Why Dave & Buster’s needed a leadership resetWhy Dave & Buster’s needed a leadership reset

The future of Dave & Buster’s is in flux as the company undergoes a leadership transition after CEO Chris Morris left the eatertainment brand in December. At the ICR conference in Orlando, Fla., interim CEO Kevin Sheehan admitted that even though Morris — who became the CEO of Dave & Buster’s after the company acquired Main Event in 2022 — “did a lot of very good things,” his leadership “wasn’t working from both sides.”

“The challenge was that we were so focused on the strategic initiatives, that we ignored the business loop of the day-to-day business, which had been very successful for 40-something years,” Sheehan said.

Sheehan said that while they have not yet selected a new CEO, the company is actively searching for a “real true leader” who can be a “cultural change agent” to make the company great once again.

Dave & Buster’s financial performance has been on a rollercoaster since the pandemic, with several quarters of downward trending sales and traffic, with a brief respite in 2022 around the time the company acquired Main Event. In its latest quarterly earnings, Dave & Buster’s reported a 7.7% decline in same-store sales, which the company mainly attributed to adverse weather and store disruptions from the store remodeling program.

“We can always use the excuse of the economic situation, but at the end of the day, there's so many things we should be able to use to drive traffic, and I just think bringing the brand back to the way it was run for so many years is key,” Sheehan said. “Then we need our team focusing on strategic initiatives and executing them flawlessly in a manageable way. If you try to do hundreds of things, nothing will get done. So let’s do four or five things exceptionally well.”

According to Sheehan, operational complexity was one of the major flaws of Dave & Buster’s over the past few years, as the company would introduce new games so quickly that employees could not keep up with training. Additionally, the company needs to hyperfocus on marketing to keep Dave & Buster’s top of mind for potential customers.

“If you build it, they won’t come because you have to tell them about it,” Sheehan said, adding that the company wants to get more into TV and digital ads.

Dave & Buster’s has also been working on modernizing the company through store refreshes, which are designed to be more inclusive and improve lines of sight. The company has also added social games like high-tech darts, and digital shuffleboard—emulating some of the popular emerging eatertainment concepts that combine elevated food with social gaming.

“I think this will be an evolutionary process as we continue along on this on this journey, and the end message is that we will always want to keep the stores fresh and new, and provide the experience that families and young adults want to come back to,” Sheehan said.

Contact Joanna at [email protected]