Insert Coin Olympia — Restaurant in Olympia

Insert Coin - Lacey will be a top entertainment destination if they fix the issues with their Kitchen and Bar. I have a shorter summary for a potential patron just below, but the rest of the review is addressed to the management to provide candid feedback if they are serious about staying afloat for more than a year.

SUMMARY/TL;DR:

Food - Better than you would expect for an arcade after a hiccup with wait time and cold food. Handmade pizza with great crust, garlic fries, and Bavarian pretzel/cheese once they remade them. It took 30+ minutes and was cold the first time.

Cocktails - all tasted the same, uninspired, soda/syrup heavy.

Beer Wall - good selection/faster than bar but needed better signage to explain.

Arcade - Wide selection, minimal broken cabinets, and freeplay on retro, TRON-themed back room.

Axe Throwing - Total blast and well-maintained lanes setup. Missed opportunity to have wait staff coming to tables for drink/food refills. We had an 8-person work group who would have spent $$$ on drinks and food if we had a dedicated waiter. Without a waiter you have to trek back to the bar/kitchen and wait in a line rather than make use of limited time on your Axe lane.

GENERAL ISSUES: The staff seemed energetic and helpful but lacked a good system to keep the food and drinks coming. This screams management/procedural problems and will lead to profit issues and eventual closure no matter how popular the games are. They just opened and can't afford to not nail it every night for all the first-time local patrons.

KITCHEN ISSUES: My wife and I watched two of our items sit in the kitchen window for 20+ minutes because the back-of-house staff and waitstaff weren't communicating missing ticket items to fill the order. When I pointed it out, one of the managers was very accommodating and got us replacements within 15 more minutes. The robot server is a cute gimmick but slowed service and prevented expediting tardy items. Save WALL-E for the big party's mains and get people their apps faster to keep them happy. I saw plenty of back-of-house staff to fill tickets, but they weren't owning their food all the way to table and it showed on a dozen customer's faces sitting in the cafeteria. None of the cooks ever asked, "How come this pizza has sat in my window for 25 minutes?" You can't serve a cold pizza and now it has to be re-fired. Wasted product, loss of profit, and bad reviews.

BAR ISSUES: On the topic of losing profit, while it was a Tuesday night, you still had a full house for Trivia and could have raked it in on drinks. The line for the bar was frequently 5-10 people long between 6:30-9:30PM, and I guarantee people skipped as a result. The only bartender was juggling register and rushing drinks/skipping garnishes. If she had a barback on shift, they were MIA most the night. This also led to empty softdrink bags and low C02 - not a huge deal now, but in the long term these are red flags to parents for not cleaning the soda/ice machine, E.coli risk, and failed health ratings. You could have made 2-3 times the money that night on alcohol with a second bartender or more motivated bar team + servers sweeping the far side where the 8top of after-work-axe-throwers were idling with full wallets and no drink/food refills.

LAYOUT ISSUES: Other reviews accurately pointed out that something feels off with layout, signage, and clear people herding strategies. You need a second entrance and signage to highlight the Axe Throwing - you're losing food/drink sales without dedicated wait staff, and it feels like an afterthought. Having it separated from the bar by the arcade floor feels like a layout blunder and it could really use a minibar/place to order food in that corner.

You have all the pieces to make money and keep a fun spot running in Lacey, but in my humble opinion you are fumbling. While I haven't been to it, the Centralia location looks like it has thrived from the Google reviews. Any investment in having members of their team come out to audit/teach for a few shifts would not be money...

Went for the 1st time at around 3:30 in the afternoon. Was not busy. Was a bit lack luster and not what we expected, as we enjoy the centralia location.

It's definitely a big arcade, a whole row of pinball, a small room of vintage games that are free with the card swiped. The room is cramped and on the darker side. There's a row of claw type games, which all had stuffed animals crammed in just right to not have any chance to get them [we tried atleast 4 different ones, and not even 1 remotely budged]. There are lots of racing type games, a few skeeball, and other ball throwing types. There were a handful of games down, and we found on accident, had to walk the whole place to find an attendant, who did put our credit for it back on the game card.

The robot bar was a bit meh. Ordered a whiskey coke, well whiskey for $9. The robot didn't do it, the worker did. Lots of ice, got watery fast.

