James ‘Buster’ Corley, Co-Founder of Dave & Buster’s, Dies at 72

Dave Buster’s, which now has more than 150 locations in North America, found success by combining several beloved activities under one roof: Watch some sports, eat a burger, play a game. And unlike Chuck E. Cheese, the longtime birthday destination for children, Dave Buster’s would prove its appeal to adults who also cherish arcade games, air hockey and racing simulators. The restaurant invites visitors to compete against friends, or to win tickets that can be exchanged for prizes while navigating through rows of bright, colorful lights.

The Dave in Dave Buster’s was David Corriveau, who died in 2015. He and Mr. Corley met in the 1970s in Little Rock, Ark., when they both owned businesses on the same street near the Capitol building. Mr. Corley owned a restaurant named Buster’s, while Mr. Corriveau owned a parlor named Slick Willy’s World of Entertainment.

There was a walkway connecting the two establishments, and the men noticed that customers would go to Slick Willy’s to play games, then over to Buster’s to eat and drink, Mr. Corley said in a 2020 interview on the podcast “Pardon My Take.”

Their thought, he recalled, was “What we need to do is we need to put these two places together, put them on a bigger scale, put them in a bigger market and launch this thing.”

The first Dave Buster’s location opened in 1982 in a 40,000-square-foot warehouse in Dallas. (The company says it was named Dave Buster’s, not Buster Dave’s, because of a fateful coin flip, but Mr. Corley said on the podcast that the story was a “myth” and that a friend had suggested the name.)

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/04/business/james-buster-corley-dead.html