Food Service

[Mark Lane]

We have an old theater that once had a crying room. The crying room is now storage for old theater junk. We are looking into turning the crying room into a small commercial kitchen. The health department has looked at the room and is okay with the idea, a contractor says it would not be a huge undertaking.
We want to focus on to-go orders while being able to offer more to those coming to see the movie. This will allow for additional income when the movie is not doing as well as we hoped.
We are looking at a MerryCheff or a TurboChef. Has anyone had any experience they can share with these ovens?

Does anyone offer a more extensive food menu?
Thank you

[Marcel Birgelen]

Those TurboChef and MerryChef ovens are used by Subway (among others, but they started the craze about 12 years ago) for those that want their subs toasted... AFAIK, those ovens use a mixture between hot air and a microwave. I'm not a fan, the food seems to come out dry and lacks much of the flavor that would've developed with a normal baking method and my reference goes beyond Subway.

What kind of menu items do you have in mind? You can buy a lot of gear that's able to prepare FRESH food for the price of one of those turbo ovens.

[Frank Cox]

The guy who owns the pool hall/arcade here put what he calls a "diner" into a corner of his building a few years ago. He has one of those super-duper microwaves and buys frozen pizza slices, french fries, burgers, chicken strips, hot dogs, cheese bites and you-name-it from the same wholesaler that I buy my popcorn supplies from.

He told me once that it's all frozen and he just has to throw it into the microwave for whatever time it says on the package, so I guess it's pretty much foolproof and doesn't require much staff training.

I have no idea how well he does with it or how good the food actually is, but he's been doing it for a few years and as far as I know he's still doing it so I guess there must be something in it.

[Mike Blakesley]

I remember a seminar some time ago where the presenter said, "You can put in whatever food items you want to put in, but keep in mind that at least 80% of your sales are always going to come from the Big Three: Soda, candy, popcorn.

I would make sure to factor in things like prep time, storage, how long stuff lasts, etc. to your decision, along with profit margin of course.

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

I remember a seminar some time ago where the presenter said, "You can put in whatever food items you want to put in, but keep in mind that at least 80% of your sales are always going to come from the Big Three: Soda, candy, popcorn.

I would make sure to factor in things like prep time, storage, how long stuff lasts, etc. to your decision, along with profit margin of course.

That's very true Mike... The guy that runs the theater in Red Lodge even has three types of fresh popcorn there. Regular, Cheesy and Caramel. Caramel corn out sold the other two by a pretty decent margin.

[John Eickhof]

when I was at the new cinema 13 in twin falls, we had a beer and wine bar as well as lighter food (burgers, wraps, salads) at the cinema in twin, it was a definite pain! aside from idaho's screwy liquor laws (had to have designated wet auditoriums) and foodservice certs and licensing, we had to have an approved kitchen then to top it off the soilage was horrendous, after 1 year it was dropped because it actually lost money! although the beer sales were pretty brisk but we had to have the bar contained inside each auditorium we decided to serve n plus allow 21+ only! now for popcorn, the roxy in shelby mt when larry flesch owned served 10 or 12 varieties of corn!, and lots of it! larry had a cretors stadium popper, and a cretors caramel / flavor popper, he had everything from white corn to strawberry, carmel, cheese and kettle corn (long before it became popular) as well as others, he said he got the idea years before after visiting a karmelkorn shop in los angeles, he had three theatres in his circuit and each one had a custom 10 bin heated displat in the snack bar, he popped various flavors daily so no theatre had corn more than 48 hoiurs old! a lot of work but he told me it made more money than sodas and candy combined!

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

when I was at the new cinema 13 in twin falls, we had a beer and wine bar as well as lighter food (burgers, wraps, salads) at the cinema in twin, it was a definite pain! aside from idaho's screwy liquor laws (had to have designated wet auditoriums) and foodservice certs and licensing, we had to have an approved kitchen then to top it off the soilage was horrendous, after 1 year it was dropped because it actually lost money! although the beer sales were pretty brisk but we had to have the bar contained inside each auditorium we decided to serve n plus allow 21+ only! now for popcorn, the roxy in shelby mt when larry flesch owned served 10 or 12 varieties of corn!, and lots of it! larry had a cretors stadium popper, and a cretors caramel / flavor popper, he had everything from white corn to strawberry, carmel, cheese and kettle corn (long before it became popular) as well as others, he said he got the idea years before after visiting a karmelkorn shop in los angeles, he had three theatres in his circuit and each one had a custom 10 bin heated displat in the snack bar, he popped various flavors daily so no theatre had corn more than 48 hoiurs old! a lot of work but he told me it made more money than sodas and candy combined!

