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Hasbro is debuting its third Peppa Pig Play Cafe location in October this month, Variety has learned exclusively, adding one more fixed attraction to the company’s growing list of in-person experiences around the global.
Opening in October in Suzhou, China, the third Peppa Pig Play Café in the region “brings the beloved preschool brand to life through immersive themed dining, interactive play experiences and character encounters,” per Hasbro. “Designed for young fans and their families, the destination features attractions, themed food offerings and opportunities to step into Peppa’s world through play and live experiences.”
“There’s always tweaks to make to everything, but as a whole, Peppa Pig Play Cafe has just been a great success for us,” Matt Proulx, Hasbro’s senior vice president of global experiences, partnerships and music, tells Variety. “What’s really important for us is that now we get into this rinse and repeat mode and you start to see after the first location, going into the second location, OK, what are your truths, and what are the things that you need to be able to to rejigger? And I think what has been really interesting about this experience is that it provides that great play for that toddler, where kids can just run around, but then also that thematic type of eating situation where people are coming in, booking their tables, having good food.”
Proulx adds: “I think some of that’s the stuff that we’ve had to work on a little bit over the first couple locations. Just dialing in the menu to make sure that we’re providing really good food because otherwise, if you’re not the value proposition of what you’re offering just doesn’t hold any water. But from a play perspective, we’ve been really, really excited about how it’s actually come across.”
See below for some first-look images for the new Peppa Pig Play Cafe location:
Hasbro has been building up its in-person experiences and and immersive attractions business with new and upcoming projects including Clue: Murder on the Menu, opening this week in Charlotte, North Carolina; Nerf Coaster at Galaxyland Powered by Hasbro in Alberta, Canada; Monopoly Experience: Treasures of Brazil in São Paulo, Brazil; the Play-Doh Imagination Center in Abha, Saudi Arabia; and Transformers: Battle of Cybertron in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
Today, Variety can exclusively confirm the title of one more upcoming attraction: Transformers Mission Energon Gramado.
Announced earlier this year, the attraction is set to open in Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil before the end of 2026. The experience, which marks the the country’s first fixed, immersive attraction is made in collaboration between Hasbro and Dream Cars Automóveis e Eventos.
Amid the growing globalization of branded entertainment experiences, Proulx’s team has become increasingly focused on permanent installations, which of course take more time and money to build — and come with more risk.
“It’s really looking at the market where you’re going,” Proulx says. “Can the market sustain your experience? What’s the competition? Because fundamentally, we are all in the same battle for disposable income. Whether it’s my branded attraction or some mom-and-pop mini golf experience or go-kart, whatever it is, it is all disposable income. So what you have to make sure is, is the product you’re offering viable within that specific market?”
Proulx says the Gramado, where Hasbro’s Transformers Mission Energon will be based in Brazil, is “actually a very heavily touristed area and so they see a lot of turnover.”
“It has its own unique culture, and so that becomes a destination for people in Brazil,” Proulx says. “So we also took a lot of learnings from our local partner in terms of what their knowledge is. If you have the right operator in the right market, they’re going to help lead you and guide you into making the right decision. Because the one thing that I think gets missed sometimes as brands have now started to go into the location-based world is people are too brand forward and not enough experience forward. Our belief is that if you create a great experience with a great IP — and those things can be in unison, or one can trail the other a little bit — you’re going to actually be very successful. But if you’re so brand forward, and you’re not thinking about what that experience is in the background, you’re going to fail more times than you’re going to be successful.”
