POS System

[Mike Blakesley]

RTS's online fee is per transaction, not per ticket, which I like, and you have the choice of whether to pass it on to the customer or not, and you can set it to whatever amount you want. You can also make it "per ticket" for the customer if you desire. Personally I hate "convenience fees" but there IS a cost to offering this service, so there's no reason not to charge for it. The key is not to go nuts with it. I decided to set our internet fee at $1 per transaction. This way we're paying for the service plus a little extra for the internet cost without looking like we're gouging anyone. So far I've not even had a comment about it, let alone a complaint.

Tons of word of mouth about the upgraded we've been making. If you never change anything, people view your business as stale and excitement drops off.

This is true, people love to see a business investing in itself. We are a very "nostalgic" theater in that it still looks just like it did originally on the outside and in the lobby; the auditorium is where most of the new stuff resides, both in front and behind the scenes. I think we have a good balance between old and new, and we have a good reputation for constantly investing in the business. We didn't promote our transition to digital cinema to preserve that nostalgia angle, but I've always figured that 90% of people don't know or care how the image gets to the screen anyway.

The nicest thing about all the electronics is, it's relatable -- everybody on the planet has occasional trouble with their electronics. So if there is ever a computer or tech problem, all you have to do is say "You know how it is....electronics" and people give a knowing nod. In the film days, if you said "we lost the lower loop due to a bad splice" it would go right over their head.

[Jason Sharp]

RTS's online fee is per transaction, not per ticket

We must be on a different pricing structure because we are not changed a per transaction fee from RTS. We pay for the all-in annual license.

[Mike Blakesley]

Are you using their app? That's what I'm referring to. The app is free upfront, it just costs 25 cents per transaction. There's no fee for "live" ticket sales.

[Mark Lane]

"That said, not having a POS system means you're not really able to sell multi-day advance tickets or have your entire ticket inventory available online in real time."

Use you can...
We have the same system as Frank does. When people want a ticket for an advance showing, we handle it like a gift certificate and write it down on paper with a pen or pencil.
It is a dependable system that work for nearly 70 years. If need by, you can get the tickets custom printed with the theater name and the ticket price.

We also still use the rotary dial phone to call in our numbers. When cell phones aren't working the old landline still works.

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

"That said, not having a POS system means you're not really able to sell multi-day advance tickets or have your entire ticket inventory available online in real time."

Use you can...
We have the same system as Frank does. When people want a ticket for an advance showing, we handle it like a gift certificate and write it down on paper with a pen or pencil.
It is a dependable system that work for nearly 70 years. If need by, you can get the tickets custom printed with the theater name and the ticket price.

We also still use the rotary dial phone to call in our numbers. When cell phones aren't working the old landline still works.

You are lucky there are any Potts lines left! I have tried to get one here in Nashville since I have a collection of antique phones, plus the phone out of my childhood home. I am going to have to build an adapter so they can work on an IP phone system if I want to use them at all..

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

I totally get that. We strive the the same vibe. That's why so much of our place is still as unchanged as possible. Most of the hi-tech stuff is behind the scenes in the projection booth, except our ticket setup, but even there, we still have the traditional window with the half-circle cut out that the money passes through. We don't promote "digital cinema" at all, in fact. There are probably still a few people out there who think we still use film.

Mike... Where's the steam powered popcorn popper?

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

[Harold Hallikainen]

You are lucky there are any Potts lines left! I have tried to get one here in Nashville since I have a collection of antique phones, plus the phone out of my childhood home. I am going to have to build an adapter so they can work on an IP phone system if I want to use them at all..

There are really inexpensive Bluetooth adapters that will drive POTS phones from a cellphone Bluetooth connection. I have not tried one, but they are under $50.

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

There are really inexpensive Bluetooth adapters that will drive POTS phones from a cellphone Bluetooth connection. I have not tried one, but they are under $50.

Thanks Harold, will look into that...

[Jim Cassedy]

Originally posted by Harold Hallikainen View Post

There are really inexpensive Bluetooth adapters that will drive POTS phones from a cellphone Bluetooth connection. I have not tried one, but they are under $50.

MARK:
I've had two of those blue-tooth POTS adapters. They were bought at separate times,
fairly inexpensively, from some no-name Chinese company on e-bay. One worked
very well, but the other one had pretty crappy audio. Externally, they appeared
identical- -it's possible I just got a bad one. I had one hooked up to a candlestick
and the other to an old 3-slot payphone I have. (I've still got the adapters & phones,
but I still haven't gotten all my stuff out of storage from when I moved 2 years ago...)

[Barry Floyd]

I'm the owner of the Stardust Drive-In Theatre in Watertown, Tennessee that Rusty from Sensible Cinema mentioned. Our server crashed immediately after our first transaction as soon as we opened. Left me dead in the water. Called Rusty at Sensible Cinema and he had me up and running literally within 35 minutes. He was able to remotely log in to our network and reconfigure my Dell Workstation desktop in my office into a POS server. I can't say enough good things about Sensible Cinema.

[Rusty Gordon]

I'm the owner of the Stardust Drive-In Theatre in Watertown, Tennessee that Rusty from Sensible Cinema mentioned. Our server crashed immediately after our first transaction as soon as we opened. Left me dead in the water. Called Rusty at Sensible Cinema and he had me up and running literally within 35 minutes. He was able to remotely log in to our network and reconfigure my Dell Workstation desktop in my office into a POS server. I can't say enough good things about Sensible Cinema.

Thanks Barry. So glad to have your theater as my customer.

[Jon Dent]

We use RTS as well. It's a decent system but not very user friendly, especially when you want to customize concession items and create combos. It works but it's a lot of trial and error to get it right.

And their default online ordering page is damn ugly. I've wanted to improve it but I'm clueless when it comes to Javascript and CSS.