RePlay Magazine Podcast
Welcome to the RePlay Magazine Podcast, hosted by Randy Chilton, which will share interesting bits of “coin-op” history and entertaining stories from industry greats – the visionaries, legends and characters that make the business fun!
RePlay Magazine Podcast
RePlay Magazine Podcast - Frank DeSocio
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This month, Randy Chilton has a real gem for you. Just days after the 2026 Bowl Expo wrapped up in Nashville, he interviewed one of the big names in bowling today: Frank DeSocio, executive director of the Bowling Proprietors' Association of America (BPAA). However, if his role leading this organization is all you know about Frank, you’re missing out on a lot.
Yes, he has been the chief exec of the BPAA since 2014, but in his 40-plus-year career, he’s also operated bowling centers, was president and CEO of Strike Ten Entertainment, was a Brunswick Bowling sales rep and lots more. DeSocio was among the earliest pioneers of the “family entertainment center” model. He helped develop national bowling promotions with major consumer brands. He was at the helm as BPAA and their members navigated through Covid. Frank is also the 2025 recipient of the Victor Lerner Award, one of bowling's highest industry honors. (Fun fact: Frank oversaw the renovation of the White House bowling lane!)
By the way, you don’t have to be in the bowling industry (or even the amusement biz) to enjoy this one. Key threads that apply broadly run throughout – the value of leadership, the importance of trying new things and the significance of relationships. And speaking of relationships, you’ll pick up on the genuine affection Randy Chilton and Frank DeSocio, good friends for 45 years, have for one another. Sit back and enjoy being in the room with these two.
Welcome to Replay Magazine's Podcast, where we'll dive into the legends and interesting stories within the world of what we call Coin OP Entertainment. That's games and amusement machines you find in arcades, fun centers, bars, restaurants, and beyond. Replay's covered this business for 50 years and is joining forces with industry veteran and former association president Randy Chilton. He is Chief Revenue Officer for National Entertainment Network, owned by Japanese amusement giant Kittleton Jenda. And now here's Randy in this month's Replay Podcast.
SPEAKER_01Hi, everybody, and welcome to the July edition of the Replay Magazine Podcast. Today we have uh a wonderful podcast to share with you, which is uh personally very enjoyable for me, interviewing my uh friend of many decades, Frank DeSocio, the executive director of the Bowling Proprietors Association of America. He's had a career in bowling that has spanned bowling center ownership. He has been the CEO of Strike 10, the marketing arm that really turned bowling around with a lot of national promotions. And since 2014, he's been the executive director of the Bowling Proprietors Association of America, which in the end just makes him about the most influential person in the bowling industry there is today. Uh, a good friend of mine, a lot of great stories. Sorry, some of them uh uh take us back to old home week in Wichita, Kansas. But uh we had a lot of fun making it. So I hope you enjoy uh my conversation with Frank DeSocio today. Welcome to the July edition of the Replay Magazine Podcast. And uh today's podcast is special for many reasons. I'm excited, it's Frank DeSocio, executive director of the Bowling Proprietor Association of America. Thank you, my friend. My friend Chat GPT says Frank DeSocio is described as one of the most influential executives in the business side of bowling in the last 20 years. That's serious.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, uh listen, I don't know if I'm influential, but uh listen, at the end of the day, uh it's it's easy to make changes when you're doing something you love and you make the and you make it for the right reasons, which is what's good for bowling. It's all good. Hey, you're humbling.
SPEAKER_01I was impressed. I said, hey, we're gonna we're gonna quote that. You're also our youngest podcast guest to date. We've had some pretty old guys on here. I like it. And uh here I actually wrote this. You're not an operator, distributor, and manufacturer of arcade games, and those have been most of the guests that we've had on this this podcast, but you clearly uh have influenced the industry in a massive way with all of the uh the bowling entertainment centers, the FEC. We're gonna talk about that because I think I may have had a hand in this back in the day. We're gonna talk about North Rock, yeah, North Rock lanes here in a minute. Hey, most importantly, right, we've been friends for 45 years. Usually I did the math. I go, shit, I think I've known him for 45 years. That's a long time. And most most of these podcasts I spend a lot. I I you know, I research, you know, I get Bob Dasheen on, I'm reading his life story, I'm doing this. I prep for you for about a minute and a half because I've I had I don't need to I've lived your career from close and far. So this is a big this is a big treat. Uh so we're gonna we're just gonna have we're gonna have some fun. All right, let's start from going backward. You just came from Bull Expo. My team says it looked like you had twice as many people as you did a year ago. But tell us how it went at bowl expo in Nashville.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I I wouldn't say twice as many, but you know, we came out of DC, which we missed it. Um DC for us is which we didn't know is almost like Orlando, a lot of distractions. So families come. And to be very candid, we rented as many room nights in DC as we did Denver, as we did before, but that everybody wants to go see the attractions. They want to go to the Smithsonian. They want to, and so we have we just had less people on the show. We had less people coming, but they were there, but they were out running around. Where this year we just and we had more people. We just we just flatten out had we we were probably 25% up on broom drop as well. But we had a great show, and and bowling's solid right now. I mean, it you know, I'm not gonna say people are cocooning, but they're staying home a little bit more. They're and we're our business is pretty solid. I'm not gonna say it's off the chart, but it's solid. And we're still above 29, our our benchmark randy is 2019. And so we're we're as an industry, we're still well above 2019's numbers.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it also attributes uh, since you were talking about the pre-COVID years, uh, your management of uh your team, which you have a great team over there, is uh you you you you're attributed with really guiding the BPAA through COVID, through the pretty and you didn't sit back and just let it go. You were pretty aggressive.
