LBX Collective

#51-The Daily Show - Big Foot Mayhem, Backyard Social, Website Fail and Elton John Pinball

Brandon Willey and Christine Buhr Season 1 Episode 51

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0:00 | 20:41

Hey there, breakfast enthusiasts and gaming geeks! Fancy a taste of the ultimate breakfast combo - chicken and waffles? We discuss its calorie count (brace yourselves) and tantalizing blend of flavors that will make any morning a good one. Can't resist a good video game? Then join us to uncover the world of Big Foot Mayhem, UNIS's latest game drop. It's a monster truck adventure with dual monitors and game modes that keep you on the edge of your seat. But wait, do people even care about Bigfoot in 2020? Why choose this IP? We'll get into that. 

But we're not just about food and games. Ever thought about the importance of a venue having a website before it even opens? We take you to Conroe, Texas, where a new entertainment hub is about to take the stage. Then we take a peek into BackYard Social with a smorgasbord of food trucks, captivating murals, and social games. Also, ever wondered why pinball machines are themed the way they are? We question the logic behind the choice of themes and reflect on our language use in the show. Tune in as we keep you engaged and entertained with our spirited discussions.

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Speaker 1

you now to the LBX Daily Show, brought to you by the LBX Collective your community to connect, engage and inspire. Now let's get ready to roll with your hosts, christine Buyer and Brandon Wiley. All right, friday. Friday, friday.

Speaker 2

Yeah, it's glitchy. What's going on? Yes, it's.

Speaker 1

Friday.

Speaker 2

But you know what? Today is it's National Chicken Waffle Day.

Speaker 1

Oh, I was going to say it's like this October 20th, which is a week after Friday the 13th, but no chicken and waffles, like my favorite breakfast of all time. So I know, and I did not get chicken and waffles today, but I will get them this weekend.

Speaker 2

So I don't. I'm not even sure I've ever had chicken waffle before.

Speaker 1

Yeah, there's like frankly, there's not a better combination of food ever.

Speaker 2

But to me. I look at it and I think, oh my God, how many calories is in one bite of a chicken waffle Like? I just don't know. I can do it.

Speaker 1

Oh for sure. I mean, let's say, let's say a waffles 500 calories, because it's actually waffles don't have that many calories, right, Because they're so airy most of the time. And then you've got your chicken tenders, and if there's usually like two or three chicken tenders on top, which another 750 to 1000 calories. So you know it's a food calorie meal. Yeah butter, yeah, I don't do that, I do the, I do the syrup, yeah for sure the syrup, no butter, but for me that's, that's my meal until dinner. So I skip lunch whenever.

Speaker 2

I'm okay, okay, okay, yeah, okay, I can see that. Yeah, if you're out and about and running around, I can see you burning that off easily as well. Yeah, yeah, it's a it's a good.

Speaker 1

It's a good like intermittent fasting meal because you can eat really big and then take, you know, eight, 10 hours off from eating anything at all and then then eat later in the day.

Speaker 2

Well, I love the flavor, Like I have a spice that's chicken waffle, little shake on my chicken. And then I got these chips actually that were made out of chicken and they're chicken waffle flavored. Oh my god, they're so delicious, like yeah, it's like.

Speaker 1

It's like the perfect combination of sweet and savory. So, yeah, love it.

Speaker 2

All right, well, let's get at her. Okay, so it's Friday. So what happens on Friday? We talked about Eunice.

Speaker 2

This is course this is week seven of their big video game drop before the show. Anyway, today they drop the big foot mayhem. So what's cool about this? It's like an ultimate monster truck racing game, right, and it's full of destruction, competition. You can race players down trucks or you can race on your own for points. What's cool about this guy, though and this is what I'm learning to understand is that it's got two dual monitors on there, so you can kind of see in front. There's two monitors where you can actually see like you get a nice path of the raceway on there. So it's a little bit more fun.

