The 7-Step Equipment Checklist for Your First Indoor Entertainment Venue

Who This Checklist Is For

If you're outfitting a first indoor entertainment venue — a family entertainment center, a bar with pool tables, a resort rec room — this list is for you. I handle B2B equipment orders at ice-games, and I've been doing it for three years. In that time, I've personally made and documented 9 significant mistakes, totaling roughly $15,000 in wasted budget. Now I keep the checklist I'm about to share, and it's caught 31 potential errors in the past 18 months. Not theory. Just the list I wish someone had handed me on day one.

Step 1: Verify the Supplier Actually Speaks B2B

When I first started ordering equipment, I assumed a company that sells to consumers could handle commercial orders. They have the products, right? Wrong. A retailer without B2B infrastructure will still take your money — but the problems show up later. I once ordered six arcade machines from a seller with no commercial setup. The delivery came in three incomplete shipments spread across two months. $8,000 effectively held hostage, and the person I'd been emailing had left the company. (Note to self: always ask for a dedicated commercial contact in writing.)

Before you request a quote, ask these three questions:

• Do they issue commercial invoices with business terms?
• Can they provide quantity pricing or a dedicated account manager?
• Who answers the service line — a salesperson or someone who can order replacement parts?

Step 2: Research the Lineage Before You Trust the Label

Who made the first video game? Most people can't answer that. The credit generally goes to Tennis for Two, built in 1958 by physicist William Higinbotham at Brookhaven National Laboratory. Some historians argue Spacewar! (MIT, 1962) deserves it. Doesn't matter. The point for venue owners isn't trivia — it's that quality has a history. Knock-offs don't.

Clients walk in asking for a Stiga ping pong table by name. That's the brand effect. Stiga earned its reputation over decades, and when you handle one of their tables you understand why. I'm not saying every purchase must be premium. But understanding where a product's reputation comes from helps you decide when to invest and when to save.

Same logic applies to ice hockey arcade games. The well-built units with steel bearings and reinforced rails have been around for years. The cheaper versions with plastic components? They fail within months under commercial traffic. The manufacturers with a track record are usually the ones standing behind their hardware.

Step 3: Play the Actual Game Before Buying in Bulk

Sounds obvious, doesn't it? I once spec'd ice hockey arcade games for a venue without testing the physical unit first. The spec sheet looked fine. The reality? The puck mechanism jammed every fifteen minutes under real usage. We had maybe 12 units on order. Maybe 10, I'd have to check the system — doesn't matter. It was a bad call, and the full order arrived before we caught the problem.

Ice skating video games are another category where testing matters. Some titles are designed for quick casual play — perfect for a family zone. Others have control schemes that frustrate everyone except hardcore players. You can't tell the difference from a catalog. Go to a trade show. Visit a working arcade. Ask the supplier for a demo unit. If they won't offer any of those, that's information.

Step 4: Calculate the Real Cost per Square Meter

Space is the most expensive thing you're buying, and you already own it. If a pool table brings in $40 of revenue a day but sits on 35 square meters of prime floor space, is it earning its rent? Sometimes yes. Often, no.

I once approved a floor plan based on product dimensions alone. Full-size pool table, two ping pong tables, four arcade cabinets. Then we set up the room and realized there was no walking path between the tables and the bar. Not fatal, but the social flow died — people bottlenecked at the entrance, and the seating area became a walkway. We rearranged after two months. Lost a weekend of operation to fix it.

The fix I use now: take painter's tape and mark the exact footprint of every machine on the floor. Add one meter of clearance around each item for players. Walk the path a customer would walk. Does it feel natural? Is there congestion? Masking tape costs $6. It saved me from repeating the mistake where I ordered a Stiga ping pong table and realized the room didn't have the 4.5 meters of swing clearance needed for two adults to actually play at a comfortable pace. (Mental note: measure before measuring again.)

Step 5: Verify After-Sales Support Before You Sign

Dodged a bullet when I double-checked the warranty terms on an order of air hockey tables. Almost clicked "accept" on a contract with no parts guarantee beyond 90 days. Ninety days. Not ideal, but workable — if nothing ever breaks. In a commercial venue, something is always breaking.

Ask these during procurement:

• How long is the warranty, and what does it actually cover?
• Are replacement parts stocked locally, or special-ordered from overseas?
• What's the average response time for a service request?

The answer to that first question tells you how confident the supplier is in their product. I've had to explain to a client that the replacement coin mechanism they needed was "special order, six to eight weeks." That conversation doesn't go well. And it reflects on the venue — public-facing equipment downtime makes customers think the whole place is poorly run.

Step 6: Get Every Date and Commitment in Writing

"Delivery usually takes a week." I heard that sentence from a vendor. Did I believe them? Not entirely, but I didn't push back either. The order showed up two weeks late, and every subsequent email about the delay started with "sorry for the inconvenience."

What changed:

• Every quote now includes an explicit lead time.
• Every purchase order includes a delivery date and a late-delivery consequence.
• Every installation plan includes a buffer day, because installation always takes longer than promised.

The buffer day rule came from a painful lesson. Our opening date had no buffer. Equipment arrived on schedule, but the install crew ran over by a day. We paid overtime to open on time, plus the stress. (Note to self: two days of buffer is standard, not optional.)

Step 7: Build a Maintenance Schedule Before Opening Day

This is the step first-time buyers skip. Games work on day one. Who thinks about six months out? You should. Arcade machines, air hockey tables, and pool tables all have consumable parts. Without a schedule, small problems become expensive repairs.

I learned this from a client who ran an escape room. They built custom puzzle props using commercial components — but the escape room industry is brutal on hardware. Constant touching, shifting, stress-testing from every group. Their venue, Game Over Escape Room, had to shut down for three weeks when mechanisms started failing one after another. No maintenance plan, no parts strategy. It turned into a rebuild.

Set the schedule now:

• Weekly: check buttons, coin mechanisms, table surfaces.
• Monthly: test moving parts, replace worn grips and felt.
• Quarterly: inspect electronics, tighten rails, verify power supplies.

Dodged a bullet when I finally implemented this myself — we caught a failing power supply in one arcade cabinet before it took out the entire bank of machines. The repair would've cost $1,100 plus a week of downtime. The maintenance check cost one hour of labor.

Mistakes I Still See First-Time Buyers Make

Three things keep showing up:

Going cheap on what customers touch first. The entry area is your handshake. If the first machine visitors interact with has a broken joystick or faded graphics, they'll assume the whole venue is like that. The quality of equipment sets the perceived value of your venue. When I upgraded an entrance-line cabinet from a budget model to a mid-range unit, customer satisfaction scores improved noticeably.

Ignoring the electrical layout. I once ordered a row of arcade machines that needed more amperage than the venue's outlets could deliver. The extra electrical work cost $2,200 and delayed opening by a week. Check power requirements before you finalize anything.

Not planning for sound. Ice hockey arcade games and video game cabinets produce constant noise. Two units are fine. Fifteen units in an enclosed space are a headache. Think about players, staff, and every conversation happening nearby.

The idea that cheap equipment is fine because "the games will do their job" comes from an era when arcade machines were simpler and more forgiving. Today's expectations are higher — from customers and from operators. The question isn't whether you can find cheap equipment. It's whether that cheap equipment is worth the $450 repair call six months later. In my experience, it never is.