That's nuts having that many flavors. If it's going to be fresh you have to pop it every day. And to do that many you need an entire popper crew on dfuty every night. Caramel and chocolate are the two favorites anyway.

[John Eickhof]

He always had the fresh popped odor cause he popped regular yellow corn nightly, treated or flavored corn stays crisp for days, (especially in a warmer) you must remembe the flavoring covers the kernals especially cheese and caramel. he would go through 150-200 lbs of raw corn a week, not bad for three small towns of less then 2000 total population! Larry Roper in Twin only popped once a week and distributed the popped corn to his 12 screen, 46 screen single and the drive-ins. Granted, at the 13 I would order a full pallet of corn every week! (3,500 lbs) We had two cretors 32oz poppers burnin all night long!

[William Kucharski]

The guy who owns the pool hall/arcade here put what he calls a "diner" into a corner of his building a few years ago. He has one of those super-duper microwaves and buys frozen pizza slices, french fries, burgers, chicken strips, hot dogs, cheese bites and you-name-it from the same wholesaler that I buy my popcorn supplies from.

He told me once that it's all frozen and he just has to throw it into the microwave for whatever time it says on the package, so I guess it's pretty much foolproof and doesn't require much staff training.

AMC and 7-Eleven also use the TurboChef ovens, and they work as specified - they use a combination of microwave and radiant cooking, and frankly the pizzas that come out of them taste wonderful.

The local AMCs all use the same trick of dumping the popcorn still in the popper at the end of the night into a big bag and pouring it into the poppers in the morning, then pop a fresh batch atop it and mix.

[Gordon McLeod]

Most cry rooms were located beside the projection room be careful that you are not introducing oil vapor to be sucked into the booth equipment

[Mark Lane]

Sorry for not getting back to this thread sooner.. Thanks to all those who have helped by adding information.
We are looking to do the food expansion in stages. We need to learn what we don't know before creating more problems for ourselves.

The theater was opened in 1947 and it was never designed with concessions being as important as they are today. The crying room is above the concession stand and we would use a dumb waiter to deliver orders to the concession stand. We do a lot of to-go orders and hope to add to that with more food offerings. I think we can do better than the local bars and gas stations (we have no fast food here). I don't want to roll out expanded food service to a world of troubles and leave the community with a bad experience.
Thank you everyone for giving us food for thought.

[Gavra Meads]

What do you mean by an extensive food menu? With so many recipe books and cooking websites, you can build your own menu. The idea is you have to find the niche specific to you that sets apart from the competition. The most profitable establishments are niche restaurants, which are high in demand and low on competition. I suggest opening a dessert restaurant with exclusive positions on the menu:
1. strawberry poke cake
2. pumpink pie
3. red velvet cheesecake bites
4. Oreo brownies
5. Keto chocolate cake

[Armand Daiguillon]

Sorry for not getting back to this thread sooner.. Thanks to all those who have helped by adding information.
We are looking to do the food expansion in stages. We need to learn what we don't know before creating more problems for ourselves.

The theater was opened in 1947 and it was never designed with concessions being as important as they are today. The crying room is above the concession stand and we would use a dumb waiter to deliver orders to the concession stand. We do a lot of to-go orders and hope to add to that with more food offerings. I think we can do better than the local bars and gas stations (we have no fast food here). I don't want to roll out expanded food service to a world of troubles and leave the community with a bad experience.
Thank you everyone for giving us food for thought.

We have two turbochefs at our theater - they are great. We can serve a full menu because of it.

[Marcel Birgelen]

I have quite a few questions left regarding offering food service in a pre-existing theater. While we all know theaters that offer ongoing food service, they usually also have the necessairy infrastructure and employees, including cooks and waiters. You need to sell a considerable amount of food and drinks to offset their paychecks alone.

Will you offer food service during the show?
Do you have tables or any other provision for people to put their food on or will it just be finger food?
Have you considered were people leave their trash?

[Phil Ranucci]

Careful with that dumbwaiter. In Cali we had one from the ticket office to the booth for film cans.
Got a notice that it was considered an elevator and would have to be inspected every 2 years.
As film was on the way out, we removed it.