Pizza Time Theatre logo
Chuck E. Cheese's Pizza Time Theatre was a chain of restaurants founded in 1977 by Atari's co-founder Nolan Bushnell. This was the original name for Chuck E. Cheese.
History[]
The first restaurant under PTT was opened May 17th, 1977, in San Jose, California. That same year, Nolan Bushnell purchased the chain, PTT, from Warner Communications while working at Atari.
Bushnell turned over day-to-day food operations of PTT to a newly hired restaurant executive and focused on Catalyst Technologies in 1981. During this time, Bushnell was using large loans on his Pizza Time Theatre stock to fund Catalyst.
By the end of 1983, Pizza Time Theatre was having serious financial problems. President of PPT, Joe Keenan resigned in the fall of said year. Bushnell tried to step back in, blaming the money problems on overexpansion, too much tweaking of the formula, and saturation in local markets by the management team. He resigned in February 1984, when the Board of Directors rejected his proposed changes. Chuck E. Cheese's Pizza Time Theatre entered Chapter 11 bankruptcy in the fall of 1984.
ShowBiz Pizza Place, a similarly themed competitor to PTT that was also struggling financially purchased Pizza Time Theatre and assumed its debt. The newly formed company, ShowBiz Pizza Time, operated restaurants under both brands for a period of time before later converting all Showbiz locations to the Chuck E. Cheese's brand via Concept Unification. This was the effect of Aaron Fechter from Creative Engineering refusing to let Showbiz keep the rights to The Rock-afire Explosion.
Trivia[]
- Pizza Time Theater was created by Nolan Bushnell, originally as a place where kids could eat pizza and play video games. As such, it could be used as a distribution channel for Atari video games.
Gallery[]