SPEAKER_02We were very aggressive, and uh we felt we needed to be. And as an ED, it was a struggle. Uh uh, we knew what we had to do. March 14th or whatever, COVID hits, we shut our office down, we work from home. May 4th, we're back in the office full time. We had pretty good spacing, we didn't have to worry about everybody's got an office, so I had people that just would lock themselves in their office and just but but it was good. But the struggle for me was simple. I'll tell you with a brief story. I I get a call from Mike Davis from uh proprietor up in Wyoming, and he says, Hey Frank, this was like second week of May, third week of May, can you come to our bowling convention, our proprietor convention in Casper? And I said, Well, sure. Uh you guys are meeting. Yeah, we got everybody coming. And so I end up long story short, I drove up there and and you get there, and he's telling me, Well, we've been shut down a week and now we're all back open. We've got some spacing. And then you get out, then the next morning you're talking to another group, and it's a group out of New York, and they haven't, they they don't even see the ending of when they're going to be be reopened. And for me, it was a struggle. You had to be careful how you talk to people because some people are, I mean, they had their best summer they ever had in Wyoming. And the guys in Oklahoma, uh, the guys in uh California and the guys in New York didn't get open for another year. And so as an ed, you didn't want to show too much enthusiasm, but but we were aggressive. We were aggressive on uh on uh we went out and ordered, I think we ordered a million of these hand sanitizer packs that had let's go bowling on it. We were sending that out to members because we were pre-the second day closed, we were pre-buying uh hand sanitizer, all we could get our hands on. We were just aggressive about it, and I I think it helped our industry a lot.
SPEAKER_01Might have saved your industry.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I mean some had a hard time getting back. You think of the movie guys? I mean, they're they're still, I mean, they're on their way back, but uh probably a little longer than they thought.
SPEAKER_01Heck yeah.
SPEAKER_02Don't want to get in trouble there by saying that.
SPEAKER_01Hey, we got some theater customers over here. It's going great. Uh all right, let's rewind the clock now. Uh best I can tell, it was 1980 something. Oh, and and for the people that are viewing this, Frank and I, both Wichita, Kansas guys, so that's how this thing goes back so far. And back in the day, you went to Wichita State and I went to the University of Kansas, and I came home and went to work for my dad, and you came home and went to work for your father-in-law close enough. Exactly. Perfect plan for both of us. And uh funny, here we are. But so you had you had, you know, and and our company, Chilton Vending, provided the games to Jomal Bowling Centers, and uh we did a pretty good job, but North Rock Lanes, and I remember I remember this time because you and John have North Rock Lanes, and you said, Hey, there's this guy in Chicago doing something, but we're gonna put an arcade in North Rock Lanes in Wichita, Kansas. It's gonna be 4,000 square feet, and we're gonna have games all over the place. Well, that we'd never heard of such a crazy idea. But John Crumb doesn't exactly he's not asking the question, he's saying here's what we need to done. So we did it and then we designed it. Remember, we hired architects, we had neon lights going all over the place.
SPEAKER_02And remember, you had those, it was before computers doing it, and you were cutting games out on a little chalkboard thing and placing them. I can do this and putting it in the city. Oh, that's right. Oh, for like the redemption center. Oh, yeah, yeah, oh yeah.
SPEAKER_01At that digamort of the time, oh baby, not the Sega, I'm searching for a sponsor here, too. Great game by Sega. That thing.
SPEAKER_02Wait, Grady, I gotta tell you, if you remember, uh, we opened our first FEC, if you want to call it that, in 1983, Frontier Lanes out on West Kellogg. And remember, it was a 20-lane bowling center that had another 20,000 square feet on the other side. And so we put in indoor miniature golf, we had eight billiard tables, we put in ping pong, and we had only then did we have about we didn't do ticket redemption, but we had about 20 games, nothing special. And then we ended up putting in eight indoor horseshoe pitching uh uh courts on on concrete, believe it or not. And then we also did two uh we did a slow pitch softball and a fast pitch baseball, all in the pitch. I mean, we just killed it, and that's what gave us the idea for North Rock. And then when we opened North Rock, we put that 40 matter of fact, we laid it out in your back warehouse with cardboard at your warehouse on Lincoln. And we laid out a golf course that had a 12-foot rock waterfall, stream running through it. And the funny one on that, if you remember, we didn't have enough room, so John extended with these sunrooms at the front, and then we had the big game room, which was yeah, almost 4,000 square feet, and we did ticket redemption. And the one funny one on the ticket redemption that I still laugh today, I saw an old picture. I was going over to the house of Schwann and buying all this Budweiser stuff because it was flying off the shelves. And finally, about a year after being opened, somebody said, Do you know you're giving kids Budweiser branded uh beer products? I said, Well, they're not kids. Well, Frank, they're 12 years old. Well, yeah, but they're not, we're not selling them beer. I mean, and and we we killed it. I mean, it was and that was in '87. Well, and you were part of us doing that.
SPEAKER_01I remember that that place ran. I I remember I remember $10,000, $15,000 weeks, and we just said we'd go, holy cow, I never saw such a thing. Yeah. Now it's like happens all now. It happens all the time in bowling center.
SPEAKER_02Did you were you? I don't know if I'm allowed to ask questions, but I I guess I can. But there's no did you oh was Grand Prix opened then by then too? And was it doing ticket redemption? I don't know. Your place on 13th.
