Conventions

[Mike Blakesley]

One of the vendors of the collectible popcorn buckets gave us a stack of eight Beetlejuice Beetlejuice buckets for a sample. They're plastic and the same size as our 170 ounce corn, which we sell for $9.75. We set those buckets on the counter last night, I hand wrote a sign that said "Jumbo Popcorn with Souvenir Bucket - $14.50." We sold out of them before the movie started and had a couple of kids whining to their parents because they didn't get one.

So guess who is planning to order some fancy buckets for the next big blockbuster?

When our theatre was first built, there was already a silent theater in town, but it was too small, and the owners decided to build a larger "talking" theatre because they "had to follow the trend of the times." So we're just keeping to the tradition!

[Ryan Gallagher]

Give away popcorn?

Good lord.

I do a free admission show most years for Santa Claus Day. The first year I had the theatre and did this I thought I would be nice and give away a free popcorn as well.

There was so much popcorn on the floor after the show that I brought my snow shovel in to clean it up. People took a free popcorn because it was free but they didn't really want it so it ended up on the floor. Inches deep.

Lesson learned there. Don't do free popcorn.

Haha, yup. That is what it looks like. The costs are covered by the studio for premieres... but it requires leaf blowers to clean up.

If they sell they sell. I'm just saying don't give em to everyone because it's part of the experience. lol

[Mike Blakesley]

We learned the 'free popcorn' lesson about 2 years into my owning the business. A local civic organization wanted to throw a free matinee with "unlimited free popcorn." Since they were willing to pay for each container used, we said "Sure!" We sold more popcorn that day than ever, but it took twice as long as usual to clean up and was the biggest mess I ever saw. We said "Never again" and have stuck to it.

If a customer wants to do a "free for all" thing, we will use bottles of water and premade bags of corn, but it's always a "one to a customer" situation and we put them on the counter to be picked up. We don't just pass them out as they come in. That way poeple who don't want one don't get one.

[Mike Blakesley]

Deluxe had a booth at our convention. They had the Q-NAP server on display. But the one they had there had a cool Deluxe E delivery logo on it, which ours does not have. So I jokingly said hey, I want one of those logos for our server. The rep (Anne) said, we can probably send you one! I thought maybe she was kidding, but it arrived in the mail today.