Chuck E Cheese T&T is not on­ly in­vest­ing in smiles and hap­py fam­i­lies, but it al­so con­tin­ues to dri­ve growth in oth­er busi­ness­es and gen­er­ate much-need­ed rev­enue streams lo­cal­ly.

Fran­chise own­er Joan­na Ros­tant gave an up­date to the Busi­ness Guardian about the com­pa­ny’s progress and chal­lenges it still faces dur­ing an in­ter­view at the open­ing of its West­mall branch last week.

Not­ing that sup­port­ing lo­cal con­tin­ues to be fun­da­men­tal for Chuck E Cheese, Ros­tant said this has en­abled sev­er­al en­ti­ties to al­so pros­per, as they are her key sup­pli­ers.

She ex­plained chal­lenges brought on by COVID-19 and glob­al sup­ply chain prob­lems led Chuck E Cheese to turn to home­made prod­ucts.

“I sub­sti­tut­ed a mul­ti­tude of our sup­plies for lo­cal al­ter­na­tives,” Ros­tant said adding, “We make all our dough in-house now with lo­cal in­gre­di­ents, our piz­za sauce is lo­cal­ly made by Karibbean Flavours, our meats are all bought lo­cal­ly from Erin Farms, our wings are lo­cal­ly made by Heat N Eat. The on­ly thing we re­al­ly im­port is the cheese be­cause I have not been able to find cheese lo­cal­ly.”

On the sup­ply chain is­sues, Ros­tant said even though it’s been two years since the pan­dem­ic struck, some of the prob­lems brought with it face many coun­tries to­day, in­clud­ing T&T.

For in­stance, Ros­tant said get­ting goods on time re­mains a work in progress.

“The sup­ply chain was af­fect­ed a lot when we were do­ing our Suri­name lo­ca­tion. If a new store usu­al­ly took two months to get games in, for Suri­name, it took eight to ten and all the ex­tra costs.

“Our sup­ply chain is im­pact­ed be­cause ship­ping takes twice the amount, and it costs twice the amount as well, but it re­al­ly im­pacts new de­vel­op­ment from an op­er­a­tional per­spec­tive. Al­so, be­cause of the shut­downs in Chi­na a lot of our Chuck E sup­ply stuff was im­pact­ed so we couldn’t get stuffed an­i­mals for a while,” Ros­tant said.

How­ev­er, with fac­to­ries back up and run­ning in Chi­na, Ros­tant is hope­ful the reg­u­lar ship­ping flow will re­turn, al­beit slow for now.

She fur­ther de­tailed oth­er is­sues not on­ly fac­ing her busi­ness but oth­ers in T&T as well.

The ac­cess to for­eign ex­change, Ros­tant said, con­tin­ues to be an ob­sta­cle but there’s a flip­side to this.

“The re­al­i­ty is the forex chal­lenges cre­at­ed an op­por­tu­ni­ty to bring a lot of busi­ness to lo­cal com­pa­nies,” she said, not­ing the im­por­tance of us­ing lo­cal in­stead of for­eign goods.

An­oth­er is­sue is the ease of do­ing busi­ness in T&T which con­tin­ues to be a prover­bial thorn for many com­pa­nies.

“Busi­ness is tough for every­one in many ways. The ease of do­ing busi­ness is tough,” Ros­tant added.

How­ev­er, she said the sup­port from her staff has been com­fort­ing dur­ing dif­fi­cult times and in help­ing to bring plans to fruition.

A ge­ol­o­gist by train­ing, Ros­tant who worked in the oil and gas in­dus­try for over 20 years with com­pa­nies based in T&T, Alas­ka, Venezuela and the US al­so spoke about her im­pe­tus to ex­pand, not just in T&T but al­so re­gion­al­ly.

“Since buy­ing the fran­chise we knew it was a long-last­ing con­cept; bring­ing smiles and hap­pi­ness to fam­i­lies.

“We were bru­tal­ly im­pact­ed. The en­ter­tain­ment in­dus­try in par­tic­u­lar, was the most im­pact­ed in an in­ter­na­tion­al Chuck E cheese con­text be­cause Trinidad was the store which was closed the longest in the world by so many months but what we de­cid­ed to do in COVID is ex­pand re­gion­al­ly. We now own the mar­kets of Guyana, Suri­name and Ja­maica,” Ros­tant said.

She added since open­ing Suri­name that lo­ca­tion has been do­ing ex­cep­tion­al­ly well.

Chuck E Cheese opened its doors in 2014 at Brent­wood, Ch­agua­nas, and in C3 Cen­tre in San Fer­nan­do in 2016, with the lat­ter clos­ing and re­lo­cat­ing to West­mall.

With the re­cent open­ing of its Suri­name lo­ca­tion in 2022, the West­mall out­let is the sec­ond in less than five months.

The West­mall branch has sev­er­al of­fer­ings like the oth­er lo­ca­tions, but its size is unique.

“The West­mall store is ac­tu­al­ly a small­er foot­print of my larg­er stores in Trinidad, so it is ac­tu­al­ly tak­ing that con­cept to Caribbean na­tions and mak­ing that work on a small­er scale,” Ros­tant said.

Al­so, she added, the west branch has a space for teenagers which al­so makes it stand out.

“There’s a teen room. They have a dark­er area with LED light­ning and games for them. Our stores are zoned via ages to pre­vent bul­ly­ing,” Ros­tant fur­ther ex­plained.

Health is al­so a num­ber one pri­or­i­ty for Chuck E Cheese.

Be­ing in the en­ter­tain­ment busi­ness, Ros­tant re­mains cog­nisant that COVID has not gone away.

While not­ing she has seen a “re­lax­ation in peo­ple’s con­cern for the virus” Chuck E Cheese, how­ev­er, re­mains ever vig­i­lant.

Sani­ti­sa­tion of every­thing in­clud­ing equip­ment, games, han­dles etc, Ros­tant said, is in­te­gral.

“Peo­ple are fair­ly con­fi­dent in com­ing to Chuck E Cheese know­ing that our clean­li­ness is num­ber one and safe­ty is num­ber one. We are see­ing groups of fam­i­lies com­ing back. When we re­opened it was very qui­et, now it is get­ting busier and busier,” Ros­tant added.

Chuck E Cheese is a US-based in­ter­na­tion­al fran­chise that fol­lows strict guide­lines on the safe­ty of all guests, adults and chil­dren, she em­pha­sised.

It al­so fol­lows the guide­lines of the Min­istry of Health, World Health Or­gan­i­sa­tion (WHO) and Cen­ters for Dis­ease Con­trol and Pre­ven­tion (CDC) and oth­er gov­ern­ing bod­ies.

Re­gard­ing T&T’s cur­rent cus­tomer spend, Ros­tant said it has re­turned to pre-pan­dem­ic lev­els.

“Peo­ple were just des­per­ate to get their fam­i­lies back out. Be­ing locked up for two years is not good for any­one,” Ros­tant added.

It was re­port­ed that in 2020, the com­pa­ny lost 35 per cent of its an­nu­al rev­enue and in 2021, the loss of rev­enue was about 85 per cent due to COVID.

What’s next for Chuck E Cheese?

Ros­tant said she cur­rent­ly has her eye on St Lu­cia but this is yet to be fi­nalised.

How­ev­er, the busi­ness in­tends to grow through­out the Caribbean as it is set to open a store in Ja­maica by the end of this year, Guyana in 2024 and an­oth­er in Ja­maica in 2025.