The bathrooms were big but not fully cleaned. They are at the other end of the large building, so if you have small kids, make sure to ask if they need to use the bathroom so you can hoof it there.

The pizza restaurant was not what we were expecting. We enjoy the food down at the centralia location, so we expect the same service and food quality.

Ordered a medium hungry gamer pizza and onion rings. I asked the worker if there were any good drinks for happy hour, and she didn't know. She stood behind the counter and chatted and texted the whole time with other workers, yet there were dirty tables that needed wiping. (She stared at my spouse, to the point he commented twice that she kept staring, and he wasn't sure why.) The onion rings were overly oily and didn't taste great. I was not impressed and didn't eat many. The pizza was okay. I asked for parm cheese and peppers for the pizza and was given 2 little packets of each for my family of 4.

As others stated, the robot who delivers the food comes to your table. The pizza tray is very hot, and there is a silicone pot holder, but it's on the other side of the robot, so you dont see it til after you have grabbed this super hot metal plate. We didn't quite understand why the worker waited for the robot to deliver to us when our food was ready (there was an order out right before ours), and she could have walked the 8 feet to bring it to us, but whatever, the robot is the gimmick. We watched the robot deliver to 2 other tables, and each time, people grabbed the hot pizza plate and didn't even see the little silicone pot holder.

(As a side note, there are a lot of exit doors, only 1 entrance door. But all the exit doors but 1 are locked. I'm not sure if that's safe in case of emergency to have 6 or 7 exit doors locked and all but 1 open.)

Overall, there were not enough workers. The axe throwing had no 1 working it. The prize station had no workers. The front entrance spot had not 1, so we kinda just stood there looking around. (There were 5 pizza workers all standing behind the counter in a circle chatting, however). We will not be back to this bigger location. We will keep to the...

If you are looking for a chill, awesome place to hang out or host a group or party, look elsewhere.

Background - My family threw me a belated 21st birthday party at Insert Coin. They were excited! The place has great reviews, and we are nerds, so it was the perfect pick! ...or so we thought.

Initial Order - We ordered by scanning a QR code on our table. This place seems to be embracing the use of technology to replace some real servers, so if that stuff concerns you, just be aware of it. The robots nearly hit two kids while we were there, which was a bit alarming. The food arrived in a timely manner, though, and was of mixed quality, but very expensive. I expected it to be a little overpriced, and I was correct, but I didn't mind too much at the time.

Breath of the Wild - I intended to order a drink called the "Breath of the Wild," but the app (understandably) does not let you order alcoholic drinks. I instead went up to order the drink in-person. I was told that they would not accept my ID, which was valid, because it was a vertical ID and I needed a horizontal one.

"Okay, no worries," I said, "I have a party coming soon and I can have one of them show ID if that works."

(I will keep the following staff member anonymous for reasons I will explain in a bit.) The staff member was kind, welcoming, and just awesome, (the only reason that I gave the Service a two-star,) and told me: "Okay. No worries. They might check you for a wristband though, to make sure you are 21, so just be prepared for that. We have a lot of oversight because we serve so much stuff here."

"Cool! Thanks." I said, and headed back to my table.

Tears of the Kingdom - Once my party arrived, (entirely sober, might I add,) one of my party got up and got the drink, (as I explained we were going to do,) and gave me his wristband. The moment I took a sip, a staff member came and reprimanded me, took my drink, told me that there would be no more drinks for the table, and said that they were going to be back with a manager. The manager arrived a minute later, and rudely declared that my party member and I had to leave. I honestly didn't know what to say. Not only was I drinking age, but I had explained the situation to a staff member prior. I decided not to mention the staff member who I had talked to originally, because it seemed that they were the only chill person there.

My main takeaway is this: It seems that certain members the staff wanted to power trip, and we happened to be the ones on the receiving end.

Conclusion - I know they have some expensive nerdy stuff on display, but don't be fooled: This is a soulless, corporate location with only a thin veneer of nerd culture. A beautiful, nostalgic veneer, but a thin one. Worth dropping by to see, but not staying to eat. I hope some of that staff changes for the better, so we can have another great arcade in Oly. For now, my best advice is this: Go to...