It didn’t go out of business in '97, I was 1000% there for a birthday party in 2000 or 2001. It seems the company went bankrupt in 1997, and the assets were sold multiple times over the years. Locations stayed open, and, according to Google at least, there seems to be at least a couple left in Ohio, and California?
Either way, this took me down a nice nostalgia hole, very nice.
This reminds me of the story I read once about Baseball Reference’s old link naming structure.
It was similar to this scheme, but it took the first five letters of the last name, and the first two of the first name. There were variants and workarounds for players with the same letters in their name, and such.
But then there was the result for Jewish player Kevin Youkilis…