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Why popcorn costs so much, and other movie theatre mysteries.
TheBoginator
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
First off, a brief intro, and then the real info. I've been working at a small theatre for a few years now. I started off as a lowly concessionaire, and have since worked my way up to the primary projectionist.
The concessions are so expensive because little to no profit is made from ticket sales. Depending on how new the movie is, the movie companies (Fox, Sony, New Line, etc.) get the vast majority of each ticket price. 90% isn't entirely uncommon for a movie's first week. The percentage tapers as the weeks progress, depending on the company and the individual contracts. The easiest way for the owners to make up for this lack of income is through concessions sales. Popcorn is a great example of this, one of our larges costs the customer $6. it costs something like $.65 to fill it. This also explains why you will probably get the employees very angry when you try to sneak in outside food, to us it seems like you're stealing our paychecks.
Since we're so small (only six screens, and only two, well, three but it's tiny, of those stadium seating) being projectionist is just layered on top of selling concessions and working tickets. We only have one person that is a projectionist that can't do both tickets and concessions, and he's in his 70s or 80s, I don't really know, because we never share shifts.
The way that we handle how many people work at any one time changes throughout the year, since like most of northern Wisconsin, our town is pretty empty when it isn't the summer, with brief spikes for things such as opening weekend of various hunting seasons, snowmobile races, and ice fishing season. During the "off" season (September-May or so) we'll only have our 7 o'clock shows during the weeknights, and three people will be on then. Either the manager or the assistant manager will handle tickets, a projectionist doing whatever when they aren't projectioning, and a third person, usually one of the high schoolers, doing concessions or sometimes tickets if the manager's busy or whatever. Saturdays during the off season is basically how every day during the summer works, 3-4 people working the 1 and 4 o'clock matinees, 6 people on during the 7s, and usually going down to 3 or 4 for the 9s, depending on how busy it is. Friday is pretty much the same, except without the matinees, and Sunday just doesn't have 9s. During the summer we have all four shows, every day.
I have some crazy stories, like the time I was cleaning the men's room after the sevens, and someone had thrown up all over the handicapped stall. There was vomit on the floor, on the wall, on the side of the toilet, but none on the seat, or in the bowl itself. The entire room reeked of alcohol, and cleaning up this bright pink mess took the better part of 10 minutes. The best part? The vomiting drunkard had locked the stall from the inside, and crawled under to get out. I'm not the tallest person, so reaching over the door to unlock it wasn't an option, and I wasn't about to crawl under on the vomit-floor, so I had to jump up, hook both of my arms over the door so it was firmly lodged in my armpits, and try to turn the latch with a broom handle.
I'll talk to some of the other guys at work tonight, try to get some better stories for you. In the meantime, does anyone have any questions? I'll probably end up making a couple of more posts about general stuff as it comes to me otherwise, but I'd rather find out what people actually want to know, instead of just rambling on about things people might not care about.
The concessions are so expensive because little to no profit is made from ticket sales. Depending on how new the movie is, the movie companies (Fox, Sony, New Line, etc.) get the vast majority of each ticket price. 90% isn't entirely uncommon for a movie's first week. The percentage tapers as the weeks progress, depending on the company and the individual contracts. The easiest way for the owners to make up for this lack of income is through concessions sales. Popcorn is a great example of this, one of our larges costs the customer $6. it costs something like $.65 to fill it. This also explains why you will probably get the employees very angry when you try to sneak in outside food, to us it seems like you're stealing our paychecks.
Since we're so small (only six screens, and only two, well, three but it's tiny, of those stadium seating) being projectionist is just layered on top of selling concessions and working tickets. We only have one person that is a projectionist that can't do both tickets and concessions, and he's in his 70s or 80s, I don't really know, because we never share shifts.
The way that we handle how many people work at any one time changes throughout the year, since like most of northern Wisconsin, our town is pretty empty when it isn't the summer, with brief spikes for things such as opening weekend of various hunting seasons, snowmobile races, and ice fishing season. During the "off" season (September-May or so) we'll only have our 7 o'clock shows during the weeknights, and three people will be on then. Either the manager or the assistant manager will handle tickets, a projectionist doing whatever when they aren't projectioning, and a third person, usually one of the high schoolers, doing concessions or sometimes tickets if the manager's busy or whatever. Saturdays during the off season is basically how every day during the summer works, 3-4 people working the 1 and 4 o'clock matinees, 6 people on during the 7s, and usually going down to 3 or 4 for the 9s, depending on how busy it is. Friday is pretty much the same, except without the matinees, and Sunday just doesn't have 9s. During the summer we have all four shows, every day.
I have some crazy stories, like the time I was cleaning the men's room after the sevens, and someone had thrown up all over the handicapped stall. There was vomit on the floor, on the wall, on the side of the toilet, but none on the seat, or in the bowl itself. The entire room reeked of alcohol, and cleaning up this bright pink mess took the better part of 10 minutes. The best part? The vomiting drunkard had locked the stall from the inside, and crawled under to get out. I'm not the tallest person, so reaching over the door to unlock it wasn't an option, and I wasn't about to crawl under on the vomit-floor, so I had to jump up, hook both of my arms over the door so it was firmly lodged in my armpits, and try to turn the latch with a broom handle.
