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This topic comprises 4 pages: 1 2 3 4
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Author
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Topic: The Annual Popcorn Rip Off Article
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Dave Bird
Jedi Master Film Handler
Posts: 777
From: Perth, Ontario, Canada
Registered: Jun 2000
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posted 09-28-2019 08:33 AM
I'm fascinated by the idea of "processing the line", particularly in businesses I've never been involved in. I kind of believe the concept that some of the best ideas come from people new to the industry because they don't know "how we do things", they aren't limited by it. Two counter staff on busy nights sounds ridiculous if they are the ones fetching all the orders. I'm from the grocery biz and so we had the luxury of always having 20-30 people in the building. If one department got swamped or even if you needed packers up front on Christmas Eve, you could damn well get everyone up there. At the drive-in, our main tricks are opening the gate early so that 2 attendants can sell the place out and everyone is parked a half hour prior to the show. Inside, we still use only one cashier, but we are a cafeteria line setup and when busy, you bet we have 4-6 in there constantly producing product. You can't convince people to come in early, but even if 1,000 people are on the lot, our line is gone by showtime. When we add people, it's in prep/popcorn/kitchen. Curious to try another till in there to see if we get more sales or if it just overwhelms us. Either way, we don't understaff, it was a different biz, but the best lesson we learned was not to operate "cheap". Sometimes that means we can't offer as much, but we don't do it cheap.
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Jack Ondracek
Film God
Posts: 2348
From: Port Orchard, WA, USA
Registered: Oct 2002
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posted 09-28-2019 03:34 PM
I think part of this is deciding who you want your target patronage to be. Having run our drive-in for 33 years now, I'm convinced you can't run any kind of business model well and please everyone. So... who do you want to serve and who are you willing to see drive past your place?
When we bought our business, it had $5 carload admissions and pretty bad food, even compared to a McDonalds or Burger King. We kept it that way for the first 6 or 7 years, while we figured out what we'd taken on and learned about the community we were to serve for the better part of our working lives.
Behavior-wise, the customers were, ummm.... challenging. Many of them would go out and buy beer, then give us their last $5. Our fields were a big, drunken party. They'd vandalize our bathrooms and spend next to nothing in the snack bar. On weekends, it took upwards of 3 hours to pick up the trash. Many of them had no respect for the place at all.
The place was usually full, but we weren't having any fun, and the studios were reluctant to book anything but sub-run out here. The people we really wanted kind of avoided the place, because some of our regulars scared the kids.
We eventually turned our ears on and heard our community say they wanted first-run movies, a safe environment for families and decent food. Nowhere in that input did we hear anything about admission or concessions price or waiting times.
So... We went near market-rate per-capita pricing, first-run films and cooked-to-order concessions. The $5 crowd grumbled but eventually bought in or went somewhere else. In 5 years, we pretty much turned the crowd around to the business model that remains today.
Water? yah... we have $3 bottles, and we sell a lot of them. I have them in a +/- 1 degree cooler that keeps them at 34 degrees... very nice during the summer. We also have 50 cent cups and a fountain you can use for free, if the price of a bottle puts you off.
We use coconut oil and Flavacol in generous quantities in a 41 year-old Cretors machine (or its younger sibling). On weekends, running them are full-time positions.
We have burgers, chicken, pizzas, fries, corn dogs, Icees, cotton candy and Dippin' Dots. All of it is upwardly non-competitive, yet our lines are customarily out the doors.
People put up with the lines because they know what they'll get when their turn comes up. It's not cheap but it's good stuff. We have room for 4 register lines and, on busy nights, ALL of them are staffed with a cashier, and an assigned runner. The popcorn machines have people assigned to them and there's a person to get the food from the window to the counter, where it's delivered to the customer. We get few complaints about time because the customers see everyone hustling... unlike the stereotypical post office with 4 registers and one union cashier who goes as fast as a sloth because there's no motivation to do better.
As for why people grumble about pricing in the first place... I think a lot of it is because they don't really understand the business. That part is our fault because we put everything together to present an experience that we don't WANT the customer to think too much about. It's much more about how they enjoyed the overall experience than what it took to make it happen. That lack of detailed knowledge makes it impossible for them to reasonably evaluate what a fair price might be, so it seems a certain amount of misinformed snark is inevitable.
BTW... I don't charge a "food permit fee" or restrict my customers from bringing their own stuff in here. Frankly, I couldn't handle the business if they all switched to my food, and I see permit enforcement as a bit of a downer to the experience. Folks who have large families and maybe can't afford the whole cost of admission and concessions will bring some of their own stuff in. They're making a compromise, and I suppose I am to.
One thing though. We have them here for 4 to 6 hours, depending on when they arrive, so eventually, we see a lot of them in our snack bar anyway.
I think we've done a pretty good job. The community has been very supportive over the years, we are (slowly) able to improve things year by year, and one of my kids hung around to pass the business to, eventually.