SPEAKER_01I think it pre I think it predated that. Or about the same time. I don't remember. I don't think this is a big freestanding game room that uh that uh my father opened in uh in Wichita and uh restaurant and games. So uh yeah, I don't think it's the finest gold-fried shrimp you'd ever had in your life. Remember, they were gone. Don't get me going. I'm not sure. I'm not sure we made any money on those french fries. What are you gonna do? Well, so now we've decided that you and I opened the first family entertainment center in between uh frontier lanes, and there's a few people that might disagree with that. But anyway, that was certainly forward thinking considering what the industry looks like today. So let's let's fast forward. So you did you go straight to work for John, or did was Brunswick before or after going to work for John?
SPEAKER_02I went to work for Brunswick Corp selling bowling equipment in the state of Kansas and a little bit of Missouri. No, I'm sorry, quarter of Missouri and a little bit of Nebraska. Did that from 82 to 85. And then I went to the ball.
SPEAKER_01So was that all kind of John? Was that John saying, I want you to learn the bowling business, or did you really want to go to work for Brunswick?
SPEAKER_02Well, I I it was John wanting me to learn the bowling business uh and and and start to understand it better. And and so and he had a unique way of teaching, yes. So it was uh kind of throw you to the wolves, but yeah, so went to work for there. And then uh I think at that time he knew he was leaving. Uh I think at that time he knew he was leaving. Uh he wanted to get out of the King Louis chain. And so at that time he uh um he just moved on. So uh uh get me in there, and then he stepped back from the business itself.
SPEAKER_01So you and uh you and Kathy ran the bowls uh for a number of years. And then how did the strike you're you president C you of strike 10 in 2000 or so, right? Yeah, you took that job. Yes, what was the appeal? You're you're a proprietor, you're you're making bank, you're running a bunch of bowling centers, and they say, Well, hey, Frank, strike 10. Tell me how tell me how you that.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I was we were eight centers at that time, even a couple in in Oklahoma City and or Edmund and Yukon, but uh I sat on every board there was in bowling then. I mean, there was way too many, but I sat on them, and we had formed a company called Strike 10 Entertainment in '96 that uh literally went bankrupt. I mean, it was owned by the industry, it was like agency of record for bowling, strike 10 entertainment. And so it was done, and they grabbed me at one of the why don't you go run this or figure out what we do with it? And that was in two January 13th, 2000. Never forget it. And so went to work there. We had an office in Shelton and an office in uh uh Greendale, Wisconsin, and closed up the office in Shelton and thought it was an 18-month kind of transitional. And uh, you know, 26 years later, I'm still doing it. Well, I'm on the BPA side now, but yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01So uh want to talk about strike 10. The bowling was not in a good place in 2000, if I remember right. Because here's here's my non-proprietor view of bowling. I've always been very close to the bowling industry, but it uh, you know, the the premise of league bowling was sign up as many people as you can to give you 35 weeks in a row, and that's where the bread and butter was, and then people's attention stand shrank, and you started and and and the industry started losing league bowlers, and then there was a shift to open play as more of a strategy, not walking away from the league bowlers, and that and then you added all the additional attractions to that. I think Strike 10 was a really big part of that. I think you went out and did I think he went out and did promotional deals with some of the biggest banners in the retail industry.
SPEAKER_02Got got lucky right out of the box. We just we just got lucky in 2000, got lucky right out of the box. They they put me in a meeting that listen, I'm green, I don't know what I'm doing, and and I go to this meeting, I'm not a sponsorship guy, I'm not a promotional guy, I just ran bowling centers. I ended up in a meeting with uh I think Kellogg's whoever had Cocoa and CineCrunch Pebbles, whoever that was, and we did a free game offer on the back of it. And when you called the phone, because it was before you know going to a website, and Fred Flintstone answered and said, What's your zip code? We'll send you. You can have a free game of bowling. And so, and we did that and and crushed it and just just crushed it. And was that the Con Agra?
SPEAKER_01Was that the was that the Conagra brand promotion?
SPEAKER_02No, Con Agra brand. No, Conagra was about three years later, and that was with the uh Banquet Foods brand. And we put on 36 SKUs, we put out 88 million free games. And and another one, and it ended up being marketing program of the year, two years running, with a guy named David Ellis, if I remember right. Great people. Uh, they were scared to death that we couldn't deliver, so they made the complaint line, their 800 number. And it it they never got any. I mean, we redeemed them all. It was it was wonderful. But that that one came after the pebbles, and that's when we became really intricately involved with uh the PBA tour at that time. Oh, yeah. Because it had just got purchased in 2000 by the 39th, 69th, and 99th uh employee at Microsoft. So these were three big players out of Seattle. They loved bowling, they end up buying it for uh whatever it was, and that helped us launch all these uh all these programs. Not necessarily the not necessarily the the uh fruity pebbles, but the others after that.
SPEAKER_01Wow, and that was only unprecedented in the bowling business at that time. I mean, these were big deals.
SPEAKER_02They they were, and they uh and we just got lucky. I listen, some of it's luck, some of it our guys delivered. We as an industry in those years, we always felt like a stepchild when you would meet with companies and and then uh but once they grasped it, they they liked it. It was easy to it was easy to go do something else and get somebody else involved. And it was fun. Was it hey uh 2000 to 20, 2007, eight was fun times. I mean, really fun. Oh, eight hits and and oh eight was oh eight, and and for everybody. Not necessarily bowling, bowling really is we're not a recession proof, but um we don't have the big swings up, but we also don't have the big swings down. We live in that little middle part, and there's ways of adjusting to still break even and not get you know like a car lot or something. We we do all right.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it's it's a little bit like you know, the traditional amusement business where a little bit of recession is good, right up until they start closing the doors. Because when you're looking at a recession, you know, we're inexpensive entertainment compared to you know some of the main event bolero places in uh in your industry. And uh, you know, people are looking for or David Busters, which is an experience, or a top golf, which is uh you know it's a hundred, it's a hundred dollar day no matter what you're doing. And uh so yeah, I I get it. I get it.
