Looney Bird's (Johnsonverse)

Mitzi's Pizza is an American chain of restaurants and family entertainment centers founded by then-Johnson Industries CEO Phil Stacker and Creative Engineering in July 1990. The brand emerged in the chaos that ensued between Creative Engineering CEO Aaron Fechter and ShowBiz Pizza Time, Inc. (owners of the Chuck E. Cheese's and ShowBiz Pizza Place franchises) when the latter tried to force Fechter to hand the rights to his animatronic band, The Rock-afire Explosion, for little-to-no monetary compensation.

Mitzi's Pizza used the Rock-afire Explosion, as well as an updated version of the Rock-afire Explosion, named The New Rock-afire Explosion, which used more articulated animatronics dubbed "miijins". Once Johnson acquired ShowBiz Pizza Time, Inc. (which had been renamed to CEC Entertainment, Inc. in 1998) in December 2014, the company began rebranding Mitzi's Pizza locations to ShowBiz Pizza Place; despite this, the brand was retained for smaller-scale locations.

History
In the mid-1980s, tensions between Creative Engineering, Inc. and ShowBiz Pizza Time, Inc. began to rise as the latter company attempted to take control of the Rock-afire Explosion from CEI. In 1990, the two companies began to cut ties once the latter began a process known as "Concept Unification", which rebranded all ShowBiz Pizza locations to Chuck E. Cheese's by replacing the Rock-afire Explosion with a new band known as Munch's Make-Believe Band, which used the characters from the latter brand's previous animatronic band, the Pizza Time Players.

Noticing this, Johnson CEO Phil Stacker, in a bid to improve Johnson after a decline in the 1980s, discovered Fechter and contacted him about starting a new restaurant chain that would compete with ShowBiz. In July 1990, the first Mitzi's Pizza location opened in Jacksonville, Florida. Eleven additional locations were opened in Florida and California, before Stacker and Fechter got into a royalties dispute, halting further expansion; new shows were halted as well.

Once Stacker resigned from Johnson on October 22, 1991, his replacement, Sheldon Johnson, Jr., resolved those disputes. Between 1992 and 1996, 25 locations opened in the United States and Mexico, some of which having been ShowBiz locations previously. In 1992, Fechter began working on an update on the Rock-afire Explosion, dubbed The New Rock-afire Explosion, which used more articulated animatronics dubbed "miijins". The new band was completed in 1994, and was installed in 20 locations.

The chain expanded to the Middle East in the late 1990s and early 2000s, as Johnson acquired the ShowBiz Pizza Place locations in Lebanon, Kuwait, and the United Arab Emirates and rebranded them as Mitzi's Pizza.

Beginning in 2002, the Mitzi's Pizza chain changed its logo to feature a refined illustration of its mascot, Mitzi Mozzarella. A few more locations were opened throughout the 2000s and early 2010s. On December 28, 2014, Johnson closed its acquisition of CEC Entertainment, Inc., and between 2015 and 2018, 28 locations were converted to ShowBiz Pizza Place locations. The rest were retained, mainly in lots too small to use the full ShowBiz layout; the locations use "by ShowBiz" in their signage and branding. A further 37 locations were opened around that time.

Entertainment
The chain uses similar entertainment to its predecessor. It