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Topic: New to this forum thinking of purchasing a Cinema Cafe. Your thoughts
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Nathan Guerriero
Film Handler
Posts: 43
From: Chicago, IL, USA
Registered: Apr 2002
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posted 05-08-2002 09:31 PM
I'm not familiar with the film market in Ft Lauderdale, but regardless of location, a Cinema Grill or whatever is an extremely ambitious undertaking, if only for the fact that you will be essentially running both a movie theatre and a restuarant. In addition to the business aspects of theatre operations, you'll have to deal with the normal restaurant headaches: health dept., extensive food preparation, supply and inventory management, staffing, alcohol control, and so on. I won't immediately say that this is a bad idea, but there is certainly a lot that could go very wrong. What are the details of this establishment, and what sort of background do you have to operate it?
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Brad Miller
Administrator
Posts: 17775
From: Plano, TX (36.2 miles NW of Rockwall)
Registered: May 99
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posted 05-09-2002 04:36 AM
The local Studio Movie Grills do VERY good business. They have a menu along the lines of your local Chili's with some extras as well as traditional concession items. Waiters (dressed in all black) serve you directly just like at a sit down restaurant. After they take your order, they give you a little drink coaster that has a small red led in it. When you want service, you flip it on and a server comes over to get you what you need. (Great should there be a projection problem, but that is quite rare for them.) If you keep your coaster light off, no one bothers you.I don't have any official numbers, but they do very well and commonly sell out their auditoriums. In addition to running movies, they have a special events department that does specialized theater rentals, which work very well for everything from meetings to birthday parties. They are equipped with high end video projection and can put on any type of seminar AV need you might need. Plus, they have Dolby Digital in all auditoriums for their film presentations. It might be worth your time to take a trip to Dallas just to visit them and see how the operation works. There are pictures in the warehouse here. Look for Studio Movie Grill Plano and Granada Movie Grill Prestonwood. The Granada Movie Grill has since been taken back over by the Studio guys and have done a LOT of upgrades to the projection booth since those pictures were taken. I'll get some updated pictures of the place at some point.
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Gerard S. Cohen
Jedi Master Film Handler
Posts: 975
From: Forest Hills, NY, USA
Registered: Sep 2001
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posted 05-09-2002 05:08 PM
Seems to me food service and film exhibition are both high competition, high risk enterprizes, but need not be "fraught with imminant peril." Combining them might either augument or minimize risk.Your key personnel would be your chef, your projectionist and your film booker. Customers, once attracted by curiosity, would need a fine dining experience, a fine menu of films, and an excellent projected presentation. Since you have experience in running a restaurant, but none in motion pictures, I would strongly recommend hiring a professional projectionist who would maintain and upgrade projection equipment, assemble custom-tailored film programs, and project them with the highest standards of image and sound showmanship. As you would not try penny-pinching the kitchen staff, entrusting food prep to a low-wage hash-slinger instead of a qualified, imaginative chef, so would you not want to entrust your
valuable presentations and equipment to cheap unqualified labor. For as a poor chef could ruin the menu and drive away or sicken your patrons, so too could a non-professional projectionist ruin films, cause breakdowns of expensive machinery, and have patrons demanding their money back before they leave, never to return. Though you could in time learn the projectionist vocation, you would not want to be confined to the booth any more than you would want to be chained to the oven when you are needed to supervise the entire operation.
(I recommend you read the thread "The Death of Film" in the Film-Handler's Forum.) Although Florida is a so-called "right to work" [read: anti-union]
state, the I.A.T.S.E. has offices and business agents throughout the state who could supply trained, experienced vocational projectionists worth their higher wages. The Union would undertake responsibility for providing qualified replacements in case of vacations, sickness or emergencies, ensuring that the show will always go on. Here's a list of secretaries and business agents throughout Florida:
http://www.iatse.lm.com/fldir.html
Best wishes to you, whatever you decide.
Gerard
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