Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Food and Beverage

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Posted by Cassandra Palko (Member # 5362) on 08-30-2009, 03:21 AM:

Popcorn, Soda, Nachos and Candy are the basic staples of every cinema I know. It was all we had at my first theatre. The "competition" down the street had pretzel bites, warm cookies and hot dogs. We added cotton candy... Over time menus grew to be more and more diverse. Pizza, Coffee, Dippin Dots, White Castle and many other items that can be produced with the use of the almighty Turbo Chef.

The theatre chain I work for now has full scale in-theatre dining complete with table service and a bar. We have another location that operates an Italian restaurant in the lobby. We call these places our F&B (food and beverage) locations.

How many of you work at locations with menus that extend beyond the normal concession items? Anybody else with cocktail lounges?

Posted by Andy Bajew (Member # 5330) on 08-30-2009, 08:24 AM:

I work at the Alamo Drafthouse Cinema -- it is a dinner and movie style theater. Full menu and beer/wine selection. The desserts are the best part. Sounds like my theater is like yours. We employ servers and food/drink runners so that we can service the customer inside the theater like a restaurant would.

Everything on the menu is a finger food (burger, chicken tenders, wings etc...) so that there are no noisy utensils to mess up the presentation.

Posted by Cassandra Palko (Member # 5362) on 08-30-2009, 10:39 PM:

How many screens do you have?

I like the idea of ALL finger food so that there are no noisy utensils to mess up the presentation. Most of ours is finger food - but we have salads - served on big heavy plates and the fork clinking has shown up on customer comment cards as a complaint.

Posted by Wayne Keyser (Member # 2420) on 08-30-2009, 11:12 PM:

My local "drafthouse-type" one-screen cinema started as just that (movies for a buck, beer and basic bar food [think 'fryolator']). It did reasonably well for years.

Maybe 4 years ago they upgraded the food (added sandwiches and basic wine and broader beer selection) and upped the admission in stages to $5.50. They also added live entertainment, starting with irregular local comedy jams, and new-sideshow/new-burlesque nights.

Starting about a year ago, Fridays/Saturdays they have national-name comics at the 9:20 show (early and late movies), and they took over a failing restaurant in an adjoining building, and made it both the drafthouse's kitchen and an independent lounge/grill. They recently added programming to the lounge (ain't bigscreen TV's wonderful?) - family-friendly matinees and some evening baby-friendly showings, Comedy open-mic Saturday evenings, family-friendly night Sundays, bizarre/schlock/psychotronic film night Wednesdays (all free admission), and small-time pro stand-up comedy Thursday nights. The drafthouse still cranks out its own bar food (I think) but the full grill menu is available.

Here's the cinema/drafthouse - http://www.arlingtondrafthouse.com/

and here's the grill - http://www.oldarlingtongrill.com/ - you can check out the menu.

Posted by Cassandra Palko (Member # 5362) on 09-01-2009, 07:21 PM:

Does anybody run a dinner and a movie multi-plex? There is one near me that has 3 screens of in-theatre dining and I know of another being built with 5 screens.

Posted by Andy Bajew (Member # 5330) on 09-01-2009, 07:55 PM:

quote: Cassandra Palko
How many screens do you have?

We have seven screens. Our total seating capacity is around 1000 or so.

We also have salads, but they are a less popular item. Thankfully we have bowls for them that don't make tons of noise and the silverware is prewrapped so there is no clanking until the customer touches it

Posted by Monte L Fullmer (Member # 2797) on 09-03-2009, 03:03 AM:

What I'm curious about with these "Movie Grill" complexes that serves alcohol in a public place like this, how do they get around with the minor prohibited law thingey to get their alcohol license?

Posted by Chris Slycord (Member # 4239) on 09-03-2009, 03:17 AM:

It would depend on what the local law actually is.

And while I am no lawyer, I don't see why a movie grill would really be treated differently from a regular restaurant. It's just a restaurant that happens to play movies.

And for local laws... I remember back in Washington they (at the time) had a law specifying that if the majority of the revenue came from alcohol then the place would automatically be treated as a bar, with only 21+ allowed.

Posted by Andy Bajew (Member # 5330) on 09-03-2009, 06:15 AM:

Well my work being the Alamo Drafthouse, we advertise that we cater to a more mature crowd, therefore you can't see a movie if you are under six with no exceptions and you can't see a movie if you are 18 and come alone. We have tons of different licenses to be able to sell beer/wine/sangria/etc... We can only employ people 18 and over for that reason.

Posted by Sam Graham (Member # 2889) on 09-03-2009, 12:59 PM:

quote: Monte L Fullmer
What I'm curious about with these "Movie Grill" complexes that serves alcohol in a public place like this, how do they get around with the minor prohibited law thingey to get their alcohol license?

The Warren balcony operations have a strictly 21-and-over admission policy.

Not sure about the Old Town conversion.

Posted by Aaron Mehocic (Member # 15) on 09-05-2009, 06:46 PM:

Many years ago a theater in the chain I work for had a liquor license and offered draft beer in its stand. It was a college town so one might think big sales. In actuality, it hurt sales in the stand because the staff was spending more time carding and less time effectively getting customers served. In my opinion, beer is not a concession item and has no place in a regular movie theater. This "drafthouse" concept, however, is different.

Posted by Edwin Schwing (Member # 1270) on 09-06-2009, 04:39 AM:

Aaron, don't you already card for Credit card sales? If not you should!

