who don’t count) gamers in both stores from December 1 until January 1.  I combine the records from both stores and rank them 1-10 based on time played.

These numbers are pretty accurate except that with our day pass customers we sometimes forget to log them into SmartLaunch when they are on console because their time automatically expires at the end of the day.  The PC users MUST login to SmartLaunch to access the game menus so they are almost always the highest users.

The top 10 for December looked like this:

1.	creedalba [TH]	+5	208
2.	dingo [TH]		197
3.	Soupernoob [EV]	-2	175
4.	ace [TH]	NEW	172
5.	KITH [TH]	NEW	161
6.	blackjack [TH]	NEW	158
7.	jde [TH]	NEW	126
8.	beastmaster [TH]	NEW	126
9.	AlCapwn187 [EV]	NEW	121
10.	Gorogon [EV]	NEW	102

As you can tell there are quite a few customers that spend some serious time playing each month at our stores.  ALL of these customers are VIP and use our inexpensive weekday pass prices (only $7.50 per day) so the funny thing is that they are not always our top customers based on money spent.

Looking at the list you can see the top 2 are quite a ways ahead of the general group in hours spent.  Creedalba (who is a great guy and always is asking to work for us but I have to tease him that if we hired him then the store would close without his business) spent at least an extra day over Dingo and Dingo spent an extra 2 days over Soupernoob from the Evansville store.

If the average time spent per day is 7 hours that would mean Creedabla was in our store 29 of the 31 days in December.  I know he misses at least a day per week so his average per day is probably more like 8 or 9 hours.  All of the guys in our top 10 visit our store at least 20 days of the month and that extends down to the top 30-40 in the Terre Haute store.

Our Terre Haute store in 7 years has built up a steady base of “regulars” that keep the store ticking.  On the slowest of slow days the Terre Haute store will still see a nice batch of customers because of these regulars while the Evansville store is still building that customer base.

I started thinking about all of this today because yesterday was one of those down days for both stores.  In Terre Haute yesterday we had 25 players in the store which is a terribly slow day for us, but the Evansville store only had 3 players the entire day.  It is funny how the days fluctuate in people in a similar pattern for both stores even though they are almost 200 miles apart.  The jumps are just more drastic for the Evansville store because they don’t have the core base to sustain it yet.

So when did we reach the point in the Terre Haute store that we could sustain with our core base of customers?  The funny thing is that the core base of customers for the store was actually more dedicated when we first opened.  Our core group was the ONLY people we had in the store.  It wasn’t until 2006 in our 3rd year that our core group was big enough to maintain the store.  That would lead me to believe that this year is the most important for our Evansville store to reach that promised land.

I would say that if you have 25 customers in your store on the WORST day you can remember then things are pretty good. 🙂

One thing that I have done since we opened back in 2004 is always try to keep up with what other game centers are doing here in the United States.  From day 1 the best place to do this was as a member of iGames (www.lancenters.com) in their private forums.  In 2005 and 2006 I probably spent 2-3 hours each day browsing the threads, giving my opinions, starting posts and most importantly sharing and gaining awesome ideas.

It seemed that in those first few years for us there were always 20-30 new game centers opening their doors each month.  Obviously the economy was much different during those times and most likely the ability to easily borrow money were probably the main reasons things seemed to be exploding.  However the scary difference now is the fact that the iGames forums have become a ghost town.  There are still some lurkers who pop-in now and then but as a whole there are now only about 3-5 new posts PER WEEK!  Compared to 5 years ago when there were 20+ new posts PER DAY!

I am not going to get into the reasons for so many failures over the years nor am I going to spend time looking at individual centers that are successful.  I just wanted to put together what I am predicting (and in some cases hoping) for our industry in 2011:

1 – The total number of operating video game centers will continue to drop.  There are no indications that borrowing is going to become any easier this year.  That leads me to believe that even fewer new stores will open.  However stores will continue to close at the same rate as in 2010 so the overall number will continue to fall.