Speaker 2

And in mayhem mode, which is the one where you're racing against yourself trying to rack up points, they have some different modes that you can go into. So there's King of the Hill, which is dominating the hill for a limited time to earn valuable points, which I don't know what dominating the hill means, if that's like a, maybe like a big monster truck thing or something like that. And then there's capture the flag, which is obviously we don't capture the flag is grab the flag and navigate the chaos without colliding with other players to secure bonus points. Anyway, it sounds like fun. The only thing that I wonder about this, and I don't know if you have this problem, but anytime I play a game like this, like I suck so bad at it because it doesn't work the way I'm expecting it to work, and I can never, and I haven't learned the trick of it yet. I guess I had just haven't played it enough. So I'd love for someone to show me how these work so I can actually get better at my at playing.

Speaker 1

Yeah, I mean, it's I'm. This one is like I've been super excited about most of their things they've come out with so far and this one is probably my least interested, the least interesting one, and part of that is, yes, I totally agree. Like you have to, you spend so much money early on just to understand and get the gameplay and like I wish there was like a trial mode where I could like test it so you know it could play like gameplay for three minutes before my actual time starts, just so I can get a handle and a feel for it. So there's, you know, there's a number of things like the F one, racing and some of those. They give you some free like warm up time before you actually get onto the track. So maybe they're doing that, but that would be interesting. The second one is like, if I'm playing with other players, I'm assuming then that this is these can be linked together like up to four players in a unit.

Speaker 2

That's right, that's right.

Speaker 1

Yeah, okay, yeah, that's interesting. The other one is like okay, I know they probably licensed Bigfoot and they say they're officially licensed product Bigfoot. But like, do people really care about Bigfoot? Like Bigfoot, I feel like, is from the like 1980s and 1990s, is this something that's going to get kids excited or is it just really something for, like you know, adults who've remember Bigfoot back in the day, because there's other monster trucks out now. Yeah, they can still around, I don't know, but yeah. So anyway, interesting that they chose that IP to license.

Speaker 2

Great point. Maybe it was just affordable.

Speaker 1

Yeah, it could have been affordable right, yeah it's a lot of different things out.

Speaker 1

Yeah, all right. Well, I mean one one thing I just wanted to add from yesterday's. So yesterday we covered Mirage, which is the hologram, the holographic cabinets, and when I didn't say is like I said Mirage, but you go and Google Mirage, obviously you're not going to find it. So I just wanted to be clear, clarify it's Miragedigital with two eyes and Mirage so M I, I R A G E digital. So if you were going to go check out that, those holographic units want to watch some of the videos and dig in a little and learn a little bit more, it is Mirage with two eyesdigital. Is the? Is the the actual URL there, right? So Cards in the Dark is a new, is you know? Pull us up?

Speaker 1

Here is a brand that this group called Three Rivers Carding Entertainment Park in Pittsburgh. They've basically rethemed their whole carding and axe throwing venue to have sort of a spooky Halloween theme and it's available Friday, saturday and Sunday nights, october 13 to the 29th, so just runs to the back half of October. And what I liked about what these guys were doing is look they're, you're pretty standard go carding place. They've got the indoor fastest indoor go carts in Pittsburgh, which I don't know how many go card places are on Pittsburgh, but they're apparently the fastest and they then they have axe throwing right, and then they have some arcades and a bar and, and you know, food and beverage, that kind of thing. So pretty standard go car facility. But they've retitled things and when you're going through your race, whether going through the go car track, they've themed it to be this red theme and you're going through the graveyard, the cave of the unknown, the spider web and the clown carnage corner, and so they illuminate the whole track in this red, as you can see here.

Speaker 1

And so they've also done reenvisioned their axe throwing, so they call them haunted hatchets and it has Halloween themed targets. They put in decorations and they even turned on fog machines to put a touch of fog in that area. They put zombies wandering around in their zombies on arcade. So during those evenings Friday, saturday, sunday there'll be zombies wandering around in the arcade room. And then they took their garage bar and grill and rebranded it to the witches brew bar and grill and created specialty drinks and specialty food items as well. So the reason to bring this up is this is something that, frankly, we were talking about back in September that every single venue should be doing, which is re theme. Add some touches around the Halloween thing, do something unique around this season to drive repeat visitation. And they did a great job with it, even coming down to developing a new logo.

