Classic Mode

Play Meter

Issue: 1976 July - Vol 2 Num 7

(continued from page 40)
down time for those machines.
GETTLE: It is a tremendous amount of down time,
but normally those pieces produce a large amount of
income.
PLAY METER: And the charge to you is what?
GETTLE: $15.00/ hour plus parts.
PLAY METER: The regular repair service charge,
plu you have the cost of trucking.
GETTLE: We're already going down there and
we're coming back, so realistically there is no
trucking cost.
PLAY METER: Do you think $15/ hour is out of line
for repair costs?
GETTLE: No sir, not at all. Because we're getting
more solid - tate equipment all the time, we're
taking steps toward doing our own servicing. Dan
and Ron are now taking a correspondence course in
solid -state repair. When they are done with the
cour e, they will go to a two- or three-day school.
We'll purchase the necessary equipment and we'll
do our own solid-state repair at that time. We'll
have business sufficient to warrant that and if I
were to then charge someone to bring in their
equipment for repair, I'd charge $I5/ hour. My
inve tment would warrant that.
CARSON: It's still a problem though. I have
probably spent the last six months trying to find
schooling that will teach a pinball mechanic how to
work on solid-state machines. The industry does
not provide any. The only thing that is available is a
correspondence course; plus Kurz-Kasch Instru-
ment Co. does sponsor a three-day seminar. But as
far as actual schooling, like Cal's Coin College, a
place where you can send a man to educate him in
solid-state repair, there is none. What the industry
ha n't caught up to yet is that there ~re operators
and distributors that need education for their
pinball mechanics to get them into the solid state
era.
GETTLE: Right. The industry has grown by such
leap and bounds that its engineering just hasn't
kept up with its imagination.
.
CARSON: Service in general is an area-oat least
according to what I've seen since I've been in the
indu try--that the industry is just now waking up
to. And service is really the backbone of each and
every operation, whether you make it or go broke.
That' where we need to put our emphasis right
now .
PLAY METER: So we've got a number of fun
centers set up: we've got locations, we've got leases
on tho e locations, we've got equipment in them
and we've got people to manage them and
omebody to repair that equipment. The next issue
I want to raise is a more general one, and that has
to do with image. What sort of image do your
arcade or fun center --do you dislike the term
arcade?
GETTLE: Yes.
PLAY METER: Why?
GETTLE: Becau e "arcades" is synonymous with
~ the old penny arcade of 15 or 20 year ago, and the
~ type of busine
that we are running now is
completely unlike that of 15 or 20 years ago.
zl PLAY METER: But back to my original question:
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56
what ort of image do you want to project for your
fun centers?
GETTLE: That it' the in -place to be for the kids,
that if you want to find almost anyone in the
community, the football team, the cheerleaders, the
honor tudent, you'll find him or her sometime
during that weekend at one of the fun centers.
PLAY METER: How do you go about projecting
that sort of image? How do you get those kids in
there?
GETTLE: By first of all having an adult as a
manager, one that likes the kids, that associates
with the kids, not one that just sits behind a counter
and makes change, but one that gets in a very short
period of time to learn the kids by name, to listen to
their problems, and, if it becomes necessary, to
discipline them. And in many cases we have one
thing that no one else has and that's the right not to
let them in our place of business unless they
conduct themselve like young ladies and gentle-
men.
PLA Y METER: When you open a new location or
when the need ari e in an existing center, how do
you advertise? What do you do to promote play in
that center?
GETTLE: When we started in the business, we did
do some newspaper and some radio advertising. We
feel that it wa a mistake, and we don't do any
advertising of any kind when we open now. a
well-run fun center is the best advertising. Kids
have a tremendous grapevine, and whether it' in
the wintertime when school's in session or in the
ummertime with the pool and other recreation
areas where the kid congregate; within a very few
days after a new fun center opens, every kid in the
trade area will know you're open.
PLAY METER: How about promoting play in the
fun center them elves? Are there any specific
methods you recommend to your managers:
tournaments, for example, or high score incentives?
GET TLE: We u e tournaments, but we try not to
wear out tournaments. You can run too many
tournaments to the point that the kids get tired of
it. We run very few tournaments in the summer-
time. W dO.lZive away T-shirts with our name "The
Good Times," on them. We'll take a pinball machine
and put a ign on it: the high score of the week will
receive a free T- hirt with the name on the back of
it.
PLAY METER: A few nut and bolt questions ,
question about day -to-day operation: What's the
pricing structure for pin , foo ball, the arcade
game and pool?
GETTLE: All of our pins at the present time are set
up on two game for a quarter, three balls per
game. Foosball is 35 cents as is the pool. The
arcade with very few exception are 25 cent .
orne of the older arcade are two games for a
quarter .
PLAY METER: I guess we've been mentioning
throughout that your patron are mo tly kids. Ther
average age would be ...
GETTLE: The average age would be 16 or 17 in
mo t location. In your mall locations, however,
you'll have many adults in on the weekends.
Parent come in with their kid or they'll be waiting
for a show in the mall to start and they'll come in to
playa quick game of pinball or foosball or pool.