2 – The new venture by MLG into game centers will be relatively unsuccessful.  As MLG reaches out to game centers and tries to create a new alliance to host smaller events that can lead to their bigger national circuits they will quickly realize that 99% of the game centers in the US today are ill-equipped and owned by lazy and unmotivated individuals who cannot run successful tournaments.  As a dreamer I wish this program could be successful, but as a person who has worked to build a game center competitive circuit I know first hand that it just isn’t possible.

3 – We will finally start seeing some game releases in centers again.  Mark at iGames announced yesterday that they are removing the requirement for publishers to pay to have their games promoted through iGames this year which is a huge step in the right direction.  In 2010 we had very little to talk about when it came to game releases through iGames and that is probably 90% of the reason most of us are members.  He knows this is a priority for us and is working to bring us back to getting 1-2 game releases each month.

4 – We will see one or two of the top centers close their doors.  I am in constant contact with almost all of the large centers out there and none of us have a large cash pool sitting behind the vault doors to weather a bad event or another sudden dip in the economy.  We have all seen revenues drop the past 3 years and if we are still operating that is because we have trimmed the fat in our operations and streamlined as much as possible.  I could probably name a couple centers that I think will go but these are my friends and my hope is that they make it through.

5 – An outside group will enter this industry and finally start to roll-up some of the existing video game centers.  I have to admit to having some inside information into this already starting so I don’t seem like too much of a prophet.  However the wheels are in motion for a large organization who is looking to buy existing centers and conform them into a universal model throughout the US.  This has always been my prediction throughout the years and I have always stressed to owners to make sure they maximize the value of their business through good record keeping and business good will.

6 – Finally the game industry will announce the next generation consoles.  This is something that was huge for our growth back in 2006 when the Xbox 360 came out followed by the Wii and PS3.  The first year that those systems are released our store saw an enormous jump in sales.  A new generation of consoles will do the same thing.  The problem is that once they are announced this year it will still be 2012 or 2013 before we see them.

7 – A video game center will exceed 5000 fans (likes) on Facebook.   Hehe… the reason I mention this is because it is one of the objectives of my store in 2011 so I hope it will be us!  As a shameless plug if you are reading this make sure you “Like” our page found here:  http://www.facebook.com/ebashterrehaute

8 – Centers will start utilizing downloaded games for consoles as part of their game library.  Honestly I am not sure why it hasn’t happened much before this, but every center that offers Xbox LIVE should be offering their customers the ability to play Xbox LIVE arcade games and other downloaded full copies of games.  We are focusing on adding this at our stores more in 2011 because it cuts down on employee work load changing out the games, wear-and-tear on the discs and disc drives and gives the customers more options for playing.  Also as a bonus secret if you have read down this far… for every game you purchase and download via Xbox LIVE you basically get a copy free.

9 – A game center will get robbed and one of its customers will defend himself against the thieves trying to take his Nintendo DS and fight back…. in Hawaii….. oh wait… that happened already! 🙂  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IYrn5MA2KtA

10 – We will all figure out a creative way to make sculptures or some kind of signs using our RROD Xbox systems that cannot be repaired.  Seriously I have been trying to figure out a good use for all of our trash systems if anyone has any ideas?  I refuse to just throw them away because I never want to forget how much pain we have suffered because of their poor design.

As always everyone and their brother uses January 1st each year as their starting point to “turn over a new leaf”.  We are all going to start doing something we should be doing, stop doing something we shouldn’t be doing or probably a fair combination of both stopping some things and starting some other things.

Just to make sure I am not left out of the game I am going to make some resolutions of my own along with some for my game center.

My first one is to prioritize my time each day to accomplish a few goals, one of which is writing this blog daily.  After 7 years in this business there is one thing I have gained through experience and that is the knowledge of what works and what doesn’t work.  There is no reason I can’t share some of those experience to help others in this industry and other similar businesses.

