You Could Once Order Chuck E. Cheese Pizza From This Ghost Kitchen

Meme-loving foodies won't soon forget the rise and fall of Pasqually's Pizza & Wings — the pie shop better known as Chuck E. Cheese's ghost kitchen. The story starts back in 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic limited restaurants across the U.S. to carryout and delivery service. Alas, the child-oriented hands-on playground that is Chuck E. Cheese doesn't really give off an "isolate in place" vibe. When the pandemic shuttered its doors, like so many other restaurants, CEC Entertainment needed to find a way to generate revenue and stay afloat. Enter: Pasqually's Pizza & Wings.

Listings for the ghost kitchen started appearing on Grubhub in March 2020, followed by Uber Eats in June and DoorDash in July. Even though the listings didn't mention anything about Chuck E. Cheese, a quick Maps search reveals that every Pasqually's is listed under the same address as an existing Chuck E. Cheese. The official company website also confirms that CEC Entertainment, LLC owns Pasqually's Pizza & Wings.

This strategic tactic is not so much a deception as a secret hidden in plain sight. Aficionados of deep Chuck E. Cheese lore will know that Pasqually P. Pieplate is a character in the brand's fictional Munch's Make Believe Band. The comical pizza chef (and, notably, the band's only human member) has been around since the O.G. Pizza Time Theatre of the 1970s. Although, for the average delivery-app-scrolling pizza-lover unacquainted with the Chuck E. Cheese universe, the name Pasqually probably doesn't ring a bell.

The first public "sounding of the alarm" came from Philadelphia foodie @kendallneff, who posted screenshots of a text conversation with their Grubhub driver. When asked whether the "Pasqually's" order was picked up from a Chuck E. Cheese, the driver replies, "There was a Chuck E Cheese store but the windows had the wing restaurant [logo] on them??? I was curious too!" Another Reddit post with 2.2K upvotes writes "Chuck E. Cheese's created a fake restaurant on GrubHub to trick people into ordering delivery from them."

Still, it's worth noting that pizzas ordered from Pasqually's weren't exactly the same as the pies served in the arcade. Pasqually's, by contrast, was marketed as a premium pizza concept operating out of Chuck E. Cheese kitchens, using a thicker homemade pizza dough than the arcade's typical pies, plus extra sauce. Back in 2020, Sherri Landry of CEC Entertainment told QSR, "Chuck E. Cheese has great pizza. Pasqually's leverages the operational infrastructure and ingredients to deliver a bold, great tasting, robust pizza that's specifically designed for a more mature taste." By July 2020, 421 Chuck E. Cheese locations nationwide were selling Pasqually's pizzas, as well as Giant Cheesy Bread, an Iced Brownie, and Twice Baked Wings. If they could forgive the bait-and-switch, convenience-minded patrons could order fare with a little more panache from the child casino — and all under the masthead of a jovial mustached chef who kicks it with giant animatronic rats.