SPEAKER_02And then I'll fill, you know what though, Randy, they all fill voids. What whether you go do a top golf, whether you go do a bowling, you know, when mom is booking a birthday party for her kid and her kid's friends, they don't they don't think about it. It's they don't think about anything other than they want an enjoyable day. Now, whether they do that at top golf or with bowling centers or um whatever it all is, that's just what they do, whether they go to main event, whatever it is, they don't think about it. I I think summer, I think we're very reasonably priced within reason. Um, but uh it it fits the void that people look for. And if you and if you're a bowler and you want it, you don't want to spend that kind of money, then you go to all you can bowl on Thursday at at you know from five to nine or something, you just do it different.
SPEAKER_01And and you're in the bowling industry, because our industry is uh relies on bowling in a big way, but all the FECs and everything, you know, coming out of COVID, we were all sitting around going, Is this is there ever going to be a business here again? And then it just came back in waves. So we went from being un have nothing to do to supply chain and labor issues almost overnight. And I think the learning there for us was you know, as humans, we want to socialize. It's it's been people started thinking, my goodness, I didn't know that I could lose all this, let's all go out. So there's just a wave of everybody went back out to the FECs, and I'm assuming the bowling centers, and coming out of COVID was some big times.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, and and and and I think uh we've got big boxes. Uh that's what we have. And so I think there was a comfortability that you could go into a bowler's area and you really didn't have anybody around you if you didn't want it. And coming right out of COVID, you know, it was like instead of every lane, we used every other pair. So if if if we went bowling, we might take lane one and two, and we put the next precinct on three and four. So you wouldn't be using and you had space. And then a big, big building at with 12 foot, 16 foot ceilings, people felt comfortable. And then that, and then I think bowling did their job. I I think bowling did a great job of, you know, we I it might have been uh right after COVID, maybe three or four months after everybody was open. We mystery shopped every center in America and sent that to proprietors and said, Hey, here's what they saw when they came in. And it was amazing how well proprietors did when people came back. I mean, and how well they treated them and got rid of the old that that and there's a lot of people keep bowling just because but they remember it and was smoky and dingy. And and when they go in, they say, Oh my gosh, this isn't what I remember. And so it was uh A revelation for a lot of our customers. And we just continue to ride that today.
SPEAKER_01So you as as BPAA, you sent secret shoppers into bowling centers and reported back to them once you found?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, and just gave it to them. We didn't even at somebody didn't read, just sent it just to try to find out, let them know, hey, because you got to remember, green are all ratcheting up too, Randy. I mean, they're all hiring new employees. They're some of their employees didn't want to come back to work. And so everybody had their own issues trying to get reopened. And it just was a uh kind of a thank you. Say, hey man, here's what's going on.
SPEAKER_01What a great idea.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, lucky.
SPEAKER_01And and and uh, well, let's do this in some chronological order. So you did that for 10, 14 years. Uh I know say you you you became executive director of the BPA in 2014.
SPEAKER_02Is that right? Yeah, July 1st, 2014. I'd be I moved literally across the hallway. And so my guy who's now running strike 10 is he just matter of fact, he just laid me down some and says, Hey, you got a call. I said, No, I don't. So he's right across. So yeah, moved across in in July, uh, July 1, 2014. Didn't didn't think I I should do it. I mean, and kind of got convinced it. A lot of the guys that on the strike 10 are the guys at BPAA, and I I was I was very, you know, I always had the backup of owner bowling center. So I said, yeah, I'll come do it. But I was really leery. Strike 10 had two or three staff people at the most, maybe four. So you go from 80% chasing business, chasing everything, and 20% administrative. Then you come over to BPAA and it's 80% administrative because you got a staff of 35 to 20 the chase. It was a it was a the first six months was me in an office staring at a screen. It was, but it it really flipped quick and and became really fun. I mean, and it still is today, or yeah, it still is today.
SPEAKER_01I steal your line when people talk about retirement. You said I come to work every day, I get to talk to people about bowling. How much fun is that? That's a good line.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, well, no, hey, for me, there's nothing better than talking to bowling people every day. And I think I've talked to five or six proprietors already today about something. And some of them have a minute phone call, one of them was 40 minutes. So, I mean, it's it's great. It's just it's not the it's not hey, I don't I put it for you and I having lunch, and it it even though we reminisce, we got a lot to talk about. There's a lot going on in bowling, whether it's the game rooms and everything, it's it it's great. And and to me, that's part of what we kind of what we all do.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, well, you're right. Our relationships are unique because you have your friends you grew up with, and then everybody goes their separate ways, and you see them once every couple of years and tell them what you're doing. Well, hell, you and I have been staying connected one way or another for 45 years. Damn, Frank.
SPEAKER_02Well, year I I know this isn't about you, but what year, because I was trying to think of this the other day, what year did you move to Colorado?
SPEAKER_01That'd be uh July 1st, 1998. Gotcha. Trying to think of that the other day. There might have been a transaction accompanied with that date, which is why it sticks in my mind.
SPEAKER_02There you go. But it's uh yeah, uh, and so then start with BPA and did some revamping here when I got here. Um, not a lot. There were some really good people already here, and so it made it uh easy. And I'd already worked with them all because I was again just across the hall. I wasn't a BPA guy, I was a strike 10 guy, but they, you know, everybody knew me. I still owned bowling centers at that time. I still own three today. So um they get it. And and but they were good people, and I'm more of a person that lets people do their job and and go out and get it done. You don't need me uh riding above you saying, you know what it is. And and I think that was a at that time for BPAA was a a great asset to bring to the table, to let people do their thing, and and instead of this, you know, what are you doing today and how you doing it? And I it let people show their uh just show who they were.
