In less than a year of opening, the Downtown Brooklyn-based fast food gaming spot 8-Bit Bites has opened two additional outposts and two more are coming to Manhattan later this summer. However, its owner Ali Ahmed says the concept almost never happened.
“This was a gag restaurant,” Ahmed tells What Now New York. “It wasn’t supposed to be this successful.”
When Ahmed’s first concept Brain Food, a healthy fast-casual spot on 111 Court Street in Downtown Brooklyn, began growing rapidly, he asked his landlord if he could use the basement space for extra storage. Ahmed was told he can only access the basement if he also takes the space next door, so he facetiously decided to come up with a polar opposite concept to his health-focused flagship. He settled on a fast-food spot with on-site gaming.
“It’s everything your parents told you would rot your brain,” he says about 8-Bit Bites.
After debuting its flagship on Halloween of 2022, he quickly opened two other outposts at 967 Bedford Avenue in Bed-Stuy and 881 Lexington Avenue in Bushwick. It’s now making its big Manhattan move, opening locations at 197 7th Avenue in Chelsea and 77 2nd Avenue in East Village very soon. It also has a location upstate in Johnson City.
Billing itself as a place to “eat like a kid again,” 8-Bit Bites offers a gamut of fast-food from smash burgers to fried chicken sandwiches, tenders and wings, fries and tots, as well as sweet and savory shakes. However it is 100 percent halal and geared toward families to separate it from the all-the-rage barcade concept.
Its 80s and 90s retro-themed decor compliments the vintage games it offers ranging from PacMan to Marvel games and Capcom. It also plays cartoon reruns and brings in cosplay characters like X-Men and the Power Rangers. Its new Manhattan outposts will uniquely offer claw and gumball machines.
“It’s fun,” he says. “It brings smiles out of the adults and kids.”
He says he wanted the concept to harken back to his childhood where he could eat without worrying about his cholesterol or wasteline, as well as enjoy playing video games and watching cartoons on the weekends. Ahmed emigrated from Yemen to the Bronx when he was five-years-old, later moving to Brooklyn where he currently resides.
