Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Popcorn serving containers

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Posted by Frank Angel (Member # 248) on 07-02-2018, 08:13 PM:

Does anyone have a source for popcorn serving boxes or tubs where you don't need to purchase 100 thousand at a time? We are looking for the traditional generic red stripes, possibly with the word "Popcorn" printed somewhere on it, but not 100% necessary as the red strips design is almost universally identifiable. A minimum of 1K per order would be OK, but no more than that; actually if we could buy 500 at a time, that would be ideal. Since weight of these things is substantial, a supplier somewhere more or less in the East would be preferred. Thanks

Posted by Martin McCaffery (Member # 37) on 07-02-2018, 08:31 PM:

You can go right to the source with this:

Gold Medal

but the shipping is going to hurt.

Posted by Bob Ezra (Member # 841) on 07-02-2018, 09:32 PM:

Amazon or Cleanit Supply

Posted by Kenneth Wuepper (Member # 1174) on 07-02-2018, 09:42 PM:

This is our locally grown supplier of corn and containers.

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Zastrow-Lloyd-Wholesale-Popcorn-Supplies/104716609594754

Zasatrow Popcorn

They also supply the containers and machinery for popping.

Great folks also.
KEN

Posted by Frank Cox (Member # 6258) on 07-03-2018, 12:54 AM:

For whatever it's worth, I buy my popcorn supplies from Harlan Fairbanks, and they have a presence in the USA too. (The 50 lb bags of their popping corn say so, at least.)

The containers that I get look like this:

They come in several sizes; I buy the 32 oz, 46 oz and 85 oz sizes.

These are a lot nicer to deal with than bags since you don't have to open them to fill them up and they stand up on their own. And they look prettier. I've never sold popcorn in bags for just those reasons.

Their minimum order (around here) is $400 so you don't have to buy a warehouse full of stuff from them, too.

Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 07-03-2018, 02:09 AM:

We use cups/buckets similar to Frank's (for the same reason) and we buy from Mountain States Concessions, in Salt Lake City. They do free shipping if you buy at least 40 cases at once, so you could buy a few cases of candy to meet that if you don't need that many buckets. We buy 32, 46, 85 and 130 ounce sizes. Best seller by far is the 85. The worst is the 32 but kids do like it.

I guess I don't know if they would ship out of this region but it wouldn't hurt to ask.

www.mountainstatesconcessions.com

Posted by Frank Angel (Member # 248) on 07-05-2018, 09:16 AM:

Thanks guys.

Posted by Randy Stankey (Member # 64) on 07-05-2018, 08:31 PM:

The Tom Ridge Center, where I used to work, bought those yellow popcorn cups from our local Slush Puppie distributor along with candy and other concession items.

They only bought a couple-few cases of each size at a time.

I don’t know what distributors there are in your area but it wouldn’t hurt to look them up, I guess. [Shrug]

Posted by Dustin Grush (Member # 10438) on 07-10-2018, 11:33 PM:

We get our cups from one of our regular distributors. They only stock 32oz and 85oz, the 130 oz is a special order for them which they are happy to do if we order a few cases. They even warehouse them for us, delivering a few cases at a time, with the understanding that we will take delivery of the remaining special order at the end of our season in the fall. It has worked well for the past several years.

It seems that the smaller distributor was more willing to do this than the larger one. Perhaps you could work something like this out?

I've been tempted to put some leg work into a "buying group" to design and order container loads of popcorn cups from china (ie, aliebaba) and then split the savings between the group members. Maybe something like this already exists. I'm not interested so much in making a profit from it as i am in getting a better cost. The savings is there if you can buy containers at a time, something we could never do with just two theatres. It would really only take maybe a dozen theatres within an hour or two radius to make it work, and it could work in any area.

Posted by Jesse Crooks (Member # 9389) on 07-11-2018, 07:35 PM:

We've used Kloss for many years. It might be grandfathered in or something, but our minimum for free shipping is only $100, and they've been great to work with. They do PA and Jersey, but I don't know if they ship to NYC.