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Author Topic: Pop Corn Question ! Ed Alvarado Film Handler Posts: 60 From: Fort Worth, TX,usa Registered: Oct 2004 posted 03-23-2008 04:30 PM                        well towards the end of the day make sure you drop the amount of popcorn being made and if there's a little bit either keep it and eat it at home or keep it for the next day and warm it and mix it with a new batch. only if there's enough but at the end of the day you should only have enough for a tub of popcorn and if you are left with enough to fill a trashbag then your employee's are making way too much at nite.  |  IP: Logged Allison Parsons Jedi Master Film Handler Posts: 630 From: East Peoria, IL Registered: Oct 2004 posted 03-23-2008 04:37 PM                        quote: Darryl Spicer ....and it tastes like cardboard too. haha. I agree. If I pick up a bag of Frito-lay's cheesy popcorn, I'm not buying it because it's fresh, I'm buying it because it's good in-a-bag cheesy popcorn. Nor do I expect it to be fresh like at a movie theater. And I've had complaints about 'chewy' popcorn after it comes out of the kettle. It doesn't help when they ask for extra butter topping on it either. I'm the first to admit I've become a popcorn nazi over the years. Maybe most of us who have worked a popper can distinguish fresh tasting popcorn over regular customers. But I'm standing by my belief of throwing the popcorn out at the end of the night. Or you could always donate it to a homeless shelter.  |  IP: Logged Chad Souder Jedi Master Film Handler Posts: 962 From: Waterloo, IA, USA Registered: Feb 2000 posted 03-23-2008 04:52 PM                     As a way to kill some time about 4 years ago I did a taste test with guests comparing fresh popcorn (made within the previous hour) and stuff that had been warmed after being bagged for 3 days. I kid you not, of the 40 or so people I asked, 22 of them preferred the old stuff. That being said, we throw all our popcorn out at the end of the night and made fresh every day. The bigger issue is getting the smell in the lobby.  |  IP: Logged Scott McGuire Film Handler Posts: 94 From: Elmira, NY/United States Registered: Oct 2007 posted 03-23-2008 05:00 PM                     We keep the lid on out warmer closed at night and this doesn't seem to do anything to the taste of the popcorn. We usually use our day old and make enough fresh to fill the warmer and mix it together. We are closed on mondays and tuesdays so on sunday night all the popcorn is thrown away. When my dad worked for a chain around here all the popcorn for the 3 theatres in the area was poped at his theatre and baged and sent to the other theatre as they needed it. The other 2 theatre didn't even have a poper in the building.  |  IP: Logged Jeremy Weigel Phenomenal Film Handler Posts: 1062 From: Edmond, OK, USA Registered: Mar 2007 posted 03-23-2008 05:14 PM                     quote: Allison Parsons Or you could always donate it to a homeless shelter. Ah, come on. The homeless have it bad enough as it is. Now you wanna give them food that you won't even eat?  |  IP: Logged Sean McKinnon Phenomenal Film Handler Posts: 1712 From: Peabody Massachusetts Registered: Sep 2000 posted 03-23-2008 05:46 PM                        Popcorn right out of the popper is very chewy and tends to cause to cause people to explain that it's stale. Popcorn also has a long shelf life if stored properly. When I worked for Loews we had to pop almost everyday of the week and store a lot of it in bags for the weekend. Even with both of our 32 oz. Cretors kettles running constantly we would not have been able to keep up with the demand if we did not pre-pop a lot of corn. In fact once one of our kettles broke and we had to have popped corn trucked in from another theatre or we would have run out. Every theatre I have worked at has pre-popped corn because it is more cost effective to pop more at one time than run the popper a little everyday, also if your popper breaks down you can still sell popcorn if you have some pre-popped. You can't use any old trashbag though, you need to use special sanitary bags intended to hold food. As far as what is left in the bin at the end of the night it depends if it is full then we would bag it and save it if it is mostly crumbs we would toss it.  |  IP: Logged Tim Reed Better Projection Pays Posts: 5246 From: Northampton, PA Registered: Sep 1999 posted 03-23-2008 06:59 PM                       It's standard practice with many circuits to pop in an upstairs room (or even off site in some cases), trash bag it all, and bring it down to warmers when needed. Also, some of these same theatres would never leave it in the warmer overnight. They rebag it and clean the popper and/or warmer every night at closing. Tasted fine, no complaints. Although, showmen know that part of the "sell" is smelling freshly-popped corn and SEEING it come pouring out of the kettle.  |  IP: Logged Sam Graham AKA: "The Evil Sam Graham". Wackiness ensues. Posts: 1431 From: Waukee, IA Registered: Dec 2004 posted 03-23-2008 07:12 PM                        I don't have a problem with theatres that use day-old popcorn mixed with freshly popped popcorn so long as the end product is hot. I once got popcorn at a drive-in that had sat overnight and it wasn't even warm. They hadn't even turned the warming light on. They were just shoveling day-old cold popcorn out of the thing. It's the theatres that reheat hot dogs that gross me out. And yes, I know a manager who did this night after night until they were turning green.  |  IP: Logged Scott Norwood Film God Posts: 8146 From: Boston, MA. USA (1774.21 miles northeast of Dallas) Registered: Jun 99 posted 03-23-2008 08:06 PM                        The fact that this is even a point of discussion demonstrates why the mainstream exhibition industry is tanking right now. Consider the following: - Popcorn costs almost nothing to make and theatres sell it at high prices. - The income from selling a single bucket of popped corn will more than cover the cost of making several batches. - Customers rightfully expect a top-quality product for the prices that theatres charge for corn. - Some (many?) (most?) people prefer the taste of fresh corn and also like to see and smell it coming out of the popper. Therefore, I've always felt strongly that saving leftover corn is false economy and that theatres should worry more about making sure that corn is popping whenever customers are in the lobby than about trying to save (literally) a few pennies by re-using leftover popcorn. I truly do not understand why AMC, Regal, and the rest don't make an effort to provide really good popcorn. My experience has been that the chains always have the worst tasting corn. Don't they realize that they will sell substantially more of it if they can provide a consistently high quality product? And that maybe their customers won't feel cheated after they spend $4 for stale popcorn? If I owned a theatre, I would explicitly tell my employees to not worry about how much popcorn got thrown out each night and, instead, to be sure that the customers could hear and see corn popping between showtimes.  |  IP: Logged David Stambaugh Film God Posts: 4021 From: Eugene, Oregon Registered: Jan 2002 posted 03-23-2008 08:27 PM                        To the best of my knowledge both Regal and Cinemark here pop all their corn fresh in poppers at the concession counter. I've never seen them use bagged corn. The poppers are almost always going between shows. For what they charge, the corn damn well better be fresh. I have no complaints with the taste of their product, but I wish they offered nutritional yeast topping. Regal did for a while, then stopped. I think Cinemark did too. Speaking of hot dogs, these days theaters here seem to have quite a ritual for serving hot dogs. The concession worker has to glove up and test the temperature of each dog with a thermometer. If the temp is too low, they try another dog. I was behind someone buying several hot dogs yesterday and the process was so slow the line I was in came to a dead stop for about 5 minutes. They finally asked the customer if it was ok to nuke the dogs in a microwave because that was the only way they'd get them up to temperature quickly (it was the first matinee round and apparently the dogs weren't warmed up completely yet).  |  IP: Logged Chris Slycord Film God Posts: 2986 From: 청주시, 경북도, South Korea Registered: Mar 2007 posted 03-23-2008 09:43 PM                     And I know for a fact that the AMC I'm at pops throughout the day. I can't say that ALL of them do but I know they do. Though having a bit of a corn allergy I have no idea if their's is good; I don't feel like having my hands and face itch like mad or get the shits. quote: I prefer fresh popcorn, the same way Mr. Spicer does, from the popper as it taste much better, Methinks you didn't pay attention to what he was responding to. I was commenting on the fact that if you don't let the stuff dry for a few seconds it tastes really chewy instead of like normal popcorn. That's why lots of people train their staff to (even when someone wants fresh) to dump it out, then start scooping. That way people won't complain about the chewy consistency. Though if you and him like it chewy then all the more power to you.  |  IP: Logged Mike Blakesley Film God Posts: 12767 From: Forsyth, Montana Registered: Jun 99 posted 03-23-2008 09:49 PM                        We'll quite often have a little popcorn left over. If we do, I turn on the warmer by about 2:00 in the afternoon and we've never had a complaint about that "old" popcorn. In fact a friend of mine (who I make deliveries to on my day job) always wants me to bring him a bucket of "last night's popcorn" because he thinks it tastes BETTER the next day. I agree with comments above about the humidity...we're in a very dry climate here so that's probably why it works for us. We clean our machine thoroughly every night after popping is finished. The thing is 11 years old but looks like it rolled in here last week, thanks to the efforts of my staff (and some credit should probably go to Lynn and me for making them clean it properly "or else!")  |  IP: Logged Sean McKinnon Phenomenal Film Handler Posts: 1712 From: Peabody Massachusetts Registered: Sep 2000 posted 03-24-2008 09:39 AM                        I swear that it does taste better the next day if stored properly. I think its psychological that people think right out of the popper is the best. At one of my old LCE theatres the popper was in the main stand so that you could smell and hear the corn popping but it was in the kitchen in the center of this center island stand (Star Theatres Prototype Design)so that it could not be seen. Whenver I had to cover a concession station and someone ordered popcorn and I went into the kitchen and got it right out of the popper (where the customer could not see) they would complain, accuse it of being stale, and ask for new popcorn. When I filled the bag with the day old popcorn from the warmer they would be happy. As I said there is also no way in really busy megaplexes to only sell what you popped that day, you would run out! We made sure to use good warmers though so that the popcorn was always very warm.  |  IP: Logged James Westbrook Phenomenal Film Handler Posts: 1133 From: Lubbock, Texas, Usa Registered: Mar 2006 posted 03-24-2008 11:24 AM                     Cinemark answers the demand with more poppers. My current stand has 3 of them, with space for a fourth (occupied by a Disani refrigerator ). Business warrents the concessionists fire up the 2nd popper. "But then we have TWO poppers to clean!" No, they don't. The janitorial service cleans the poppers now. NO EXCUSE not to fire up that second popper.  |  IP: Logged Darryl Spicer Film God Posts: 3250 From: Lexington, KY, USA Registered: Dec 2000 posted 03-24-2008 12:19 PM                    I will agree that if you only have one popper and three or four warmers then popping in advance was the desired method to begin with. With Cinemark it is the opposite. They have in our case 5 poppers in the stand no warmers. The poppers are the warmers. They want you to pop the corn fresh everyday. My case for the pop in advance for warmers is that it always looked bad if customers saw you refilling the popcorn warmers with popcorn out of a big bag. They would get this strange look on their face and question you as to where the popcorn came from and how long have you had it. Especially if you had no popcorn popper in sight. As for the way I like the corn. I like it just after it is popped and sifted in with the other corn.  |  IP: Logged

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