I'll talk to some of the other guys at work tonight, try to get some better stories for you. In the meantime, does anyone have any questions? I'll probably end up making a couple of more posts about general stuff as it comes to me otherwise, but I'd rather find out what people actually want to know, instead of just rambling on about things people might not care about.
No you don't. It's mass effect brah, just grab your controller in one hand and your dick with the other and go to town
TheBoginator on
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I don't get it
Which OF COURSE is filled with makeup, silly girls. 8-)
it's fuckin frightening.
Geek: Remixed - A Decade's worth of ruined pop culture memories
Xbox Live - Fatboy PDX
Butter flavored oil.
And yet so addictive.
The AMC near here doesn't have this no outside food rule. People regularly bring food in from the mall or snacks regularly.
The subs were so good, but it was so awkward.
Also, when soda and popcorn are mixed and left to ferment in a garbage can for longer than 20 minutes, it smells like what I would imagine a rhinoceros' intestines would smell like.
Geek: Remixed - A Decade's worth of ruined pop culture memories
Xbox Live - Fatboy PDX
Well, that and their awesome "shut the fuck up" policy.
Oh God. The paper rattling. Cinema weeps this day.
The wrattling sub wrappers was pretty bad.
And we were trying to be quiet, so it wasn't as loud, but it the unwrapping lasted like 3 times as long.
Mostly, however, it was the smell of sweet onion chicken teriyaki and meatball sub that made it the awkwardest.
My friend was cleaning under the bleachers at his highschool once and found a nacho tray that had been there for at least a few years, and there was absolutely no mold or anything on it. It had simply hardened.
It cannot support life.
Do you know that, literally, people have been shot for less at movies?
But I don't like leaving to just go get an usher to kick their asses out because then I'm missing out on the film I paid for. Need a call button in chairs or something.
Might as well go all out and be loud for a few seconds than be a slightly quieter bother for a few minutes.
At the multiple theatres I worked at, none of them did this.
Also being a projectionist is like the single best job in the world. I worked at 16 stadium theatre so we needed several full time projectionists.
This is why I go in the afternoon on weekdays.
Then of course there was the very slight crinkling everytime I picked up and put down the sandwich.
All in all it was not my best moment. But it still makes me laugh.
when you go to a newly released movie and everyone claps when the title comes on the screen.
cmon, who are you clapping at?
Or even at the end of the movie like the cast is hiding in the screen waiting to hear your applause.
This was the afternoon on a Wednesday. As I said it was literally full of asians so I don't know if they had some kind of discount on or what, me, my friend and the staff were the only white people there so I was intimidated from telling these people off (They were young so more likely to kick off and there were 8 of them to my 2). Its just blatant ignorance though, and not only were they noisy,t hey kept leaving and coming back as well, going to the toilet or whatever but bounding down the stairs because they'd chosen wisely to sit at the back.
The theaters I worked at, they did.
Regal theaters. Late 90's.
Geek: Remixed - A Decade's worth of ruined pop culture memories
Xbox Live - Fatboy PDX
We use platters. We don't have enough people on for somebody to just sit around waiting for the right time to go to the next reel.
It's usually coconut oil. And it freezes. Our popcorn machine is next to an exterior wall, and there have been days where the wall's gotten cold enough to freeze the "butter," and we would have to get there about half an hour early on those days and hold a hair dryer pointed at the box with the bag of butter.
We actually don't hide the popcorn anywhere, we keep it in warmers built into the concessions counter. One handy rule of thumb when it comes to the freshness of anything, be it popcorn, or meat at a butcher's, the busier the place has been, the fresher the stuff will be. It's rare that we won't have started batches by at least half an hour before the first shows of the day.
It's one of the worst smells imaginable. You start off with a strong yeasty scent, which I assume is the sugars being turned into alcohol, but if that's left to sit for too long, you get this soul-searing vinegar scent, letting you know that soda, which hardly ever goes bad, has gone bad not once, but twice.
I don't know.
I doubt that many people in a theater go to see actual live theater.
Anyway next time it happens I'm just going to stand up and take a bow and claim I'm a producer.
god, get with the times people. this is the age of the internet, you should be declaring that the movie sucked as loud as possible while making obscene gestures.... during the opening credits.
Last time I asked I was told no.
Damn. I've never seen it do anything but sit in the jug, malignantly. Although I like the idea of someone being paid to sit in the stockroom with a hair-dryer, reading a comic and re-liquefying the butter flavored oilish substance.
Geek: Remixed - A Decade's worth of ruined pop culture memories
Xbox Live - Fatboy PDX
Use a small popcorn bucket. The two halves of a subway sandwich fit perfectly into ours. I'd post a picture but I don't have any available at the moment. This is basically how I eat dinner when we have our private showings of the movie coming out that week the Thursday before.
I buy it to put on my microwave popcorn.