My Individual Goals for 2011:

1. Increase my time spent spiritually, mentally and physically staying active.   This is probably similar to most people’s new year’s resolutions, but specifically I want to spend more time with daily devotions and prayer, daily time thinking creatively and outside-the-box and some kind of daily physical activity.

2. Focus on spending time with others.  The basis for me to start eBash back in 2004 was because I didn’t want kids playing by themselves in a dark room.  I want to make sure that I follow that same reasoning.  Playing Black Ops with 5 gamers from the store is WAY more fun that playing by myself.  I want to make sure my son Zander and all the other gamers I influence have this same mentality when it comes to gaming and life.  This makes some things easier to accomplish like my goal for daily physical activity.  Going with a group mountain biking is more fun than biking by myself!

3. Increase my gaming time and also increase my time outside of gaming.  I found myself the last few months trying to squeeze in both outside activities and gaming around work.  It seems like the better we do at our gaming center the less I get to actually play games.  Doesn’t it seem sad that I have to force myself to play games and I own a video game center?  I would like to increase my Xbox gamerscore by 100k in 2011 and I am shooting for adding 10,000 points each month.  Outside of gaming I want to get back into fish like I was in college.  A complete overhaul of my 220 gallon tank at the office will happen right away this year.

My goals for eBash Terre Haute in 2011:

1. Upgrades, upgrades, upgrades.  That will be my theme throughout the year.  Shawn and I are going to start building and putting in new computers monthly as well as buying new generation Xbox systems and replacing our old white ones.  We plan on utilizing some of our long-time customers as admins throughout the center to help maintain systems and games also.

2. Try and get everyone to focus more on some kind of gaming goals.  The store seemed to buzz quite a bit more a few years ago when players were forming WoW guilds, battling in big console tournaments or participating in gamerscore challenges.  We are hoping to revive some of that purpose for all of the little groups at the store.

3. Reach out to the gaming community beyond our area.  In the past we have focused on just serving gamers that could visit our physical store.  Instead we are going to look at reaching out to gamers throughout the US online through online tournaments and ecommerce sales.

4. Make some money.  So many times those of us in this industry get caught up in how much we love our jobs and how much of a service we provide for our communities.  But there is nothing wrong with making some money along the way!  I want to provide a premium service and charge a premium price.  At $4 per hour many game centers in big cities think we are high priced, but in 7 years we have never heard complaints about our prices for the service we provide.

So as we kick of 2011 what are your goals?  I would be interested to hear some of the goals of other gamers and game center owners out there.  I have a few customers wanting to play some Black Ops so I am off to work on my #2 individual goal of the year!

 

I don’t like to usually put down some of my negative thoughts permanently like this but the last few days I have really been disappointed in the disregard and respect for our store.  I want to share a few of my obvious disappointments recently that just drive me crazy.  I think part of the problem is that customers do not associate their carelessness and recklessness with a cost to them directly.  However every single one of us in ANY business have to pay to repair or replace damaged items and the customers end up paying for it.

Is it appropriate to associate rate hikes immediately following these periods of customer neglect?  In our store the average age is around 14 and I feel that as kids grow up they need to see consequences for their actions.  In some cases we do not see the culprits behind the problem but in most cases we can watch our security footage and see who caused the problem.  Instead of charging all customers for a few player’s problems we could directly add a fee to the problem kids on their next trip to the store.

Let’s get to a few of my examples:

#1 – Messy Players.  This one drives me crazy.  I have a feeling that the parents (and maybe even spouses) of these customers allow them to live like slobs at home and either clean up after them or just roll around in garbage all day.  In our store we have 9 private rooms and many stations in the lobby area and customers will leave $10 worth of snack and drink carnage spread all over their station.  Bits of Butterfinger ground into the carpet.  Sticky controllers, counters and keyboards from what appears to have been a “stick as many skittles in my mouth as I can, drool sugary slime all over myself and then use my hand to spread it all over anything possible” party.  Gum stuck about anywhere you can imagine it possible to stick gum EXCEPT the trash can. (Clark where are you going to put a tree that big?  Bend over and I will show you!)

