One of the greatest joys of being able to work in the restaurant marketing industry is to find restaurants that have bold ideas, bold concepts, and most of all, people that have a passion to make things happen. I had a chance to sit down and chat with Brian, one of the movers and shakers at EXP Bar and Restaurant, and talk about his vision for the restaurant and his recent sponsorship campaign at Indiegogo/EXPBar

MCNG: Tell us about yourself and what’s your role at EXP Bar?

Brian: My name is Brian Vidovic, I’m the Creative Director and co founder of EXP, that means I deal with a lot of the marketing, preplanning, vision statements …kind of putting EXP where it needs to be in the public eye, once it opens up, I’ll be front of the house manager as well.

My previous experience is in game design. I worked at Radical entertainment for three years on Prototype One, and Prototype Two, and another unannounced title and that was really awesome, and it helped with the EXP creation process because writing a business plan is very similar to writing a game design document. They transfer really well in that way. Taking from vision to detail to final is pretty well the same thing. So that was really exciting and helpful.

MCNG: Why did you and your team decide to open up EXP Bar and Restaurant?

Brian: It’s a dream I’ve had ever since I was twelve or thirteen to open, back then what I thought was a pizzeria with video games, but my taste matured and I wanted to open up a restaurant instead. Basically I felt a lack of a social environment for gamers.

And one of my favourite things to do is to go out with my friends and go to their houses and try to set up a couple of TVs if we can, have a few drinks and food, and that’s all good and well, but I thought there was a place for that in the public eye.

We really wanted to take the idea of taking gaming socially, and really put it out there, and really destroy the stigma of gamers as basement dwellers. I don’t want to dwell in a basement, I’d rather be out and socializing and talking about this hobby I love, that’s kind of the point. It’s the gateway to all things geeky and awesome, and that’s kind of our point right?

You know the average age of the gamer is 34? And most people don’t know that. And a lot of people think, “Oh it’s all for kids,” and we aim to really fix that in the public eye as best we can.

Starts with one place and hopefully we’ll franchise everywhere. But for now, that’s where we’re at.

MCNG: You touched on the gaming community. I’m curious to know what you feel EXP Bar and Restaurant is about.

Brian: It’s about being that community hub for gamers, and even non gamers, people who are curious about games. We want to destroy the stigma of gamers as basement dwellers. I want to take E-sports gaming to the next level. I want to take that community and wrap around the idea of giving to it. It’s something we don’t talk about a lot, but it’s kind of our main back bone.

If I can develop a business in which at the drop of a hat we’re raising money for something this week and you know it can be anything from Child’s Play Charity to a disaster that happens around the world, to anything like that. It’s kind of my main thing.

I just want to build a system, or community, that centers on the giving nature of gamers. And the Child’s Play Charity is something that you can look into and see how much awesome gamers have been able to give, and I want to be able to keep supporting that stuff. And that’s one of my main things.

It’s about gamers going out and enjoying themselves while at the same time they know they’re helping out a bigger cause. And it’s not talked about too much because it’s a little hard to explain what our exact plans are. But once again, if we’re franchised all over the place, that’s kind of our idea, 5% of all sales today…boom. Like we’ve done magic things that no one else can, and that’s kind of our point.

Changing the view on games and helping as many people as possible.



MCNG: It seems like you guys have a lot of different events coming up, so what should gamers and customers be expecting from you guys?

Brian We have a ton of stuff, and we’re really open to community feedback to it, but the basic stuff is that we want industry mixers, where it’s just industry networking, or it’s meet the people that made these games type of events, Q and A’s kind of mixers. Student showcases, helping students get those game jobs they’ve always wanted; I know how hard that was.

I want to help out the students as much as I can. It goes without saying, tournaments to e-sports viewing from your barcrafts to professional tournaments to in the MLG, EVO, IPL all those big leagues and even some of the smaller ones we’re trying to support we’ll be showing a lot of those.

Launch parties, wrap parties, games, pre release parties, we get something go with a publisher, something we’ve had a few nibbles on would be really great. Play a game on Friday and it will come out on Tuesday and then pre-order at the bar, that kind of thing.

So we’re doing all sorts of really cool stuff and we really want to be open to as many things as possible, going from live shows. If someone wants to hold an event, something new, we’re really opened to that, you can rent out the whole bar. Not a big deal.

Just tons of events, charity fundraisers go without saying. But I think the biggest stuff will really be transparent with our community on Facebook and Twitter. And just kind of say “what do you guys want to see because we’re going to make it happen.” That’s the whole point.

MCNG: When are you guys opening and what should we be expecting during your grand opening day?