SPEAKER_01Well, you have such a strong team over there. Yeah, that's good. Yeah, good, good stuff. What is the state of uh bowling uh industry today? Would you say how would you summarize it?
SPEAKER_02Again, we're still we used we use 2019 as a benchmark. I don't think it's it was never fair using 20 or 2021, because even at 21, there were still a a lot of bowling centers that weren't even open full time yet, or they had limitations. And so we we go back to 19 and we're still above that by four or five percent, maybe a little higher. And so business is good, huge influx of building of FECs over the last seven or eight years. Um, but uh on the you know, everybody forgets there's still a million certified league bowlers that bowl 35-week leagues every year. Um, they have to join every year, so it's not like it's a you know, you join, you're in for good. So they re-sign up all those people every year. It's wonderful. And and league bowling is still fun. I mean, league bowling is still, you know, you could be a 170 average and compete with a with a 220 average person and and have fun doing it. And uh, I think that's been the secret of growth as you see at IAPA for bowling. And that's why when you go to IAPA, you see a lot of the bowling guys are all there with big with big boosts, just like they are at Expo. But the the miniature golf course that wants to expand in a game room and adding eight lanes of bowling or 12 lanes of bowling, it it's a fun, it's it brings people together and it just gives you a never revenue stream uh for your plot of land or what you're doing. And and movie theaters are another one that are putting in uh a lot of bowling centers and a lot of miniature golf courses that are building on. So it's it's an interesting business today.
SPEAKER_01You remember I am a former league bowler? Yes, you are. You grabbed you well, you you grabbed me in 1980 something and said, Randy, you're gonna, I'm starting a Monday night football league at North Rock, and you're gonna be on my team. And I went out there and I stunk. I couldn't even bowl a hundred, maybe a hundred and ten on a good day. And uh, and uh not to name drop, but another customer of ours in Wichita was Gordon Vatican at Wichita State University, the greatest collegiate bowling coach in America ever, Hall of Famer. And I go to him and I said, Gordon, would you teach me how to bowl? Frank's making me bowl every night, and I really stink at it. And he looked at me, he said, Well, if you'll come by every Tuesday at four, we'll spend a little time for you. And I think I got that thing up around one, you know, 60 ish.
SPEAKER_02Oh, you were a little above that. You were pretty good. You were pretty good. Our memory is how fun was that? Watch a little football. We Monday night football was above the screens, and that was a collection of folks that we all bowled with. I'll leave it at that.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, well, you know, hey, working for dad to go back to show up at work at 10 the next morning. So it was all right, it was good. I got quite sure.
SPEAKER_02I shouldn't say this, but I still remember your dad driving around in that back warehouse on that concrete floor with that little machine that cleaned the floors.
SPEAKER_01He wanted clean floors in this big warehouse, and you wanted to buy that warehouse back in the day, put cars in it or something.
SPEAKER_02God, I'd love to have that. Yeah, it'd still be good to have. Yeah, still would be.
SPEAKER_01That's pretty funny. What was I going to ask you? Oh, yeah, I'm back to business. So uh I think I've made a slight career miscalculation, and this goes to uh you know, being a traditional operator and providing games, and somewhere along the line, most bowling centers now buy their own games. Now we have a lot of bowling centers, but uh most proprietors will just throw down the two, three, four hundred thousand bucks, buy their games, distributors will make that pretty painless, install, do the whole thing and turnkit. And uh my theory was that always made a lot of sense in the first year or two. And then things start breaking and people start asking for more games, and it really becomes a hassle. And they would all call us and go, Hey, come help me out. I got in a game, get me out of the game business. This is hard. Um, not very many people call.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I I gotta tell you, Randy, if you take the evolution for guys like me, so remember my first big game room. Yeah, you ran it. We rev shared. I we rev shared for till at least 2015. You were out by then, but we were still Rev sharing because I didn't want to throw the guy out because he had a big investment in games there. Right. But in those days, you had protect, if I'm right, you had protected territories for distributors that really weren't allowed to sell that game in that territory without going through the other distributor. I might be wrong on that.
SPEAKER_01No, no, back in the day, that's exactly what they tried to enforce, but uh with some stuff.
SPEAKER_02When that really relaxed, yeah, you saw a lot more proprietors start buying their own games.
SPEAKER_01And you know, I I I interviewed Bob Gasheen on this very podcast a few months ago, and he talked about this exact thing. He said, We just decided to heck with it, we're gonna sell to everybody. These these these territorial uh boundaries really make no sense in the industry, and they were really the uh ones that pushed that whole agenda, exactly what you're talking about.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, and it was it that for us, that's what and I do think game game manufacturing is is light years ahead of what it used to be. And so you just don't have, and then remember all the tickets that would get stuck on ticket games. Now you just run cards, and I I think it's just light years ahead of all the of all the issues. But I got to tell you this one of my best friends in the business, um a bunch of locations, still running tickets, won't get rid of them. Those kids love it coming out, and you can't argue with him because he runs big volume. So I still believe we are we all run our business, we got to run it the best of it works for us. And and if you think you still need to have a uh a route guy that does your games, I get it. But some don't, some do. In bowling, it's just that way. You you get a little of everything. And we and I have talked about that before, where you know, even a big operator says, I just I'm a bowling guy.
SPEAKER_01And yeah, where do you see this? Uh, where's where's bowling going? Uh what do you look over the next five, 10 years?