This is one I am considering adding a $5 clean-up fee to the customer’s account when they leave and the next time they will have to pay before they play.  We are not a maid service and their messiness ruins the station for the next customer and all of the customers around them.

#2 Equipment Abuse “Accidental”.  It seems like the list of broken items is never ending.  With so many Xbox 360 stations at eBash one of our big ones is always “I need a different controller”.  I bet this happens once per day during the week and half a dozen times on the weekend.  We try to add new controllers into rotation every 3-6 months but it doesn’t seem to keep up with complaints.

PC headphones and Xbox headphones (the cheap ones we rent out for $1) are also always turning up broken.  Wire snapped off, plastic headband broken, etc.  Luckily this doesn’t hurt quite as bad because the replacement units are only $10 or less.  We just try to keep extra in stock.

A couple days ago the real kicker hit me.  We had an older player, I believe he was maybe college age or older, that rented one of our new $150 3D glasses SIT on the glasses when he came back from getting a drink.  The lenses are cracked and the glasses cannot be used any longer.  He brought them up right away and apologized and I believe it honestly was just a simple mistake.  But man it hurts.

#3 – Stupid, dumb, intentional, moronic, immature and childish problems.  Much of this stuff can be categorized as vandalism from my point of view.  The bathroom is where the pain starts.  We have situations with poop wiped all over the walls of the bathroom, people trying to urinate in the floor drain instead of in the toilet and kids trying to make the sink overflow with paper towels stuffed into the drain.

Next would be anger issues.  Guys getting mad and slamming the mouse or keyboard, throwing down the controllers and one of the biggest problems I have seen is people punching the screen.  We have literally lost 3 or 4 monitors over the years that have been hit with a hand, controller, keyboard, mouse or something.

This past weekend someone decided to bend one of our “Drop off Zone” parking signs from each of the four edges.  This was another one that kind of set me off.  It doesn’t make any sense but once again the customers don’t realize there is a cost to their actions.  I was able to bend the sign back but there are creases in the sign now and I am sure they will bend it up again.  The signs cost me around $150 to have made and we will have to buy new ones.  If the problems continue I will have to add an outdoor camera to our security system.  Vandalism like this could end up costing the store $1k or more in equipment and time.

I do feel a little better sharing these things and it has been a few days since some of them happened so I have cooled down somewhat.  However I still feel that I should find a way to make the customers who are causing the problems pay directly for their actions instead of passing the cost onto the other customers with increased fees and rates.

My partner Shawn and I have been pretty busy the past few weeks getting the eBash Terre Haute store caught back up in many areas.  For those close to the store it was apparent the first half of 2010 that we were just getting by when it came to store upkeep and maintenance.  We restocked the food and drinks as funds allowed instead of as needed.  By the time we were at the end of June (right before the ownership change) we literally had JUST the most popular items stocked:  Reece’s, Snickers, Mt. Dew, etc.

So the VERY first thing we did when taking back over the majority ownership on July 1st was make a run to Sam’s Club and restock EVERYTHING.  Shawn had the guys at the store literally go through SmartLaunch and list out anything we have ever carried in the past and dropped just under $1,000.00 on food and drinks.  We paid off a past due amount with one vendor that had kept us from ordering for 2 months and restocked BAWLS, Slushie Mix and Nacho chips.