It's been a pretty good life for a stereotypical old price-gouger.
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Bobby Henderson
"Ask me about Trajan."
Posts: 10973
From: Lawton, OK, USA
Registered: Apr 2001
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posted 09-28-2019 07:47 PM
I get the feeling that in my particular market the higher-ups are prioritizing minimal staff over customer service.
quote: Jack Ondracek
We have burgers, chicken, pizzas, fries, corn dogs, Icees, cotton candy and Dippin' Dots. All of it is upwardly non-competitive, yet our lines are customarily out the doors.
People put up with the lines because they know what they'll get when their turn comes up. It's not cheap but it's good stuff.
I think one advantage you have is your drive-in theater is a locally owned independent, and it's a drive-in. Combine that with the wide array of food choices. The customers probably don't have much of a problem waiting a little extra to support a retro-style theater that's also a local business.
But if you're at a major chain theater just wanting a bag of popcorn and a fountain drink cup (to fill at a Freestyle machine) or are waiting only to buy tickets then a long wait in line is probably not going to be tolerated nearly as well.
The restaurant industry knows how critical wait times can affect business. I think some of the big steak/BBQ chains go a little too far with gaming table top turn-over times. So many customers have no idea what goes in to cooking their steaks. The slabs of beef are shipped to the restaurants, often pre-grilled just to get the grill marks on them. In reality when they're cooked they're heated up in a commercial-grade microwave. It's like heating up leftovers. But you're paying a good chunk of money for that steak anyway.
There's a little steak house in the small town of Temple, OK called The Rocking H. They make a good steak and it doesn't come out of a microwave. Lots of people from Lawton are willing to make the half hour drive down there to eat. Prices are pretty reasonable too.
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Dave Bird
Jedi Master Film Handler
Posts: 777
From: Perth, Ontario, Canada
Registered: Jun 2000
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posted 09-29-2019 11:33 AM
I think we share a similar attitude Jack, I like to say "we're raising prices to serve you better" as my go-to joke, but it's true, we've learned to focus on what we can do well, cook to order (in a different service model) and got rid of the cheapskates.
I felt it was a shame when I visited the nearby city drive-in that just closed that a number of the things we were doing to simplify things for ourselves may very well have saved the place. Likewise, the owner echoed a few things you say, they raised carload night pricing and then eliminated it altogether. Struggling to operate two businesses at once, they eliminated Monday nights. Not a single complaint, and no loss in numbers, they just came on one of the other six nights.
We had a couple challenging nights this season where so much of our staff were having "once in a lifetime" stuff combined with midweek Lion King crowds we just decided to cheat our way through a Tuesday and Wednesday with myself plus a box office person to serve 250-300 people per evening. Announced no grill or fried food for those evenings, had my helper come in a couple hours early, made and bagged a ton of hot dogs and popcorn, opened early. Smooth sailing, had 3 or 4 people ask about fried food, per cap concessions were HIGHER than usual. It went so well in fact that I really would consider doing a night or two a week putting hot dogs on special and going without the grill. Not to cut staff, but to allow me to have a younger "assistant manager" get some experience running the place while our manager gets a couple nights off. I want a system where we're constantly training people capable of running the place.
We're also finishing our second season of closing the hot fryer and grill either at showtime on quiet nights, an hour into the first film on double features, or through first intermission for triple feature holiday showings. We realized that we just sold very little hot food at intermission and rather than having the kids stand around the entire first movie, we can basically clean the place top to bottom, serve the intermission crowd, then tidy and go home. It's fun to play around with something that nobody tells you how you have to do it!
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Martin Brooks
Jedi Master Film Handler
Posts: 900
From: Forest Hills, NY, USA
Registered: May 2002
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posted 09-29-2019 07:23 PM
Understaffing is insane, especially when paying minimum wage and charging movie theater prices for snacks. A popcorn and a soda can bring in $$7 to 11 in revenue (and $6 to $9 in earnings) and you would let that customer walk away because you didn't want to hire another person for $7.40 to $15 an hour who could serve that person and 20 others?
I can understand keeping the staff to a minimum during the week when the theater is pretty much empty, but not on a weekend when it's busy. Personally, I don't do lines and I will use the line as an excuse not to fill up on crap anyway. But sometimes, if I have already skipped a meal that day and/or I'm very thirsty, I'll cave, but only if there is a minimal or no line.
This reminds me of the idiots you see on those restaurant/bar reality shows who know less than nothing about running such a business.
quote: Bobby Henderson
I remember seeing one documentary about New York City's water supply system (Modern Marvels, I think) and its tap water would often beat most bottled water in taste tests.
If you get the water from the fire hydrant, yes. But the pipes in many (most?) old NYC buildings are horrible, some have lead and I notice there's weird discoloration in the toilet, so I don't trust my tap water as drinking water, although I'll cook with it. But at the fire hydrant when it's running cold on a hot day? It almost tastes sweet! But even if bottled water is better (and the major brands do taste pretty good), I don't trust the plastic.