Brian Well we expect to open, the way permits and everything going, by mid July. Our fundraiser ends at the end of June so that gives us a few weeks lock down everything and pay off everyone that’s been thrown on credit cards.

And basically sit down and plan opening, the idea is that we’ll have two weeks of pre opening events. Hopefully people who contributed to the indiegogo will get an invite.

We’ll have 50 at a time to get people to try stuff until they’re fully ready to go out. And I mean if they’re lining up for EXP it’s whatever they want, it’s coming in, sitting down, you’re going to have your standard upscale bar and food items. Some of the best food that’s locally sourced. It’s going to be great.

Drinks, we’ve got local beer taps, some of the bigger guys on there as well, craft breweries if we can get them, and basically we have multiple stations set up. We have a TV that can show anything that you want. So if you want regular sports experience, of you can put games on it or you can watch MLG, or you can watch whatever is available at the time.

The beauty is that certain stations have two TVs or four TVs and now you have the ability to split screen games with games that aren’t necessarily split screen. Some of the bigger games out recently, SSX from EA or Mass Effect 3 those don’t have split screen options for one reason or another. Now you have 4 TVs with 4 consoles so now you can play right next to each other and enjoy yourself.

That’s kind of the things we want to offer, the kind of things you can’t easily do at home with our stations and our setup service. Very different from just staying at home with a single tv, and that’s our vision, to make it as flexible and as awesome as possible.

Right now you’ve been offering some cool perks to your sponsors and fundraisers, what should your sponsors be expecting from EXP Bar and Restaurant?

If you want to go take a look at the EXP Page, just indiegogo/expbar and there you’ll see a whole list of perks. The basic perks are you get a gift card that’s one to one. And if you’re not local you get Tee-shirts or shot glasses, something we can send to you. Because you still want to contribute even though you can’t get to EXP right away.

The other thing we have for everyone that contributes is that we have a big credits wall, and depending on how many people donate, it’ll be a bigger chunk of wall and space but ideally we’ll take some plaques and throw them all over the wall and these are the people that made EXP happen. It kind of that feel good, that’s my name up there, helped this place come to fruition. And that’s one of the feel good stuff we want to have, that we want to offer people.

The other thing we have is the EXP Reward System, in which you can literally level up at the bar, so you gain EXP for every dollar you spend, every event that you go to, every contribution that you make to charities, even tips, we want to encourage awesome behaviour. Any time you participate, help out and share we want to give people EXP. When they level up, they get discount, free stuff, access to things on the menu that other people don’t have access to like certain things you have to be at level 50 that kind of stuff, where we really want to reward our regulars. People who come back often and really enjoy what they want.

We’ll also have Facebook, Android and IOS apps that show your level where your EXP level so that you have it ready to go. Stuff like that. It’s about gamifying your experience but making sure it’s for the community by the community.

One of the perks that people have been digging is that you can get a custom laser etched glass, right in a back case that’s LED backlit that only you’ll ever be able to use, and if it breaks we’ll replace it. We also have a deal with theControllerShop.com, it’s a custom controller company down in the States, and they basically said, yeah, we’ll provide you with some custom controllers, so we can get their name and custom logo on the controllers right next to their glass.

Those kind of things when you walk in you’ll go “I want my controller, and I want my glass. “ And people are like, “wahh.” And then you can just pull it out, and hopefully we’ll have an opening sound every time we open up the chest cabinet, you know little things like that.

And the super high end tiers will be naming the stations with a big golden plaque, or table naming plaque so you can have your name and your motto. So it’s good for businesses or for people that want to advertise on our tables.

Some of the super big stuff is like naming the VIP area, or a free food item every day, we already had someone snatch up the one really good one, like bang for buck, the Elite, $1337, that was gone within the first few hours. And that’s like a free food item every week, you get to name the bar area, you get all the custom stuff from before. Really great prize package, that we thought would be kind of funny if someone was a straight up Elite and they walked in, and say “I’m the Elite Guy.” And it works really well, so someone grabbed that right away and that was awesome.

So we’re hoping to get support from lots of people on the $25 range and here’s a gift card, when hoping for some bigger companies with cash that will get the super high tiered prizes. It’s that status of “yeah this my house, I helped make this really happen.”

It’s really exciting. We’ve got a lot of stuff coming down the pipes. Like live Q and A sessions with myself and the team. We’ll have video tours of what’s being made, and videos of cooking with the chef. We’re learning too, and it’s awesome. It’s a crazy adventure in the best possible way, and we hope people check out the fundraiser and get some of those awesome prizes.

MCNG: Thanks Brian, really appreciate your time and looking forward to the opening at EXP Bar in Restaurant in July.

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