Grinkers Grand Palace

October 1st, 2020

It is with great sadness the we must report that we have closed our doors permanently. Thank you everyone for eight great years of arcade awesomeness. The collection has been sold to a good friend, and fellow arcade collector in the Salt Lake area.

We are very happy for the collection to be kept together, and for it to be combined with another impressive collection, including many vintage titles that Grinkers did not have. Keep your eyes peeled for amazing things happening in the Salt Lake area in the future.

In order to care for our amazing staff, we will be opening a small sandwich shop in downtown Eagle in the former Zen Bento building. Be sure to stop by for a tasty sandwich and an ice cold beverage. We may even put a couple of games in the corner. : )

Forced covid closure + subsequent and ongoing occupancy restrictions + a landlord that stated that the prorated abatement adjustments of our lease didn't apply for covid = an unsustainable combination. We explored several different approaches to keep it going, but at the end of the day, the circumstances surrounding covid were simply not survivable.


Update, October 5th, 2020:

On Sunday, October 4th the staff held a meeting at the sandwich shop location and decided unanimously to respectfully decline my offer of continued employment. The sandwich shop would have been a completely different environment, and a completely different job. The staff elected to remember Grinkers as it was, and move on at this time. Some are going back to school, others are pursuing other job opportunities.

I thought it was classy that the staff contacted me afterwards and asked me to join them so they could tell me in person. There is no ill will, and I sincerely wish them all the very best. The staff was a big part of Grinkers, and they will be missed.

The primary purpose of opening the sandwich shop was to take care of the staff. With the staff bowing out, the need for the sandwich shop no longer remains. Therefore, the sandwich shop will not open.

There are some former Grinkers' guests that are pooling resources and looking to open an arcade and restaurant venue in the years ahead, and it was suggested that they could offer Grinkers sandwiches.

We will offer, for free, our sandwich recipes, prep methods and vendor resources to anyone that would like to offer Grinkers sandwiches in a restaurant environment here in the Boise area.

Messages from the staff after the meeting:

Steve, thank you for putting up the fight for this place. I've loved being a part of it and am thankful I had the opportunity to work here. I'll always remember the last 8 years there that I got to spend with friends and family very fondly. Grinkers was a special place.
-- LeeAnn

I want you to know we are all extremely grateful for everything - for being a part of something bigger than us. I think I'll always remember and cherish being able to be so close to pieces of video game history and getting to make a lot of people's days brighter. I really loved all my time at Grinkers, and I learned a lot and got a lot of excellent experience. As well, thank you so much for looking after us during these crazy times especially - we all appreciate it probably more than you know. And we'll all miss Grinkers like crazy. Still doesn't feel real.
-- Sian



Update, October 15th, 2020:

Messsage from the new owner of the Grinkers collection:

My promise to you and the community is that the spirit of Grinkers and the classic 80's arcade will live on after COVID ends. We won't break up the collection.

Currently the games are housed in what we affectionately call the Alan-1 Hangar in Tooele Utah. Our plan is to recreate the Hull building located in Culver, CA (used as the Flynn's arcade in Tron), somewhere in Utah County, Utah. It will look identical to what we see on screen with a second story balcony HQ that overlooks the arcade and even the basement upgrades shown in Tron Legacy. We'll fit 600 games in there. It will be our legacy gift to the community. We will also introduce new retro style games from members of the community and our own Alan-1 team periodically like what you see at CAX.

We've been practicing with our 1500 sqft 45 game Flynns Retrocade in Roy Utah for the past 4 years. We've been collecting games (we had about 300 before we added the Grinker's collection of 308) over the past 20 years and started Alan-1 to keep our Star Wars and other vector games reliable.