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Bankrupt Chuck E. Cheese parent company wants to shred 7B tickets
- itsdrewmiller 6y agoThis headline would not be nearly as intriguing if it included "Company" after "Parent".
- irrational 6y agoI was so confused by the headline until I read the article. Was there really a parent out there with 7 billion tickets? Why would they destroy them instead of redeeming them?!
- vxNsr 6y agoEh, I immediately understood it meant CEC's holding company, I didn't even get the "pun" until I saw this comment.
- ashtonkem 6y agoAnd even if they did want to destroy them, why would they need permission to do so?
- astura 6y agoBecause they are going through the bankruptcy process - if you intentionally destroy assets during a bankruptcy without permission the judge can deny your bankruptcy and you might even be charged with a crime.
- kevin_thibedeau 6y agoPeople with home machines might want to buy some reels for collector value.
- PacketPaul 6y ago7 billion tickets. That must be good for the plastic spider, finger trap, and a Frisbee. Well not a real Frisbee brand Frisbee. More a flying disk.
- edoceo 6y agoYou're thinking of "flim-brim" / "flying hat" (this joke is for the Murdoch Mysteries/Jonny Harris fans)
- dang 6y agoOk, we'll put the company up there.
- dwg 6y ago$2.28 million to destroy contents of 65 shipping containers, = $35,076 per container I wonder where the bulk of this cost comes from. Transport? Legal fees (for the petition)?
- thathndude 6y agoFor real. I’ve got a fire pit in my backyard. I’ll knock out a container a day for a couple months for 2.28m
- smnrchrds 6y agoThat's most probably illegal to do. It certainly is where I live.
- t0mbstone 6y agoIn all honesty, though, you could just take them all to a landfill, right?
- kyleee 6y agoYes, I'd prefer a ticket sequestration strategy
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- gruez 6y agoThanks to globalization, this is no longer an issue! All you have to do is outsource it to somewhere where it is legal to burn it. Comparative advantage at work!
- sundvor 6y agoIsn't it fantastic to have zero ethics whatsoever?
- phasetransition 6y agoKid me (or now my six year old) would love an intermodal full of Chuck E Cheese tickets! Adult me wonders how long they've been sneaking the ground up tickets into the "pizza" dough...
- balls187 6y agoHad my sons birthday at Chuck E Cheese a few months before the pandemic. Surprisingly the pizza wasn't too bad. The actual party experience was really well done.
- jsgo 6y agoYeah, they changed the pizza a couple years back. I wouldn’t say it is great by any stretch of the imagination, but it is improved.
- in_cahoots 6y agoIt must be location-specific. I went to my first one in decades this March, and we couldn’t finish the pizza. It felt like a kid’s casino with all the lights and sounds. The party was dystopian. It really soured a good childhood memory.
- srtjstjsj 6y agoMany people like the casino design. That's why casinos use it, unhealthy as it may be. Same for the pizza.
- danielrpa 6y agoChuck E Cheese is great for young kid parties. We've used it for our kid's 5, 6 and 7 yr old birthdays. Took all the stress out of planning, cooking, cleaning etc. The kids had a ton of fun and the prices were reasonable. The food was nothing to write home about, but kids this age aren't exactly very discriminating when you put a ton of cheese and sweets in front of them.
- joezydeco 6y agoThanks to COVID and the rise of food delivery, you can still get that pizza! https://www.pasquallyspizza.com/ https://www.pasquallyspizza.com/ (psst. just don't tell the hipsters that think this is a new place.)
- jimbob45 6y agoCould they not hold an auction? Surely some other company could put them to use.
- TylerE 6y agoWhy? Because they have the CEC name on them, and any company trying to use them in now on the hook for every CEC ticket ever issued to potentially be redeemed.
- astura 6y agoThey article mentions that they have the Chuck e cheese trademark on the tickets (which I took to mean they couldn't be sold)
- dyeje 6y agoThese tickets have literally no other possible use that they need to be destroyed for 2.3 million dollars? Really?
- agotterer 6y agoI hadn’t really considered how much environmental waste those tickets produced. Would reusable coins be cheaper and better for the environment? When casinos gave up coins in the slot machines I think they did themself a disservice. The noise and excitement from dropping coins and the feeling of having a bucket full of them was an important part of the experience. I wonder if patrons of Chuck E. Cheese will care. I certainly enjoyed carrying around a bucket of tickets when I was a kid. And enjoyed seeing what other people were winning. E-points sounds less fun to me...
