One of America's beloved restaurant chains is in dire straits after the COVID-19 pandemic shut its doors, leaving it awash in debts with little in the way of money coming in.
Chuck E. Cheese, where a whole generation of kids have memories of celebrating birthdays with mouthfuls of pizza and fistfuls of tickets won on a variety of games, could be forced to close all of its locations, according to a report from The Wall Street Journal.
However, rather than just putting its own, famous name out there, the company worked the name of one of the restaurant's animatronic band members into a delivery-only front on GrubHub: Pasqually's Pizza and Wings.
More than 17,000 workers were laid off in March - basically every worker except the few put to work making Pasqually's pizzas, according to The Takeout.
That, along with cost-cutting measures like suspending rent payments, saved the company $7 million a month, QSR reported.
With the restaurants closed and no kids putting coins into the games, even before anybody had figured out who Pasqually's was, sales plummeted 94% compared to a similar period the previous year.
The parent company, CEC Entertainment, has been trying to raise funds to avoid bankruptcy, seeking $200 million from lenders while facing debts of nearly $1 billion, according to The Wall Street Journal.
CEO Dave McKillips is in line to receive a $1.3 million retention bonus, president Roger Cardinale will get $900,000, and EVP and CFO James Howell will receive $675,000.
Twenty-five others are due to receive bonuses as well under the company's Key Employee Retention Program, which requires all who receive retention bonuses to stay with the company for at least a year, or 30 days if the company has to restructure.
The company has announced measures such as temperature checks and mandatory hand sanitizer for guests, as well as spacing out the games, to ease the worried minds of prospective guests.
However, so far, the games areas of their restaurants have not been allowed to open, so their doors remain closed - and they may have to remain closed for good.
h/t: QSR, Restaurant Business