Speaker 2

Yeah, you know, what I love about it too is that by creating this kind of stuff in your facility or creating events and changes, it just gives you an opportunity to market something else out there. And you know you want to be marketing stuff, you want to be staying top of mind and if you don't do things like this, it you know it doesn't give you any reason to be reaching out to people. So by doing this hey, guess what, guess what's new? You know you're always staying top of mind and getting in people's inboxes or social media accounts, right?

Speaker 1

Yeah, that's right. Marketing has to be relevant. It has to add value to the consumer when you're sending it to them. And if it's not relevant, then why are you sending it? Why am I sending it? I'm going to hit that unsubscribe button. This creates an opportunity for relevance and I'm like, oh, that looks cool. I want to go and have some witches brew while I race around go-karts through the graveyard and that is uh. So I'm going to go, maybe a second time through the year when I wouldn't have normally gone that second time.

Speaker 2

Oh my god, yeah, if you can get someone back for one more visit a year, it's totally worth it, right? Yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 1

Yeah With spending a thousand dollars or whatever they probably spent on some decorations and some re-theming. Maybe it's a couple of grand they spent, but still to get people back in the door it's a great opportunity. It's a missed opportunity if we're not doing that in our venues.

Speaker 2

Well, and especially right now, when we know that Halloween is such a blockbuster holiday now, like people are almost spending more at Halloween than they are at Christmas. Like, why wouldn't you be maximizing your opportunities for that kind of thing? That's right, yeah, so yeah, good on that, and that's awesome. I wonder if they have a costume contest too. That would be fun.

Speaker 1

Yeah, yeah, maybe, maybe on the 29th or something like one of the nights.

Speaker 2

Yeah, for sure, um, awesome. Okay, so you know, speaking of other really cool places, um, we ran into this kind of, uh, this backyard social today. Um, I know, both Brandon and I saw it.

Food Trucks, Arcade, and Central Perk

Speaker 2

I'm just going to share their website on here, because they've done such a really amazing job, actually, uh, of uh, building this website and making it all look. The branding looks super cool, everything inside the facility looks awesome, and so we just wanted to share this with you. And what I really like about this is this concept is kind of like um, they've built an area for people to hang out and socialize in. Um, we've got some different attractions, like they've got the jang as the connect forwards and all that kind of lawn stuff like the cornhole and stuff. Um, they've got some duck uh pin bowling lanes, um, some electronic darts, which is super fun, and a few other things that I won't mention. Um, but what I really liked about it is it's this whole idea of bringing um uh food trucks in. Uh, so you bring in outside food trucks. Uh, now I believe these ones stay there permanently.

Speaker 1

I'm just trying to see if I can find them. Yeah, they are. Yeah, they're permanent, from what I read.

Speaker 2

Um, yeah, that's right from what I read too. Um, there's eight different.

Speaker 1

there's eight different food trucks that they're bringing in.

Speaker 2

Yeah, you can kind of see over here on the side. Um, actually, if we go to menu, let's just see if we can see here, Um the actual food truck lineup, because it looked pretty cool. So yeah, oh, I see. So they've got a list of all the different food trucks that they have um in-house there and you can actually go online, see the menus and at each of the tables inside the facility you can scan a QR code and actually just order from your phone without going up to the food truck. Um, and then when your food is ready, they kind of send you a ping onto your phone and let you know and then you just go pick up your food and bring it back to your seat, which is kind of fun.

