Word: pizzas
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Venture capitalists routinely come across way-out investment proposals. But few have sounded wackier, yet paid off more handsomely, than Pizza Time Theater Inc. of Sunnyvale, Calif. The company operates a rapidly growing, 50-restaurant chain of fast-food pizza parlors in which food is almost the least of the attractions...
...Pizza Time Theater Inc. is the creation of Nolan Bushnell, 38, a microelectronics expert. In 1972 Bushnell founded the successful Atari electronic games company with a $500 initial investment. Four years later, he sold out to Warner Communications, ending up with $15 million in cash and debentures, and took the post of chairman of his company, which became a new Warner subsidiary. Since then, Atari has broadened from electronic games to personal computers. Bushnell had been working on the Pizza Time concept at Atari; but before the first of the computerized robots, a wisecracking rat named Chuck E. Cheese, emerged...
Though Warner's management permitted Bushnell to open an initial Pizza Time Theater restaurant in San Jose in 1977, the parent company never saw much future in the idea. In 1978 Bushnell resigned his chairmanship, put up $500,000 to buy back the Pizza Time concept from his old employer, and went into business for himself...
...fall of 1979, Bushnell had plowed $1.8 million more of his personal wealth into Pizza Time Theater Inc. and had opened four more outlets on the West Coast. But to expand further he needed more money. Bushnell therefore turned to venture capitalists for backing. Says Wallace Davis, 63, whose venture capital firm, Mayfield Fund, invested $750,000 in the company: "I'm not a game player or a, big pizza eater. But I was impressed observing the customers at Pizza Time restaurants. People really seemed to enjoy themselves there." Another attraction for investors was Bushnell's good business...
Despite the allure of the pizza and pasta at Ippolito's River Restaurant, Betty will not return to Derby next year. After she receives her degree in economics this June, she will head for New York City, where she will work as a business analyst for American Express...