09/30/2026
🚨 PLEASE SHARE - LONG BUT IMPORTANT 🚨
Many of our guests have been asking us what’s happening with skill games and where we stand on the issue. This is a lengthy post, but it’s an important one, and we hope you’ll take the time to read it.
TL;DR: We are NOT asking for skill games to remain unregulated — we support regulating and taxing them. Our proposal: a $500-per-machine monthly tax, machine limits based on occupancy rather than a flat per-license number, and machines limited to legitimate licensed establishments. With PSP enforcement starting October 14, we're asking you to contact your state representative and senator now. Details below.
We’ve stayed relatively quiet up to this point, hoping that Harrisburg would come together and figure out a reasonable path forward. But with the recent court ruling and the Pennsylvania State Police now warning that our machines can be seized and businesses can face criminal charges beginning October 14, we feel it’s time to address the concerns we’ve been hearing from our customers and share our thoughts on what we believe Pennsylvania should do.
First, we are NOT asking for skill games to remain unregulated.
We believe they should be regulated. They should be taxed. There should be clear rules, accountability and oversight. And there should be consequences for businesses and operators who don’t follow those rules.
What we don’t believe is that Pennsylvania should take something that has become an important source of revenue for so many small businesses and either ban it outright or tax it so heavily that it no longer makes economic sense. Should they go this route, the economic impact and the amount of small businesses closing will be too many to count.
Pennsylvania has been down this road before.
For years, small businesses have watched policy decisions chip away at the traditional sources of revenue that helped keep local restaurants, bars and other hospitality businesses viable.
Take Small Games of Chance. The tax structure placed on pull-tabs made them far less attractive for many businesses. When you tax something to the point where fewer businesses participate, you don’t necessarily collect more tax. Sometimes you simply shrink the entire market.
We saw something similar with Video Gaming Terminals (essentially slot machines).
VGTs were proposed as a potential source of new revenue for Pennsylvania bars, restaurants, clubs and other licensed establishments. Ultimately, they were restricted to qualified truck stops. Casino interests were a major force in that debate, and Pennsylvania’s hospitality businesses were once again left out of an opportunity that could have provided meaningful revenue to small, locally owned businesses.
Then came expanded sales of b**r to go. Gas stations, convenience stores, grocery stores and large retailers entered a market that had traditionally helped support independent b**r distributors and small b**r shops.
And then there was COVID.
Restaurants and bars were shut down. Revenue disappeared overnight. Food, insurance, utilities, labor and other operating costs continued to rise. Labor shortages and inflation followed.
For us personally, when the shutdown orders came down right before St. Patrick’s Day — after we had already purchased massive amounts of inventory for our planned festivities — skill game revenue, not government assistance, helped us keep our entire staff paid for weeks before PPP even existed.
That isn’t a political talking point. That’s what happened.
Since then, skill game revenue has continued to help us do things that directly benefit our employees and our community.
It has helped us provide frequent raises and benefits, make major improvements to our establishment, purchase new kitchen equipment, hire local contractors and absorb some of the enormous increases we’ve seen in food, labor, insurance, utilities and other costs without passing every increase along to our customers.
Throughout the inflation we’ve been dealing with since COVID, we haven’t raised any of our regular food or beverage prices in the last five years (unless we received price increases from our b**r distributors). By every metric, we absolutely needed to, and probably should have. Without skill games, that would not have been an option.
It has also allowed us to contribute to local families and community causes when people have faced tragedies, medical emergencies and other difficult situations.
And there’s another important piece of this that sometimes gets overlooked:
Our customers actually enjoy these games.
We see it every day. People come in, sit down with friends, have a drink or something to eat, and play. For many of our guests, it’s simply another form of entertainment they enjoy while spending time at our establishments.
We’re not saying everyone plays them, and we’re certainly not saying everyone has to like them. But our customers have repeatedly told us that they enjoy having them available.
They are adults making their own choice to play, and we believe they should be able to do that in a regulated and responsible environment.
And there is another side of this industry that we think people should know about.
Our relationship with our skill game operator has gone far beyond putting machines in our establishments.
Our operator and partner, DeLeo Games, and specifically Tom DeLeo, has stepped up for our employees and our community in ways that we will never forget.
When Pennsylvania finally allowed restaurants and bars to reopen after COVID, there was another problem. Guests could sit at tables, but they could not sit at the bar.
We still had to staff bartenders to make drinks for those tables, but the bartenders who normally relied heavily on tips from guests sitting at the bar suddenly had very little opportunity to earn that money.
It was another example of a policy that looked fine on paper but created a very real problem for the people actually working in our industry.
So we called Tom and asked if he would be willing to help us with a “Save Our Bartenders” T-shirt fundraiser.
The idea was simple: guests could purchase a shirt for whatever amount they wanted, and 100% of the money would go directly to the bartender on duty.
Tom didn’t hesitate.
He didn’t ask how much it would cost him. He didn’t ask what he would get out of it. He simply said, “Absolutely. How much do you want to start with? And when you need to buy more, let me know how much it is.”
He single-handedly helped “save our bartenders.”