Speaker 2

But I love the idea of having the multiple selections with the food trucks, where it's kind of self-serve. You're kind of eliminating staff. This way, Maybe you bring in staff to serve at a certain point during the day, but then your customers and your guests actually get the opportunity to go to the food truck, interact with the people and pick up the food that they've ordered. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2

Um, the this facility turns into a 21 and up after nine, which again is kind of neat. Um, and then let's go back to the welcome page here. So we see it. Um, they also offer live music on the weekends, and I didn't again. I just think they've done such a great job with, uh, uh, the branding, the, the artist designs of the murals on the walls, the seating, everything just kind of works well, and I don't know why this, uh, this is not loading up for me right now. Oh, here we go. Yeah, it's taking a little bit, it's a little bit slow there, yeah.

Speaker 2

Yeah, there you go. So just fun colors, fun place to be social. Um, you can see this little walkthrough here of the facility.

Speaker 1

Yeah, yeah, it's a beautiful venue and you know, with regards to the food trucks, you can tell by the very the varying degrees of sophistication of the logos that clearly they're not all developed by backyard social. So they're, they brought in, you know local, probably locally recognized and known food trucks, and drop them in and now they don't have to be food operators. You know they can be beverage operators they probably their own bar that just because of the license that they probably have. But they can be different. You know they can bring in different food operators, probably do a revenue share or whatever with the food and not have to really worry about that and and have such a wide variety. So you know, pretty much anybody can come here and one person gets sushi and other one get barbecue and that's just a great, you know great place to hang out and it looks awesome. So it's it's very well done.

Speaker 2

Yeah, kudos to them. Super fun place to hang out.

Speaker 1

And what a great, what a great website that they have. So you know. So there's another venue that's opening up in early November. It's in Conroe, texas. It's called a game changer and the entertainment center says we'll have an arcade games, a speak easy themed bar, a patio spaces for private event rentals and a coffee bar. In the arcade there's 40 games, so large arcade but there's vintage, contemporary and interactive arcade games up to four years old and up and you basically pay a $10 wristband to come in and you get unlimited access to the arcade.

Speaker 1

And there's a 20th, 20th century themed speak easy with vodka infused, with vodka infused cocktails, which you know. Again, why is it a 20th century themed speak easy for the prohibition era with vodka, I don't know, because we didn't have vodka. Then we had gin and whiskey and everything else that you get in the US because we weren't shipping alcohol in because fucking prohibition era, but whatever. And so, as you can tell, the rant is rolling and getting up and running a little bit. But and so the patio bars going to feature these cocktails, cider, seltzers, and you know, there's coffee bar with fresh page threes.

Speaker 1

And I was like, okay, I want to go check this thing out. You know, because I know some friends that have an entertainment venue in Conroe, texas, and I wanted to see how there's was maybe different and I went to, went online, google them, and they had no fucking website. No website, no website. They're opening in two weeks, three weeks max, and they have no website. They don't even have a Facebook page. I had no ability to learn anything else about them and they were doing press releases with nowhere to go.

Speaker 1

So you're putting out a press release, news stations are picking you up and if I hear about you, I think, oh, that's cool, I want to go play some vintage arcades and drink as vodka infused cocktail. How do I learn more? And I can't. I cannot learn more. The only way. I even knew where this place was because of the press release that had the address. There's no place for me to sign up for information, no place for me to book or you know, or whatever, ahead of time. So, as we've talked about and I've talked about multiple, multiple times your website should be one of the first things you build. Like six months, 10 months, when you first are breaking ground, you should be breaking ground on your website as well. So if you're breaking ground on your venue. You need to break ground on your website. Put your concept art, put coming soon, put whatever you want to, but start collecting emails, start getting information out there. All right, rant over.

Speaker 2

So two things First of all, brand is going to build it for you. So passionate it is, okay, he can whip it off in an hour. As a matter of fact, ai is going to build up for you because they can right. And second of all, you've used the F word now a couple times, no, or just at least once. So now we have to click explicit on our podcast, just so you know, no, we don't, no, we don't.

Speaker 1

Nobody's nobody cares, kids aren't watching this show.

Speaker 2

They all know that word. Anyway, they use it all the time?

Speaker 1

Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 2

Oh, brandon, I love it, love it, I love it.