SPEAKER_02I I think we we might I I have a concern of all these bowling centers that are being built within other businesses, and that it's like when Japan in the early 60s, Japan exploded in bowling. I mean, you they couldn't get the equipment over there quick enough. But then eight years later, you you still got to run a business. You can you can build whatever business you want. You can you can make a math, you can make a magnificent business. But if you don't operate it and you don't run it correctly or you don't know how to do it, you're probably gonna fail. I mean, you could. And I think bowling, what scares me is bowling's always gonna be here. And I think the traditional FECs, I even call them now traditional FECs, are are all still are all still doing very well. We we've all learned that it's the five miles, 10 miles around our bowling center. That's that's the draw. That's the that that that's our draw area. And and yes, I just went into a new uh Andretti's uh up in Kansas City, and they're doing great. And they, even though they compete against one bowling center, they're doing great because it's it's a piece of their bigger business, and they're really good at it. Um, but I do get worried at times there might be too much of an influx of smaller uh six to 12 lane centers built into other uh other attraction businesses. And uh that sometimes worries me. And then I think you're gonna see this continual growth of string machines, which don't need the mechanics at what we call a free fall. And what I mean by that is a string machine is almost like if you ever seen Route 66, they got a string holding the, but they're regulation laying right and they're regulation with the United States Bowling Congress, our governing body, um, but you don't need a mechanic to use them. You you have a mechanic, but you don't need to know everything you do on a free fall. And I think you're there's gonna be a continued growth uh with that as well. And I don't think that affects our game at all. I I think it's it's it's just growth. But I think bowling is set for the future. I think we operate better today than we have ever operated uh as an industry. I mean, you can't, you know, it's tough to measure some of that, but um you know we're a tough group to measure, Randy, because we only have three companies that are public. Uh Main Event, uh Lucky Strike, and I think there's one more small one, and that's it. Everybody else is privately held or privately owned. Where you go to the restaurant business, every a lot of uh public. So you can get real numbers you know, quarterly, and we don't have that. So, but we're all doing pretty good. We're all we could do it, we can always do better, always do better. But I I feel great, and that's why I still keep three centers, even though I sold some. I keep three, and whenever I'm done here, I'll go back and start hanging out running my bowling centers.
SPEAKER_01To your point about proprietors, because as a former regular attendee of the Kansas State Bowling Proprietors Association meetings and played in their golf tournaments, because you always invited me. Bowling proprietors are unique in that they're just a bunch of good old down home proprietors. A lot of them started out being great bowlers, great businessmen. And so you're right, you're right. I mean, we deal with a lot of different verticals, but uh bowling centers are consistently some of the nicest, uh, easiest, not easiest, but the most enjoyable people to uh to deal with. I'll say that about the salt of the earth for my salt. Salt of the earth, that's what I've been trying to say.
SPEAKER_02And they they it's a high cost entry into bowling centers to to build a bowling center is high cost entry. I mean, it's expensive that when you don't think about it, but you're building a building that if you're if you're putting bowling in it, you're only using 20% of that building. You don't think about the 90-foot lane that takes up space. I mean, but you got to have a building for it. And so, but our guys that they they get in and they do great, but they're salt of the earth and they never forget how they got there and and what what sacrifices, whether it was personal or financial or time constraints, they they did to get there. And and that's why I think they they keep this for a guy that's seen a lot of other industries, a lot of other industries, they'll help each other. They're peers, they'll even if they're a competitor, and I'll even bring up uh uh uh our good friend Dale Frazier. And and Dale was a guy that I competed with, we didn't always agree with, but if we needed help, we helped each other, even though he was a competitor. And and and I will tell you that's the bulk of America for bowling centers.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I can I certainly have witnessed it firsthand. So uh, love it. All right, let me ask you a couple of more questions here. You know, through your strike 10 and your BPA, you run in some pretty big circles. You've uh you got your president with you and uh Bush too over there behind you somewhere. Yeah, it's gotta be on your hold that hold that somewhere, yeah. It's a fantastic picture. Uh any other don't you have one with Obama too, or just Bush?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I've got one with Obama. I I I I had a unique went to the uh White House for breakfast uh for Veterans Day, yeah, and actually got to have my picture with Biden and Obama together, which is having both the vice president president is a little bit unusual. You don't always get it, and I've got that, it still hangs in my office, yeah. Huh. It's a great one, yeah. And it was breakfast at the White House, and yeah, it was good. And he was they were a lot of fun. I mean, wow, Obama was a was a lot of fun. I mean, he I won't bore you with the story, but it was a lot of fun because you get uh 15 seconds with them, and then I made a comment that dragged it out for that he dragged it out for another minute and a half, and then the other talking to the president, yeah. Well, I the other good one I got is uh when I remodeled the White House bowling lane. So I had to go to the White House, I don't know, 10 or 12 times, and then remodeled the uh executive branch across the street and got, and I'll never forget it. I became buddies with the usher of the White House under Trump's first term. And next thing one day I'm at home and this thing, I don't know how you got my name, got my address at home, and I got an invite to the White House Christmas party. Get out of here. Oh, it was unbelievable. It was so cool. I mean, it was just it was just so cool. The White House Christmas party. Yeah, and and and and the White House Christmas party is all about the first lady, it's not about the president. So Melania and got my picture with her, and it it was unbelievable. You got a picture with Donald? I haven't seen that one. Could you give me a little bit? I haven't got one with Donald. I got one with her. I I ring probably probably a better picture anyway. Well, much better picture, much better picture. But yeah, so I've got to I've got to do some cool uh, you know, this year we had Drew Breeze speak, and but we've had uh I've got to meet another guy I don't ever talk about a lot was a I'd probably get mad for talking about. I got to spend a little time with a guy who owns Chelsea Pierce in New York City. His head of marketing and I were friends, and one day he wanted to meet with me about bowling because they have a big bowling center on there, and and he he was not dressed the best because hey, I'm sorry, I just got back from the Olympics and I flew out there with George Bush. I said, Really? He goes, Yeah, George W. was my uh pledge son at Yale or Harbor or whatever. It was interesting, and then and he actually talked about it for a minute. He was a great guy, and it but yeah, I've I've been blessed to meet a lot of freaking people. And I gotta tell you, I I don't know if I've ever met one that I think most people are accommodating and and uh it's it's great, and they love talking bowling that they that you know it doesn't mean they're gonna go bowl, but they love talking bowling. And the one the one line I always use I I don't think I've ever met a person that that is an adult that their children haven't not attended a bowling birthday party. I'd even say that to you right now. Did your kids ever go to a bowling birthday party? Oh, heck yes, yeah, that's my point. And anybody you go to gets it. I mean, because they've been there. Yeah. So but I've been i I've been busting a lot of people, and it's been uh it's been fun doing it. It really has been.