I can't see where that would add (or take away) from sales.

Posted by Alex Edwards (Member # 5413) on 09-08-2009, 09:21 PM:

At our theater we started frying various things like chicken strips, cheese sticks, and curly fries. The funny thing is so far the fried stuff has been more popular with the employees than with the customers because the employees like them and the customers generally just with the regular stuff.

Posted by Caleb Johnstone-Cowan (Member # 3710) on 09-09-2009, 07:31 PM:

We had something similar at a place I worked at with Paninis. The staff discount on concessions was 40% so they worked out a lot cheaper than the food outlets near us. I don't think any customers ever bought them.

I don't see how asking for ID causes queues, customers must expect it especially in the USA, maybe it was because I was 21 when I visited but we got carded everywhere.

We serve alcohol in bottles on the stand. They are a good addition to the range and I reckon as more people become used to the idea of drinking in the cinema we'll sell more and more.

Is an ice cream stand at the cinema a common thing in the USA? We have a Ben and Jerry's franchise, as do most of our sites. I end up working there most busy shifts, pretty easy job but the queues can build as we also serve normal stand items from the tills.

Posted by Mark Hajducki (Member # 1732) on 09-12-2009, 01:08 PM:

The profit on beer/wine is likely to be a lot less than the traditional items sold on the concessions stand due to the higher duty payable on those items and the higher cost price. It would be worth establishing whether selling alcohol cannibalise sales of the high profit soft drinks.

The same would apply to some types of food, especially those which need to be delivered freshly, and cooked to order.

quote: Caleb Johnstone-Cowan
We serve alcohol in bottles on the stand.

Do you decant it into plastic cups before people take it in? The cinemas round here which have bars, but not special premium seating, insist that glass is not taken into the screens. Collecting broken glass will slow down the cleaning of the screen, and the bar may then get short of glasses.

Posted by Aaron Mehocic (Member # 15) on 09-12-2009, 07:01 PM:

quote: Edwin Schwing
Aaron, don't you already card for Credit card sales? If not you should! I can't see where that would add (or take away) from sales.

Edwin, I don't understand the premise of your question. I was simply stating a theater in our chain, many years ago, in a college town, and in a different state was carding customers who wanted to buy liquor. It slowed up the lines so people who just wanted popcorn and/or a soft drink got disgusted and walked away.

Now, as to your point about carding credit card sales . . . again I'm not quite sure what you mean. At the particular theater I'm based out of all sales are cash only in both the box and the stand. We do not have card scanners anywhere in our building.

Posted by Caleb Johnstone-Cowan (Member # 3710) on 09-12-2009, 08:56 PM:

Almost all our alcohol range is in plastic bottles so it's OK, but yes anything sold in glass would be poured in a cup.

To respond to Aaron, if someone doesn't have a signature on their credit/debit card (which seems to be the norm with American cards I come across over here) the procedure is usually that you get them to produce a matching drivers license, passport or ID card before you accept payment. I think the idea is that it places responsibility for paying for any fraud away from the merchant and on to the card issuer. In the UK paying by card is a lot more common than most countries, we have pin readers instead of signatures so ID is irrelevant unless it's a US card!

Posted by Aaron Mehocic (Member # 15) on 09-19-2009, 07:48 PM:

Hmmm . . . thats interesting. None of my credit cards are signed either and nobody anywhere has ever asked to see another form of ID when ringing my purchases.

Posted by Anslem Rayburn (Member # 1267) on 09-21-2009, 06:52 AM:

Technically, you're not supposed to accept an unsigned card. Says so right on the back "NOT VALID UNLESS SIGNED"

I write "SEE ID" on the signature line, and still nobody asks for ID. It's no wonder credit card theft and fraud is so common.

Posted by Chris Slycord (Member # 4239) on 09-21-2009, 07:29 AM:

This reminds me that once a guy gave me his card w/o signature so I asked for ID; he told me he left the sig off specifically to make me have to check ID. I then said "What if someone stole your card and added a signature of his own on there? When I check the back of the card, the signature will match the one he signs the receipt with."

And the guy could only think of saying "But there's no signature so you have to check ID." [Roll Eyes]

I tried explaining again but gave up when it was obvious he was not thinking whatsoever.

Posted by Sam Graham (Member # 2889) on 09-21-2009, 08:34 AM:

You all might find this interesting...

Rules for VISA Merchants

Page 29 discusses unsigned cards, including specifically the "See ID" theory. Bottom line: If they refuse to sign it, don't accept it.

Also noted on the same page, VISA prefers you don't check ID in the first place, though they don't forbid it (though they DO forbid you refusing a sale based on ID).

Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 09-21-2009, 04:55 PM:

I don't understand why they would discourage you from checking ID. What does it hurt?

Posted by Mitchell Dvoskin (Member # 751) on 09-22-2009, 01:30 PM:

A few years ago, my credit union sent out a notice requesting members not allow merchants to copy id information and to refuse to provide a telephone number. It went on to say that the merchant is not issuing you credit, they are. They felt that the then common practice of writing drivers license numbers and telephone numbers on the credit slip was a greater risk to identity theft than the occasional person using a stolen credit card.

While credit card taking is now mostly electronic, banks still feel that having personal id information in unsecured databases is more risky than not. I'm not sure that is still true, but considering the number of security breaches at retailers over the last few years, they may very well be correct.