Restaurants & Eatertainment

In the mid-1980s, an independent Burger King restaurant added a small soft-modular-play unit to the outside of its restaurant. Sales dramatically increased. Thus began what has become a major trend of adding children's play and entertainment areas to quick service restaurants.

The White Hutchinson Leisure & Learning Group has broad-base experience and expertise in feasibility, design and start-up of food and beverage facilities in family and children's entertainment and edutainment facilities, as well as stand-alone eatertainment or restaurant-entertainment facilities.

Our development work has included the design of major food service components such as:

• Yummy in Your Tummy Cafe in the 28,000 sf Bamboola in San Jose, California
• Charlies' Diner in the 32-lane Olathe Lanes East Bowling Center
• LouLou's Café in the 2,400 square meter LouLou Al Dugong's children's play and discovery center in Dubai, U.A.E.
• Paradise Café at 36,000 square indoor and 15-acre outdoor Paradise Park in Lee's Summit, Missouri.
• Max's Diner in the 5,000 square meter Dinotropolis children's entertainment center in Caracas, Venezuela
• Herd Rock Calfe at Davis' Farmland, a children's discovery farm in Sterling, Massachusetts.

Our work included name, brand and menu development, full design of the kitchen and physical facility and operational consulting and training.

We also design and produce stand-alone eatertainment (restaurant-entertainment) facilities. Our work experiences with these facilities includes:

• StoneFire Pizza Co., New Berlin, Wisconsin
  White Hutchinson conducted the feasibility and developed the brand concept, then went on to fully design and produce this 37,000 square foot, $10 million one-price, all-you-can-eat family pizza buffet-entertainment center with dining room seating for 460 plus eight private party rooms and about 12,000 square feet of family entertainment. Positioned as a New Luxury offering, StoneFire Pizza Co. is the world’s first family pizza buffet-entertainment center with stone hearth Wood Stone pizza ovens, a Pan-Asian wok station and a children’s discovery play dining room (opened November 10, 2006). Read more...
• StoneFire Pizza Co., Kenosha, Wisconsin
  We are currently completing full architectural, interior, kitchen and site design for the 2nd StoneFire Pizza Co. facility to be located in Kenosha, Wisconsin. This upscale family pizza buffet-entertainment center will be located in a 53,000 square foot building with five dining rooms with seating for 730 guests, dedicated birthday party rooms, seven major indoor attactions and outdoor attractions including miniature gulf and a discovery play garden.  Opening late 2008/early 2009.
  

• Knuckleheads, Wisconsin Dells, Wisconsin
  Developed concept, mix and preliminary plans for the 130,000 square foot indoor Knucklehead’s Bowling and Family Entertainment Center eatertainment facility in the Wisconsin Dells that includes the 1000-seat Buffalo Phil’s Grille Tex-Mex sit-down casual restaurant, a fast-casual restaurant and family entertainment center including indoor go-karts, bowling, rides, a fast casual cafe, 3-D simulation theater, rides and games.
• Nibbles’ Play Café, Wheeling, Illinois (metro Chicago area)
  Conducted feasibility and full design for this 4,300 square foot stay-at-home mom’s play café for mothers with preschool children opening late 2007.
  
• Danville, Illinois
  Completed feasibility and preliminary plans for a 35,000 square foot pizza buffet and entertainment center.

We have successfully translated our entertainment experience to the food service industry with the design of entertainment and play features for restaurants and food courts. Two of our projects were the design of a unique, proprietary play area for a new Pizza Hut prototype restaurant that included three types of children's play besides soft contained play and a 4,000 sf children's play area called Funderland for the food court at Foothills Mall in Tucson, Arizona.

Many of our children's projects include children's cooking areas, where children prepare a food item to eat.

For existing food service facilities, we offer family friendly audits to evaluate all aspects of the business as experienced by families and children.

The Food Network's Unwrapped show filming the children's cooking area
at Paradise Park, one of the projects our company designed and produced.

Pizza Today Magazine Features White Hutchinson

The August issue of Pizza Today magazine, the trade journal for the pizza restaurant and pizzeria industry, includes an article entitled Courting Kids. Both Randy White, our CEO, and Vicki Stoecklin, our Education & Child Development Director, were quoted as experts on making restaurants child and family friendly. Read the article here.

Food Network "Unwrapped" Show
Features White Hutchinson

"Environments that make you say wow while you chow." That's how the Food Network's January 3, 2004 Unwrapped television show on eatertainment described the facilities our company produces for clients. To be exact, the show featured an interview with Randy White, our CEO, who they introduced as "an eatertainment expert," and reported that the White Hutchinson Leisure & Learning Group was "a company that specializes in creating environments designed to make you say wow while you chow." The show also featured scenes from the children's discovery play center at Paradise Park, which was shown as an example of an eatertainment facility.

We are very appreciative of the opportunity to have had this nationwide, maybe worldwide, recognition and exposure. If you missed the show, the Food Network will be rerunning it many times.

Additional reading:

• That's Eatertainment! white paper
• Kid’s dining out is not child’s play
• Kid-friendly dining