Before I break down some of the sales more let’s just look at the food/drink sales for our store in the first half of 2010:

January – $4,186.13
February – $4,545.45
March – $4,353.90
April – $4,150.48
May – $3,716.45
June –  $3,677.54

As you can see throughout the year the sales gradually decreased.  Now we are in July and on pace to sell $5,130.87 in food based on the daily average.   However like anything else in the business you cannot just look at the raw sale’s numbers alone.  We need to look at the total number of customer visits during that same time and use that number to calculate the $ spent per customer visit:

January – 4876 Visits = $0.86/visit
February – 4925 Visits = $0.93/visit
March – 5059 Visits = $0.86/visit
April – 4691 Visits = $0.89/visit
May – 4046 Visits = $0.92/visit
June –  4460 Visits = $0.83/visit
July – 5633 Visits = $0.99/visit

Looking at this data our top month was February with $0.93 spent per customer visit.  Our lowest month was June with only $0.83/visit spent on food and drinks at our store.  Unfortunately unless someone out there can help me out I cannot pull the number of customer visits (as Smartlaunch tracks them) for July until the end of the month report.  So we will have to wait a few weeks to see what our $/visit ratio will be for this month.

One thing to keep in mind is that a larger selection doesn’t necessarily sell different items.  I believe that a large selection just puts the thought of food and drink in the customer’s view and then the top selling items are still what is sold.  Nothing ever comes close to the sales of Mt. Dew in our center.  We pick up the 24 ounce bottles at Sam’s Club and sell them for $1.50 each (tax included).  This month for example we have already sold almost 300 Mt. Dew bottles.  That is $450 in sales for Mt. Dew only!  The next closest drink is Dr. Pepper, same size and price, selling 121 units so far in July.

We have never put any of our products into combos, either with other snacks/drinks or with a game time product.  I would be curious to hear from a few centers to see what their experiences have been using food/drinks together to promote the sale of other items.

Energy drinks I feel like should be a bigger part of our center but the price points are sooooo freaking ridiculous.  We make a big effort to keep our margins the same for all of our food/drink products.  That is literally impossible for energy drinks if you want to get the same kind of interest.  We can’t find anyone to supply us energy drinks at less than about $1.30 per can so we price them at $3.00 each or 2 for $5.  We get a bit more interest at the 2 for $5 price point but not enough to push it to the front of customer’s minds.

One thing that I have a problem with when it comes to energy drinks is that the customer usually will spend a set amount of money in our store on drinks.  Let’s use the example of a customer spending $5 on drinks while they are playing at our store?  They can get 2 energy drinks which gives eBash $2.05 in profit after taking out the cost and the taxes.  If they buy 3 soft drinks for $4.50 we will get $2.26 in profit.  The kicker is that the customer also gets 3 drinks instead of 2.

We offer a few frozen items that we sell for more filling options but they really don’t sell a ton.  Frozen pizzas, hot pockets, corn dogs and similar items are nice for the younger kids that cannot leave the store but the older crowd still just runs out to get some food when they are ready for a meal.  We feel like it is something we need to keep for the younger crowd but it is not a money maker.

Candy is an entirely other story.  We sell the crap out of snacks like Slim Jim’s and candy bars.  We have really two categories of snacks:  $1 for candy and candy bars and $0.75 for chips.  The chips really do not sell as much as any of the candy items which is probably good since chips can be kind of messy.

We allow our customers to take their drinks and snacks to the rooms while they are playing.  Many people question this decision but I know that to make the customer’s stay longer and be more comfortable they need to have their drinks and snacks with them while they are playing.  That is one reason we try to stock the drinks with bottles and hence CAPS to keep on the drinks to prevent spills.  Sometimes I question this after I see a room with a Butterfinger smeared into the carpet or a counter all sticky from a drink but I always come back to a room full of happy gamers with drinks and snacks spread out all around them.

I am curious to hear some other center’s feedback on their experience with concessions.  Maybe someone can help us figure out the energy drink side of the business?  I know some have full restaurants attached to their center and I wonder if that helps keep people in the seats longer?

**** UPDATE ****  I have updated the report above to show the July food sales.  This was with a complete restocking of our concessions for the month.  Our visits were WAY up this month but even still we increased our food/concession sales to nearly $1 per customer visit!!!!