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- bdcravens 6y agoI think today's kids are used to the epoints/reward paradigm.
- kyleee 6y agoAgreed, but maybe the bias of liking the "waterfall of metal coins" is just sentimentality. I'd like to see some studies comparing physical coins to electronic rewards. I get a sense that the vice industries (gambling, porn) are often a bit more consevative with changes and/or data driven in their decisions, so I suspect they have some interesting data on how people react to coin rewards vs. electronic rewards. I'll bet their data says the various electronic versions earn them more money
- dylan604 6y agoIf you're a kid that has grown up with electronic devices your entire life, e-rewards are what is normal to you. This is the target audience of Chuck E. Cheese. If you're an old fart that can remember living without electronic devices, then you'll probably have a natural affinity to a more physical type of reward. You might even be able to remember going outside to play.
- mbreese 6y agoLast time I was there with kids (which was a few years ago now), they had already started to migrate away from rolls of tickets for some games. Instead, you got a receipt-like printout that represented a certain number of "tickets". So, instead of getting 42 tickets, you'd have a receipt with a barcode that said "42 tickets". It's all very similar to casino slot machines with their receipts. While this doesn't quite have the satisfaction of tubs of tickets, it is significantly easier to manage for the parents. And it makes it more possible to save tickets from multiple trips for larger prizes, should your kids possess the appreciation for delayed gratification (mine never did at that age). But I will say this -- I don't think my kids or their friends had less fun with the transition away from individual tickets.
- smaili 6y agoMy inner child is cringing at the thought of all those tickets going to waste.
- kbrosnan 6y agoWhat did you think they did with the tickets after you redeemed them. They were always destined for the landfill. I worked at a Dave & Buster's as a tech. We were required by corporate to destroy any redeemed tickets, usually by shredding them. The shredder would go on the fritz because it was not designed to run 8hrs a day 7 days a week. When it did they would bag and bleach the tickets. Eventually I heard that they had outsourced the destruction to a mobile document shredding company.
- klodolph 6y agoAn inner child doesn't see that far ahead... we're not talking about someone's inner adult, after all.
- spicybright 6y agoWha, bleach the tickets? That sounds like way more hassle then it's worth. A strong lock on a dumpster should be enough. If someone really wanted to take them then sure, they can have the ultra cheap Chinese made stuffed animals that cost next to nothing for D&B.
- kbrosnan 6y agoI recall reports of people dumpster diving for the tickets. They were bagged separate from the foodstuffs which made dumpster diving fairly effective. One 50 gallon trashbag full of tickets was probably enough to get some of the higher end electronics stuff. That was not cheap. Though tickets were an expensive way to buy electronics vs cash at an electronics store.
- labster 6y agoI know the paper recycling industry is basically a myth but doesn’t anyone want a mountain of clean paper to pulp?
- Scoundreller 6y agoI tear it apart and mix it with compost instead of using peat moss (which is totally non-renewable). I still wasn’t putting enough in and the pile smelled like a sewer until I picked up a bag of shred from the street :)
- shannifin 6y agoIf I remember my childhood visits to Chuck E. Cheese well enough, I'm pretty sure 7B tickets could redeem approximately 12 plastic frogs and an eraser.
- smitty1110 6y agoThat’s a lot of cheating at ski-ball.
- ebg13 6y agoWhy don't they just throw them away? It's not like the tickets have face value.
- plorg 6y agoThis article would be way more interesting if they were treating 7B outstanding tickets as debt and were seeking a deal with the ticketholders.
- phire 6y agoKnowing accountants, outstanding tickets are absolutely on the books as a liability. But it sounds like they were using accounting practices where that liability was created when the tickets were manufactured, rather than when they were issued to customers. And shredding the tickets now has removed some of that liability from their books.
- ISL 6y agoSeems like they could sell entirely different tickets to a Guinness-Record-caliber bonfire. (or sell them to a pellet-stove or recycling company). Presumably the difficulty stems from the fact that outstanding tickets in the wild can still be redeemed. There's got to be a cardboard/paper recycler that would be interested in the containers and would be willing to find an expedient way to invalidate them.
- WMCRUN 6y agoI can think of at least 50 ways to use them that cost less than 2.8 million, one of which is art.