PLA Y METER: How do the kids react to pricing
changes?
GETTLE: We've never changed our pins. We've
had occasion, however, to change or foosball in
some locations from 25 cents to 35 cents. It usually
doesn't present a problem if you'll change the
equipment when you change the price, but if you
take the same table and raise the price on it, you're
going to decrease the number of plays; you may not
decrease the total income on the table, but you'll
decrease the number of plays on it.
PLA Y METER: You do allow food and drink in
some locations and not in others.
GETTLE: We allow no food in any location. We do
allow Coke machines in most locations, but we allow
no outside drink to brought into any location .
PLAY METER: And again, smoking is allowed in
some locations and not in others.
GETTLE: Yes.
PLA Y METER: How is this determined?
GETTLE: Many times it's dertermined by the
lease. But it would be more properly determined by
the area we have to work with. If we have an area
that we can set aside for a smoking and b verage
area then we do that. We set that area a ide and
that is where the kids can take a break, have a
smoke, have a Coke. But there are no drinks or
smoking in the playing area.
PLAY METER: Are there any age limits imposed
on who can play your machines?
GETTLE: In the state of Kansas, there are no age
limits on who can play pinball, foosball or pool.
PLAY METER: Do you operate jukeboxes in your
fun centers?
GETTLE: We do not operate jukeboxes in any of
our locations.
PLAY METER: Why not?
GETILE: We don't think it's necessary. If a kid
comes in with $2.00 or $5.00 to spend, he's going to
put it in your machines. If one of your machines is a
jukebox, he'll put part of it in t here. But, if you
provide music, he's still going to put the $2.00 or
$5.00 in your other machines. So it's just one more
machine to divide t he total income by. And it's a
maintenance problem and an expense problem, an
unncecessary expense problem.
CARSON: There's one more thing. If you take one
of our fun centers and turn off the music there, the
music we have playing full -time, and you have
maybe only one person in there, the place is dead.
That's what happens with a jukebox. II kids aren't
putting money in it, there's no noise. I think our
theory has always been that we want music, we
want noise any time anybody goes in there, any
time of the day. Activity creates activity. There
may be no movement but the noise i there and it
create activity. It's omething that we offer free.
GETILE: Music is part of the decoration just as is
the carpet and the lights.
PLAY METER: You don't think then that a
jukebox might bring more girls into a fun center.
GETILE: If you have music that appeals to the
kids, it doesn't matter whether it froma jukebox or
you provide it, the kids like it. We did have, when
we first stated, jukeboxes in some of our locations,
and we had other locations without, and the kids
travelled between locations. Some kids feel almost
offended that they have to pay for music if they can
go somewhere else and get it free.
PLA Y METER: What do you think are the major
advantage of operating just fun centers? All your
machines are in fun centers, right? None or on
location?
GETTLE: None at the present time. And we don't
actively or even inactively go out and try to acquire
other locations. But if someone was to come in and
ask us to set up in what we considered a very good
location, we probably would. But we have not had
that happen. There are only so many hours in the
day, and we feel that we would like to do what
we're doing now and better than anyone else. So we
try to zero in on one area of the amusement
business--and that's fun centers--and do the best
job that we possibly can. Also, if it's good enough to
have 50 per cent of it, it's good enough to have 100
per cent of it.
PLA Y METER: How does the local political
structure view your operation?
GETTLE: Very well. We've been extremely careful
since we started to try to have good public relations
with city officials, especially the local police
department in any town that we operate in. We
co-operate with them fully. I think our situation' can
probably be t be de cribed by using as example a
fun center that we recently closed down. We were
asked a few days after it closed down if we would
'epopen it. The sheriff of the community asked us if
we would reopen. We told him that we had had a
lack of bu iness up there, but if the local residents
wanted us to, we would . We were then presented
with a petition to reopen the fun center.
Twenty-nine familie , husbands and wives, had
igned the petition a king us to reopen this fun
center and provide entertainment and adult
upervision for their kids.
PLAY METER: Where wa this?
GETTLE: Thi was in Park City, Kan., a town of
approximately 4,000 people that does not have a
wimming pool or any type of recreation other than
what we had provided for the children.
In addition, we have had one minor zoning
problem. We operate a fun center in Arkansas City,
Kan. We lea ed a 7-11 store thte thinking that it
being a retail location there would be no problem;
but ju t prior to opening, we found out, much to our
urprise, that in thi particular city fun centers
were zoned the ame as circuses. We had to have a
public hearing in front of the planning commission;
then we had to have a public hearing in front of the
council.
Th city council, by a 3-2 vote, gave us the right
to do bu iness for 90 day in a non-conforming
district. After 90 day , we had another hearing in
front of the council, and it took about one minute
before we had a unanimou vote to issue us a
permanent non -conforming use permit. Members of ]
the city council had conducted their own personal
inve tigations of our business and of our manager, ~
and they voted unanimously in our favor.
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