Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, February 28, 1992 TAG: 9202280280
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: E-6 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JEAN MARBELLA THE BALTIMORE SUN
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
POPCORN KEEPS THEATER DOORS OPEN
When you pay $6.50 for a movie ticket, you know some of it ends up, at least theoretically, in the pocket of Kevin Costner or whoever is up there on the screen entertaining you. But when you pay $3.50 for a bucket of popcorn, where does it go? Are there some farmers in Iowa whose kids are getting the best orthodontics and college educations that money can buy?"Most people don't realize that it's the popcorn that keeps the theater's doors open," said Cathy Kasberg, concessions director for the United Artists movie chain, the nation's largest. "Most of the price of a movie ticket goes to the film company. On an opening week, film companies can get 90 percent of the box office [receipts]. That's why we have to make our profits on concessions."
Indeed. Popcorn, among the cheapest of snack foods if you make it yourself at home, and the soft drink you need to wash it down are both wildly marked up at movie theaters - about 80 percent by one estimate. But like hot dogs at the ball park and cotton candy at the fair, popcorn is such a part of the movie-going experience that consumers continue to spring for it. Which makes theater owners happy, and their books a little better balanced.
"There is no concession known to man that has a mark-up like popcorn," said Tom Kiefaber, owner of the Senator Theatre in Baltimore, Md. "It's such a high-profit item. . . . In fact, the wax-coated cup that it comes in costs more."
Even as fewer people are going to the movies these days - what with video rentals and cable TV keeping them at home - concession sales "pretty much have stayed consistent," said Mandy Pava, spokeswoman for the National Association of Concessionaires.
Snack Food magazine estimates that moviegoers buy $350 million to $400 million of popcorn every year.
The cost of popcorn and other concessions, long a grumbling point among moviegoers, has led some to sneak their own snacks into theaters.
Several theater owners say they allow patrons to bring their own popcorn or candy, but draw the line at more distracting and odoriferous fare - potato chips in noisy crinkly bags, for example, or fast food from nearby restaurants.
"There was a Sunday matinee a year ago, all my employees remember this, when two characters brought in fish sandwiches. We took them out, but the odor remained," Kiefaber recalls. "Then we had another gentleman who came in with a pizza in a box under his shirt. We put it in the popcorn warmer for him and let him eat it in the outer lobby during intermission."
With such a large chunk of their profits coming from the concessions, some theaters are offering special training and incentives to their employees to push their products, Kasberg of United Artists said. One method that employees are taught, she said, is "suggestive selling," in which concessions employees convince you to buy a larger size of something or encourage you to buy a second product to go along with the single purchase you intended to make.
The extra training must be succeeding: Between 1990 and 1991, attendance at UA cinemas only increased 1 percent but concession sales went up 8 percent, Kasberg said.