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Dave Bird
Jedi Master Film Handler
Posts: 777
From: Perth, Ontario, Canada
Registered: Jun 2000
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posted 09-30-2019 09:09 AM
Employees are your most valuable resource, I've always believed my most important job in managing was to look after them first, make things as smooth for them as I can and there's just no size of crowd that can overwhelm us. That said, we simply had to cut down on what we offered when the gov't raised student minimum from $11 to $14 overnight. We decided to close the grill after the show starts most nights since we weren't selling much of that at intermission anyway, open the box a bit earlier so we had more time to deal with parking without an extra staffer. The attrition of a couple long-time students moving on let us re-jig it so most nights we'll have one less, but one MORE on Friday and Saturday nights. Raised prices a bit. A little more efficient quieter nights and extra help otherwise. And I'm adamant that the kids who are working for us, even if the roster is down one or two, that they all are able to achieve what they always have, getting enough hours to pay for a big chunk of their schooling at least spitting distance from debt-free. We work hard, they tell us often this was the best job they ever had. We just won't do it anymore if it ever has to be otherwise.
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Randy Stankey
Film God
Posts: 6539
From: Erie, Pennsylvania
Registered: Jun 99
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posted 09-30-2019 09:30 AM
quote: Bobby Henderson
I remember seeing one documentary about New York City's water supply system (Modern Marvels, I think) and its tap water would often beat most bottled water in taste tests.
quote:
If you get the water from the fire hydrant, yes. But the pipes in many (most?) old NYC buildings are horrible, some have lead and I notice there's weird discoloration in the toilet, so I don't trust my tap water as drinking water, although I'll cook with it. But at the fire hydrant when it's running cold on a hot day? It almost tastes sweet!
quote: Bobby Henderson
I don't remember the tap water being that bad in NYC. But then I don't know what all has happened in the following 30-ish years.
I can tell you exactly what happened... Fluoride.
No, I'm not an anti-fluoridation nut. It's about the chemistry that goes on inside the pipes.
When water flows through pipes for an extended period of time, a layer of scale builds up on the interior walls. That scale serves as a passivation layer, protecting the metal underneath.
Fluorine has a very high affinity for calcium. When fluorine is introduced into the water supply it begins to dissolve the calcium lining the insides of the pipes, releasing it and any other substances that were contained in that scale back into the water.
In the past, any lead and contaminants would have been drawn out of the water, into the scale in the pipes. Now, with fluoride, that scale is being dissolved back into the water.
This is what happened in Detroit. When they changed the water supply from Lake Erie to the Detroit River, they had to change the mix of disinfectants like chlorine, bromine and fluorine, plus a few anti-corrosion substances but they got the mix wrong. That bad mix allowed the scale on the insides of the pipes that had built up over a period of 100 years to dissolve and release poison back into the water.
You're right. The main water lines are probably clean. They get maintained and replaced every so often. It's the lines that branch off the mains, inside buildings, that don't get maintained.
That's why water from the hydrants tastes good and the water from your faucet tastes bad.
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Jack Ondracek
Film God
Posts: 2348
From: Port Orchard, WA, USA
Registered: Oct 2002
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posted 09-30-2019 07:21 PM
At the risk of putting my foot in this...
I'm not sure that the "employee is our most valuable resource" is any more valid a slogan than "the customer is always right". That said, the customer is always the customer and your employees are certainly valuable. In the end however, the unvarnished goal is to generate a sustainable program that ensures the ongoing success of the business, without which there are no customers OR employees.
We pay close attention to the customers, and are always looking for ways to reasonably meet their needs within the limits of what we're trying to accomplish with the business. Those parameters are our right to choose as the owners of the business, for which we are ultimately responsible.
Our employees are certainly integral and necessary, but most come to us with no experience. We are their first job. As such, it's a bit symbiotic. We are paying, maybe too much at first, for their time, while teaching them, at our expense, to become productive members of our team and giving them a place to learn skills they'll use to take their next step. They'll learn teamwork, elementary accounting, food service, sanitation and customer service, while building their own self-confidence. While they're with us, they are part of our family and we have their backs.
We look at it this way because we have no illusion about whether there's a career path in theatre concessions or parking lot management for them. There isn't much money to be made as a trainee, who comes to you with little else but desire and a mostly-blank slate. At best, they might be with us for 3 or 4 years, until they finish school and (over here) community college. They'll eventually move on and we both know it. So... we make it a bit of an introduction to life, we position it that way and we make it clear to our staff that their major benefit in being with us is what they'll take with them when they leave. If they do their part, that starts with what we hope will be one of the best references they'll ever get.
We treat them like adults, because we're expecting adult performance from them. This is the first place many of them have experienced respect for the effort they choose to put into their jobs, and for the most part, we have to shoo them out the door at night.
All in all, it's worked out to be a pretty good system.
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