‘Clawcades’ coming to downtown San Mateo

They land on one exhibiting a collection of smiling blue robots and begin the notoriously disappointing task of toggling a claw machine into position. But on just his second attempt, Kevin Ramos secures a plushie for his son.

Unlike the typical, seemingly unwinnable arcade games that are every parent’s worst nightmare, Nakoko employs a different model — it’s a Japanese-style “clawcade,” one of several popping up across the United States this year. 

“We started off pretty slow,” said Kelvin Ko, the co-owner of Nakoko, an extension of the San Francisco location Bibbiti that began its soft opening over the summer. “But the word is getting out on social media.”

The machines aren’t rigged against users and no kid will leave without anything, Ko said. If they have a difficult time, staff will rearrange the plushies to make it easier. 

The prizes in the machines can also be traded in to win bigger prizes, Ko said, pointing to the sizable Pokémon plushies sitting behind his desk and above the machines. Each one displays a card that indicates the number of claw machine prizes required to swap for it. Instead of attempting the grand prizes all in one go, players can save their name and point totals in Nakoko’s system.

A second clawcade, Clawesome, is in the works on Fourth Avenue, currently set to open in early October. Co-owner Leann La Sala thinks the Japanese trend will fit nicely with downtown San Mateo’s various Asian influences, she said, which could be why the owners of Bibbiti sought to expand there. 

La Sala and her husband John, along with another couple sharing ownership, were born and raised on the Peninsula, she said. Many of the fun places they grew up going to, such as Malibu Grand Prix and other arcades, have disappeared, leaving a lack of entertainment in the area, she said. 

“John and I always go on date nights Friday night. Besides going out to eat or going to a bar, there’s not much else to do. We got the idea when we went to Japan,” La Sala said. “There’s a lot of little arcades everywhere in downtown Tokyo and many were these claw machine arcades, you can kind of just pop in and play a few games. The aesthetic is very clean and appealing. So when we came back and went to dinner in downtown San Mateo, John had the idea of opening something like that here.”

Clawesome has a similar trading system to Nakoko, but rather than tokens, players will have a reloadable card and an app to keep track of points. La Sala said the app will have additional ways to gain points. The prizes will include “blind boxes,” keychains and Labooboos, as well as some bigger plushies.

“It’s not something we’re looking for people to spend hours there. It’s more just a place to pop in while you’re waiting for a table at a restaurant, or after dinner, and you want something different to do,” La Sala said. 

With Clawsome, La Sala and her business partners are hoping to add to the “resurgence of B Street,” bringing San Mateo’s post-pandemic liveliness to other areas downtown, she said.