Since opening the second week of December 2011, customers have flocked to Heart Beats, 301 M.A.C. Ave., a combination billiards and karaoke lounge, Heart Beats representatives said.
The lounge features seven billiards tables and nine smaller rooms around the edge of the lounge — five rooms dedicated to karaoke and four rooms set aside for the traditional Chinese table game mahjong.
Heart Beats offered free admission and soft drinks to draw customers during the lounge’s first two weeks of business, said Chester Cao, a marketing junior and the vice president of marketing of Triple-T LLC, the company that started the lounge.
“Pretty much the first two weeks that we opened up was kind of a promotional run,” Cao said.
Since then, interest in Heart Beats has kept up, especially once classes finish for the week, he said.
On a typical weekend, Cao said the lounge attracts close to 2,000 customers — mostly students from the area — to play karaoke, billiards or mahjong.
The lounge is open from 5 p.m. to 5 a.m. on weekends, and 3 p.m. to 3 a.m. on weeknights.
But the trickle of customers has slowed down Mondays through Thursdays, with the exception of customers who rent out individual rooms by the hour for karaoke or billiards players who come in for shorter periods of time, Cao said.
So far, Heart Beats’ most popular attraction has been its billiards tables, Cao said.
“(Playing billiards) doesn’t require a long period (of time),” he said. “(You can) do it right after class or at the end of the day.”
Rooms or billiards tables can be rented out for $35 per hour on a weeknight, and $45 per hour on weekend nights.
Some MSU students haven’t caught on to Heart Beats, despite its draw with other Spartans.
Human resource management sophomore Janelle Richardson said she hasn’t heard of the lounge or been there before.
“I think it would be fun to go with a group of friends,” she said.
Cao said the lounge plans to launch a marketing campaign starting in February that will include a Facebook page.
Auxiliary Resources Communication Manager Kat Cooper said the addition of another billiards location to the East Lansing area hasn’t drawn any customers away from The UCue Billiards Lounge at the Union.
The Auxiliary Resources department manages the Union.
“Nothing’s really changed here,” she said. “I think it’s just a completely different audience (Heart Beats is targeting).”
The lounge does not have a liquor license and cannot serve food inside, but permits customers to order food from nearby businesses.
The addition of a business near downtown East Lansing that does not serve alcohol is a welcome change for the city, East Lansing Planning and Community Development Director Tim Dempsey said in an email.
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“The underage population needs more options such as this,” he said in the email. “I think they have a good chance to succeed long-term.”