SPEAKER_01Bowling sponsors uh a race every year. You sponsor a bunch of stuff, yeah. Bunch of stuff in the race. Yeah, and and you've uh if I remember right, you got another picture up there. You doing the checkered flag at the Indy, Daytona, both I forget.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I've done the checkered flag at Watkins Glen and maybe Pocono. I we try to let our volunteers do it. I mean, that's my bigger thing. We have a god of people that, you know, I'm paid to do what I do, but we have a lot of people that give their time and effort, and and we try to do that. So we uh we do a Super Bowl program where we have bowling, we raise money for the NFL Alumni Association. We've doing that since 2014, 20. Well, we've been a long time, but 18 years now. And uh, and so you get to go to the games and you take people, and then uh we do a Macy's Day parade float, which I'm so proud of to get in there and and wonderful people to deal with, do a rose bowl. And here's how I always tell people this is how small the world it is. We have a Rose Bowl parade float that we do, and believe it or not, the tournament of roses, which is the parade and the rose bowl, is ran by a wichtaw guy named David Eats. Unbelievable. Well, he's not the guy in charge.
SPEAKER_01They dinner with you and him about a month ago, didn't they?
SPEAKER_02That's right. We got to go to that wonderful restaurant. Yes, that's right. And so, but you don't, you know, you think, and people always sometimes make fun of you, Randy. They'll say to me, Frank, everything doesn't come from Wichita. I said, Listen, man, it's a lot of stuff goes on there, you just wouldn't think about it because it's witchcott. But we do that, and then we do uh we do a race. We just we just signed on with professional bull riding. We're the sponsor of the New York Mavericks bull riding team. There's 12 of them across the country, and uh I'm looking forward to it, but we've never done it. We're looking forward to that. And NASCAR has been NASCAR, we've been in NASCAR since 2024, maybe even 2012. We're we're we're a long time in there, been fun. We did a bowl game for a few years, don't know if that works, uh, but we'll see. Uh we have got to just keep looking at it. There's a you know, the what you find out is even though we have a very limited budget uh to do this stuff, you try to sprinkle it around and just get your money's worth that you the best you can.
SPEAKER_01I mean that doesn't sound that limited.
SPEAKER_02No, it's more limited than you think, it's just how you do it. We don't we don't buy a lot of commercials. We most of ours are awareness programs and uh that's working, like the military bowl having your name on the having go bowling. And you know, the great thing about bowling and using the go bowling tagline, which is what we have. The great thing about that is the call to action, Randy. It it's it it's not like you're trying to promote dipping dots or whatever the whatever you want to call it, and and try to explain it. Go bowling. Hey, everybody knows what bowling is. Bowling is. The pin is one of the most recognized items in the world still. And so if we can just talk about bowling, it it enhances our brand.
SPEAKER_01Is there any event that is on? Do you even have a bucket list?
SPEAKER_02No. No. Listen, I've been very blessed. You know the one you'll get, you'll love it. You'll get I have one bucket list item. I do have one bucket list item that I will get done. I'm not going to say his name because he's going to get it done for me said this year. Everything I've ever gone to, all and been to I I've been to so much. I mean, one year uh was invited to the sports illustrated swimsuit photo issue. And that's why on the tag of my car put on there by a couple of friends of mine, it says no show de socio, because I didn't go. And they go, You're kidding me. But I've never been to the masters. Have been invited, I won't 15, 20 times. Get invited usually every year. One guy just says, You're not invited me this year. He goes, Frank, you don't go. So why invite? But a bucket list would be to play Augusta. And I think this might be my year to get it done. And I and you see me play, I suck. I'm horrible.
SPEAKER_01Oh, so you're not just going to attend the masters, you're going to play Augusta.
SPEAKER_02I want to play the course. I want to play the course before I go to the Masters itself. I want to reverse it. And I think I this guy, I think I think I got a chance this year.
SPEAKER_01Well, you know, if you're a guy or two short, you know a guy.
SPEAKER_02Oh, I know a guy.
SPEAKER_01You'd be there in a heartbeat, yes.
SPEAKER_02And I I've had friends play it. Um, two or three have played it. And I had one friend that actually got to play Sunday night. And when he told me his whole experience, I said, Man, I I I gotta go try to do that. And I'm not big on, I'm not big. I mean, I played beautiful courses. I'm just, as you well know, I'm just not very good. But I just enjoy the outside, the the the being outside, being with new people. It's just fun.
