How 73 Dave & Buster’s Locations Organize 300 Events Across One Platform

Background

Dave & Buster’s is a mainstay in the thriving entertainment and restaurant industry. Melding fun and food under one roof, the business enterprise has grown to over 70 locations across the United States.

With their stratospheric growth, Dave & Buster’s saw an opportunity to roll out nationwide events across all of their satellite locations. The concept was to organize ticketed events around holidays and current happenings. These themed events would include multiple packages and a mix of perks for each pricing tier.

The Challenge

Kristen Schascheck, National Director of Sales at Dave & Buster’s, led the initial rollout with the first nation-wide ticket sales program. Almost every location would host at least one event on New Years Eve. Altogether, over 100 ticketed events would occur simultaneously across the country.

Kristen faced an enormous challenge logistically. How to collect tickets and track sales across every location was a big question mark. To complicate things, each event had a pre-determined capacity based on the location along with specific ticket pricing and sales tax. This meant little room for error. Additionally, every location’s special events manager needed guidance in regards to event setup. Communication breakdowns had to be avoided at all costs in order for each event to run without a hitch.

Ticketbud’s ability to streamline the sales process for 70+ events is impressive. The support team is friendly and efficient, they take the time to understand my needs, and are able to quickly implement solutions when needed.

Kristen Schascheck, National Director of Sales at Dave & Buster’s

The Solution

After completing a thorough search for a ticketing solution, Dave & Buster’s partnered with Ticketbud to assist in their admittedly complex rollout. The technical team at Ticketbud was up for the task and began scoping Dave & Buster’s implementation.

Communicating closely with Kristen, Ticketbud assigned a dedicated team of event experts to work through the rollout’s needs. The first challenge was onboarding every special event manager to the Ticketbud platform. To accomplish this, Ticketbud created a custom ticketing portal for the organization. This portal seamlessly connected each event to Dave & Buster’s merchant account along with providing direction on how to setup an event page and sell tickets.

The administrator dashboard is a tremendous timesaver which allows me to see everything I need in one place- all current events, sales-at-a-glance, and sales trends over time.

Kristen Schascheck, National Director of Sales at Dave & Buster’s

For national ticket sales programs, Kristen’s team dealt with massive spreadsheets involving various pricing tiers and venue capacities. To declutter this process, Ticketbud’s enterprise suite mapped the spreadsheet data into the platform’s backend. The results were incredible. Every single event was pre-populated with the appropriate event information. This saved event managers from the headache of manually creating and editing each event.

The final hurdle to overcome involved managing and tracking every location’s sales data in one place. Kristen heavily relied on Ticketbud’s Organization feature to make this process a breeze. With the organizational component, the Dave & Buster’s team gained important insights into each location’s progress. Cross-event sales reporting allowed them to slice and dice their ticket data to help make decisions regarding future ticketed events.

Dave & Buster’s has now completed three national ticket sales programs under the Ticketbud platform. Proof of success is in the numbers:

  • 300 ticketed events
  • Over 10,000 tickets sold
  • Zero logistical nightmares

With the enterprise solutions provided by Ticketbud, Kristen and her team continue to see unbelievable growth from their ticket sales initiative.

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