5 Essential Traits of a Reliable FEC Tech Provider

The family entertainment center (FEC) industry heavily relies on guest experiences, efficient daily operations, seamless transactions, and emerging trends in customer success. As such, you need to find a provider that is not just a vendor, but a partner whom you can rely on for your business solutions. With the rising competition in the industry, having a reliable FEC tech provider is a non-negotiable to guarantee that your business is in for the long game.

With all the competition and constantly emerging customer demands in the FEC and amusement centre industry, it’s easy to forget a crucial factor in maintaining your FEC business: what happens to your systems after making a successful sale. Thankfully, we have the Embed Success Squad™ leading the game. The Embed Success Squad™ is not your ordinary FEC support team. It’s a powerhouse of SaaS specialists, trainers, and payment experts that will help you improve your daily operations. And the best part of it all? It’s completely FREE for all members of the Embed family!

Running a successful family entertainment center business does not just revolve around having the latest or most popular games, attractions, and technology. The heartbeat of every unforgettable guest experience is your front-line team. Your FEC staff can make or break the whole guest experience, and in a competitive industry like the family entertainment and amusement center space, investing in your staff’s training is a necessity. In fact, a study reveals that 42% of consumers would pay more for a friendly, welcoming experience, which starts with knowledgeable, confident, and empowered employees.

Like any other business, the quality of your staff can make or break your operations, and of course, your profitability. While there are many factors that contribute to the success of your family entertainment center business, highly trained employees are definitely the cornerstone of your operational success. And now that modern FECs are integrating Software as a Service (SaaS) solutions to streamline tasks and allow for more flexibility, your staff can now focus on what matters the most: your guests.

If you are looking for how to hire a general manager for family entertainment center business, you must prepare a set of interview questions for your prospective candidates to assess if they are the right person for the job. This will also enable you to check if an applicant is a good fit for your company culture, your team, and your business. To help you ask the right questions that generate the answers and outcomes that you hope for, we talked to Embed's very own Kash Ahmad, Chief Management Consultant in Operations at NASA. Ahmad has over 25 years of extensive experience in the amusement and hospitality industry, including recruiting general managers for top family entertainment centers in the business. Choosing the right general manager for your FEC is crucial to ensure that your company culture has a steady footing: "A good leader can make all the difference. Different employees work differently depending on the manager. Taking the time to make the right selection for the manager you’re going to bring on board is essential. If you bring in the wrong person who doesn’t believe in your culture or plan, does not care about your employees, or doesn’t care about the business that much, it can really move your culture backward," emphasizes Ahmad.

Talent can come from everywhere. However, finding a culturally good fit for your family entertainment center's general manager can be quite a challenge. Company culture and values carry great weight in choosing leaders such as GMs for your team. Settling for just anybody can discourage good employees, run guests out the door, and cripple the energy to go to work. This is one of the reasons why you have to take into consideration where you scout for this role. Before you can start, you have to be prepared with some of the key aspects of the job hunt, such as the general manager's role, responsibilities, and the required skills and characteristics. To help you search for the right place for your FEC's next leader, we talked to recruitment and hospitality veterans David Curtis, Senior Director of Talent at Dave & Buster’s, and Beth Standlee, CEO & Founder at TrainerTainment. Here's where you can pool prospects for your FEC's general manager:

Looking for how to hire a general manager for your family entertainment center? There are specific skills, qualities, and characteristics that you need to be on the lookout for. Whether you have a mom-and-pop FEC or are already scaling into a chain, hiring a general manager is necessary and beneficial to keep your daily operations in check, your staff in their best professional shape for your guests, and your business in its most innovative and successful form yet. To help you on your talent acquisition journey for this vital role, we talked to David Curtis, Senior Director of Talent at Dave & Buster’s, Beth Standlee, CEO & Founder at TrainerTainment, and Embed's very own Kash Ahmad, Management Consultant in Operations at NASA. According to our industry experts, the following are the non-negotiables when it comes to hiring a general manager:

On revenue growth, the Harvard Business Review mentions that a lot of companies treat cost cutting as a skill - something that senior managers are competent on doing. However, if executives are asked to boost growth, they are left stunned. Total revenue tells a story about the business growth, but not the how. In this fast-paced and technology-driven age, family entertainment centers and other companies should unlearn cost cutting as the answer to revenue growth.

What do we mean when we say "FEC of the Future?" A family entertainment center of the future has the following tech-driven qualities: A revolutionized consumer journey A redefined revenue landscape A wider demographic Embracing emerging technology is necessary to achieve these. But before you can reshape the way your guests engage with your business and create tech-based revenue streams, you need to transform your operations and bring them to the next level.

The future is digital – even for brick-and-mortar businesses in the entertainment and amusement industry. It’s smart, automated, and high-tech. Today, we are getting first-hand experience on the benefits of rising technology. Light bulbs, refrigerators, security cameras – you name it – almost everything can now be controlled easily from a mobile phone. Since this is the case, consumers demand the same level of quality, convenience, and interactions from family entertainment centers.