Speaker 1

Oh gosh, drives me crazy, drives me crazy, all right.

Speaker 2

It's hilarious, all right. Well, okay, supposedly, supposedly, folks, there is a central perk opening up in Boston soon. So if you recall the show Friends which, oh my gosh, I believe it was 20 years ago or something that Friends aired, if you can believe, it.

Speaker 1

I know it must be fueled.

Speaker 2

Yeah, yeah, me too, anyway. So this is a rendering of what it's going to look like. But some guy out of New York has bought the, he's working with Warner Brothers and he's licensed the brand of Friends to open up a central perks in Boston. Now, from the article I was just reading, they finally picked a location, because this has been under works for a long time. They finally picked a location that's going to be opening up soon, but you can kind of see what it looks like. It almost looks like a Starbucks to me. Honestly. I hope they do it. I hope they get a little bit more of that orangey red couch that was in the show. You know what I mean. I make it a little bit different, more like it. But they've done a really good job of actually branding well with the theme of the show.

Speaker 2

So, here you go, you've got a little coffee thing that says you're my lobster. Obviously, you all know that. How you doing Okay, that was a bad Joey, but how you doing, whatever, you know what I mean. They've got other coffee brands and other products that are labeled. They've got swag that they're selling. I thought they did a really good job. If you pop onto, if you Google central perks on Instagram or on Google, you can go to their website and you can see all the other things that they're actually offering. But just really really well done. We're on a coffee break, right Obviously famous sign. And also they are serving up dishes that are playfully named after show characters. So they've got Princess Consuela Banana, mocha Blend, chandler's Hot Chocolate, milk, cold Foam and then some meals. They've got Joey's Meatball Sandwich and Rachel's Side Salads. So I think that's going to be super fun. People that love friends will enjoy going there. It looks like they're going to be doing multiple locations and they just done a really good job with their marketing and their advertising around it.

Speaker 1

So they've got their website up and going.

Speaker 1

Oh good, I was going to have to turn on the rant stream. The rant ticker again at the bottom of the screen. No, that's awesome and I think these types of hangout places, that are places where people that we know and that shows that we've watched for a long time, those things do really well. The Cheers Bar in Boston as well. So it's interesting that we have the Cheers Bar in Boston but then also now this is coming in Boston two places where I can go to my old favorite TV shows and actually have a drink and hang out in a place that I used to watch. So very, very cool there. All right, well, so the last thing we've got.

Speaker 1

We covered Eunice, and sometimes we don't only talk about Eunice because they do a good job marketing their stuff. Well, this one was really cool. Jersey Jack just announced and released their Elton John Pinball and it was actually developed in really close collaboration with Elton John himself. So Mr Sir Elton helped, not that he was out there, he was in collaboration, probably in song choices and other things. And this thing runs for 12,000 for the Platinum Edition and 15,000 for the Collectors Edition. So I think the majority of the video we're going to watch a little video here that we see is, I think, the Collectors Edition because of the big screen and everything else, but we'll go ahead and just take a look at this. It's pretty, pretty cool, and the way they've integrated his music into it is well done. I love how the exact head actually turns.

Speaker 2

That's a great marketing video, hey.

Speaker 1

Oh, it's a great video. Yeah, it's such a good job. Yeah, I mean great action. There's 12,000 LEDs underneath and really beautiful machines. Anyway. So that's our. If we could almost just leave that as our outro music and let's just let that go. Yeah, right, I know.

Speaker 2

I wonder what goes into actually selecting what theme pinball manufacturers are going to use, like Wilde and John. Why the Foo Fighters, you know like? How do they actually know what a good theme will be?

Speaker 1

Yeah, I don't know, and maybe they just take a guess at it sometimes too, but yeah, All right. Well, LBXers, this is CB and BW signing off and putting soap in our mouth for using so much language on this show.

Speaker 2

That's bodymells.

Speaker 1

All right, stay tuned and keep kicking ass.

Speaker 2

Enjoy the weekend.