SPEAKER_01Amen to that. All right, speaking of having some fun, let's have some fun here. And uh apologize in advance for some of this. But uh, this is you getting the Victor Lerner Award in bowling. It's the Hall of Fame for the bowling industry. It's the highest honor in the bowling industry.
SPEAKER_02Yes, it is, and that's a dear friend of mine, Kevin Krause from St. Pete, uh giving it to me. And and uh I listen, it's humbling. Uh, you never think you deserve it, and I still don't think I deserved it, but it's humbling. But yeah, that was Kevin, that was two years uh year uh year ago, year ago, uh June. Kev is one of the uh I I I I call Kev one of the great minds of bowling. He gets it, he loves it, and he enjoys it. And uh he's over the last 15 years has become a very good friend. And to have him give it to me was even was even more proud for me.
SPEAKER_01Well, congratulations. That's just a huge deal. Thank you. It was good. Let me see what else I got here. Oh, hey, easy now. Uh oh, come on. Oh no, what happened? What I don't know who just got it. I don't know how this got in here.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, okay, sure. Any uh that's when I was the mascot for Wichita State University. I think I'm one of the only mascots that got fired, but yeah, how do you get fired being? Up in uh Omaha, Nebraska. I'll never forget it. What a fun! That was fun times.
SPEAKER_01Fun time. I can just I can I bet you were fantastic at it. Let's see. What else do I have here? Kevin, I got I got what what do we got going on here?
SPEAKER_02Who's that? Oh, is it my grandkids, man? That's that's Wyatt and Mason.
SPEAKER_01Well, I never seen a grandfather didn't want to talk about his grandkids. Oh my god, I've got I've got uh six now.
SPEAKER_02I've got Wyatt on the left, or whatever it is on the show is the oldest. Mason is next, and then there's Logan, and that's my oldest son, and then my daughter, Elizabeth, has JB, and uh he's gonna be three on Saturday, and then they've got another one due in October, and then uh I have uh another grandchild with Linda and I, uh Zay, and they live out of Florida, he's only like three months old, so that's how you know you're old, man.
SPEAKER_01I gotta get I I gotta get my kids busy here. There's one more that really I just thought was cool as heck. What's that? Uh oh yeah, that's JB. Well, I think that I think the expression JB's cool, but the look on your face is uh exuding happiness, is what I'd say.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, you can always tell it's JB because it's either it's either heavy equipment or tractors. Everything he wears. Uh I bought him uh one of these remote control uh bulldozers, and you he thinks he's driving, and his mom and back, mom and dad are back there driving. So he but now he does drive it himself. She just I just talked to my daughter this morning. She was telling me every day he gets home and drives it, and he's been doing that for a year, so it's kind of cool.
SPEAKER_01Well, those are good-looking grandkids.
SPEAKER_02Thank you very much. I gotta get my kids busy, man. I don't have I don't even have one. Well, wait till you get one. And uh yeah, here's the funny one don't have any girls, and so Elizabeth's Elizabeth's daughter in October, or Lizbeth's gonna have a girl in October, so it'll be my first, which could be really bad for Elizabeth and Cole, because uh I'll be a spoiler. Well, that's pretty cool.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, all right, man. What have I for what should we talk about that we haven't covered here? I've gone through my list, uh E over replay, sent a whole list of questions. I think I've knocked out those. We've looked at family pictures.
SPEAKER_02Well, the two you the two things you have forgotten to mention. Uh-oh.
SPEAKER_01Oh no.
SPEAKER_02That you're you're you're uh I don't know if I have an original idea in my life. I really don't. And uh your influence for me taking me to my first uh AMOA show, whatever year that was, I think you were an officer, but you weren't president yet. And watching how that show went and how you raised money for the foundation by auctioning off of I mean, uh, we still implement all that stuff today at Bull Expo. And and in a sense, taught me, uh let me learn through you. And and I say that because right after that, I say the same thing I always when I'm talking to friends or doing stuff like this. This this world we live in is all about relationships. It's it's all about friendship and relationships. And and uh I I tell my kids when they went to school, and it is, and and to think that I can just pick my phone up and call you. We've been friends that long. And sometimes we we went maybe a year without talking sometimes, but you pick it up and and boom, you're you you're back. And I think sometimes we underestimate uh the power of relationships and friendships that that go way back. I I just think we we underestimate it sometimes. But I think of all that stuff you taught me, and and I I talked, I was at a uh one of our group meetings, and I talked about ticket redemption and all that. And I said, Well, Frankie, but listen, my buddy Randy Chilton got me into this, and we didn't know we we learned together. He barely knew it, you know. He he read about it and saw some places, but learning together was great, and and it's and it's still great today. Um and I appreciate and I thank you for that. You and I you've taught me a lot more than I should know.
SPEAKER_01Well, I hope we have many more years of uh doing it together. And people say, Randy, how much longer are you going to work? And I go, Frank's working, I'm working. So God help you. I'm I'm following you, buddy. I'm following God help you. Well, I think I think we can put a pin in that, gone a little bit over an hour, and uh, it's just so enjoyable. This has been the funnest, most personally rewarding conversation, just because you and I have such history, and uh we do. It's just been just been a been a hoot, and uh, we got a lot of mutual connections and in Wichita. So uh uh it's all good, man. And I appreciate you and I appreciate your friendship and your hour or so we spent today. And uh congratulations on all that you've achieved. It's been uh so impressive. Thank you, Randy. Good to see you. It's humbling, very humbling.
SPEAKER_02All right, take care, my friend. See you, buddy. Thank you.
SPEAKER_01Bye game over.