Our bartenders ended up receiving as much, and in some cases more, through those shirt donations than they would have made from tips during that period.
It was absolutely incredible, and we cannot thank Tom enough.
We’ve also held benefits for a staff member’s family and for a friend in our community. Again, one call to Tom asking if he would donate T-shirts resulted in an immediate yes.
The only question he had was, “How many do you need?”
We were able to order shirts, sell them and give 100% of the sales — not just the profits — directly to those families.
These are the types of things that people don’t necessarily see when they hear the words “skill game operator.”
Tom DeLeo lives and works in this community. He knows the people and businesses he works with. And he has repeatedly shown that he cares about what happens to them.
Casinos may or may not care about the community, and we’re not here to tell them whether they do. But they don’t have the same personal connection to our community that our local skill game operators do — because these operators live here, work here, know our employees, know our families and are personally invested in the communities they serve.
That personal connection matters.
These are the people and businesses that Pennsylvania policymakers need to think about before they write a law that could put this entire industry out of business.
That is why we believe the conversation needs to be about how Pennsylvania regulates and taxes skill games — not simply whether Pennsylvania allows them to exist.
We support regulation and taxation.
We would support a $500-per-machine monthly tax.
It’s simple. It’s predictable. And it creates a market-based limit.
If a machine isn’t generating enough revenue to justify a $500 monthly tax, the business will eventually remove it. That’s the market determining how many machines make sense — rather than Harrisburg picking an arbitrary number for every business.
Pennsylvania should be asking:
“What tax structure produces the most total revenue for the Commonwealth?”
Not:
“How much can we possibly take from each machine?”
There is a difference.
If the tax is so high that businesses remove machines, operators leave the market and participation drops, Pennsylvania could actually collect less revenue than it would under a reasonable tax.
We also don’t believe every business should have the same machine limit.
A 15-seat neighborhood bar and a large, multi-room restaurant or resort should not automatically be treated exactly the same.
If Pennsylvania wants to establish limits (which are likely not even necessary under a $500/machine tax), they should be based on something objective such as occupancy or seating capacity.
A larger establishment with more customers and more physical space should have the ability to operate more machines than a tiny corner bar.
That is a much more reasonable approach than simply saying every liquor license gets the same number.
And skill games should be limited to legitimate, licensed establishments.
We don’t think Pennsylvania needs to turn every empty storefront, v**e shop or pop-up operation into a gambling location. While it doesn’t directly affect us, we simply don’t think that is a good look for the Commonwealth.
Keep these machines where there are already employees, liquor licenses, established businesses, age restrictions, accountability and existing regulatory oversight.
If Pennsylvania is going to allow skill games, let’s put them where they can actually be regulated.
We aren’t trying to fight the casinos.
If casinos want to offer skill games, that’s fine with us.
Give them the same machines, the same $500-per-machine tax and the same rules that apply to everyone else.
That’s not anti-casino.
That’s a level playing field.
What we don’t want is another system where large corporate gaming interests get the opportunities while Pennsylvania’s independent restaurants and bars are told they aren’t allowed to participate.
The difference is that when revenue is generated at a locally owned restaurant or bar, the people receiving that revenue are often the same people living, working and reinvesting in the community where it was generated.
When money is generated at an independent local restaurant, a much larger portion of it tends to stay right here — paying employees, contractors, suppliers, local taxes and supporting other local businesses.
And here’s something else that doesn’t make sense to us.
Pennsylvania already allows adults to gamble legally from their phones, which largely ruined the novelty of a trip to an actual casino. Gambling is everywhere these days. The lure and draw of going to a casino is no longer what it once was.
You can sit on your couch and use a legal Pennsylvania gambling app — lottery, casino, etc.
Yet we’re potentially going to tell a properly licensed restaurant or bar that it can’t have a regulated machine inside its building, where there are employees, age restrictions and accountability?
If Pennsylvania is comfortable regulating gambling on someone’s phone in their living room, surely it can figure out how to regulate a machine inside a licensed business.
This isn’t about being against casinos.
It isn’t about being against regulation.
And it isn’t about asking for special treatment.
It’s about recognizing the reality that skill games have become an important part of the Pennsylvania hospitality industry and creating a reasonable system around them.
For years, Pennsylvania’s independent restaurants, bars and hospitality businesses have been asked to absorb higher costs, higher wages, higher insurance, higher food prices and increased competition while operating on incredibly thin margins.
Skill games have provided some breathing room.
For many small businesses, that breathing room has meant keeping employees, making payroll, making improvements and staying open.
We believe Pennsylvania should regulate them, tax them and hold everyone accountable — but not tax them into oblivion or create rules that only make sense for the largest players.
The October 14 enforcement date is approaching.
We are asking our customers, employees, fellow business owners and everyone who cares about Pennsylvania’s locally owned businesses to contact your state representative and state senator.
Tell them you want Harrisburg to act before October 14 and establish a fair, reasonable and workable regulatory system for skill games.
And to our elected officials: we will remember how you handle this.
The upcoming election will give voters another opportunity to decide who stood up for Pennsylvania’s small businesses and who didn’t.
We hope everyone else remembers too.
