Hot food and ice cream

[Darin Steffl]

Does anyone sell hot food items that would be cooked in a fast oven like Turbochef? We're thinking of adding 4-5 hot food items when we redo our concession stand.

We also want to consider scoop ice cream offerings as something fairly simple instead of a soft serve machine which is way more work. Does anyone sell ice cream?

Our hope is to sell some extra items that people can stop in and buy even if they're not coming to the movie. Something that can help increase profits for when our staff is idle during movies and need something to do.

[Marcel Birgelen]

If you want to sell food to the bypassing traffic, you'd better brand yourself as an ice cream shop, coffee shop, bakery, restaurant and not as a cinema, otherwise I don't see all that many people stopping by to get an ice cream from your concession stand.

I know of a single screen that sold a big part of their lobby to a restaurant. They lost all their street-facing property with the exception of a small passage to the remainder of the once large lobby, way in the back. That move signified the end of that particular place. Visibility is key.

[Mike Blakesley]

Just think of whatever food item you want to sell dumped into one of your seats and then your staff having to clean it up (remember to give it a couple hours to melt and seep into the cracks). That mental picture will help you decide if it's a good idea to carry that item or not. It doesn't matter if you have trays or some other device for people to put food on - you'll be amazed at the ability of kids to stuff almost anything into any crevasse you might have.

Unless you're in an area that has a lot of walk-by traffic AND there is a dearth of other food options in that area, your walk-in traffic is bound to be pretty minimal. The main thing is to cater to your moviegoers, that's your bread and butter.

Also, don't forget to check on food laws in your area. Around here, since we don't store or prepare any cooked foods that need refrigeration, we get out of several licenses and inspections that the restaurants have to deal with. Make sure you're properly licensed for whatever you want to sell.

[John Eickhof]

mike spelled it out well, plus in a lot of areas you will need serve safe certifications for all employees handling food as well as approved / inspected food prep area and 3 bay certified sink or a commercial dishwasher / sanitizer for utensils, etc. you will find the set up along with the operating expense will pretty much rule it out. at the 13 screen i managed in twin falls idaho, we had to have serve safe, and approved kitchen / sanitary facilities just for hot dogs and prepping popcorn! you should casually check into local, county and state laws pertaining to foodservice establishments. overall the mark up of sale is pretty marginal on a 12 hr saturday we would typically sell less than 2 dozen hot dogs (2700 seats) yet we would go through 1500 lbs of popcorn in a seven day period! . good luck

[Darin Steffl]

Good feedback so far. We do not want to have any grill or rollers, just considering a turbochef type oven using frozen foods only. Nothing refrigerated so this may be easier than a kitchen setup.

If hot food doesn't make sense, the ice cream should be pretty easy with 8 tubs of flavors and isn't hard to do.

I'll look into the permits and inspections we may need to see if it's worth doing either of our proposals.

[James Wyrembelski]

Generally not worth it.

Although, Ice cream seems to be the most common addition to theatres in this area. Though, I only know of two locations that offer anything more than something like a pretzel.

[Mike Blakesley]

I know "Dippin' Dots" are pretty popular for a frozen treat. I've always wished we had ice cream sandwiches because I love them myself, but I can just imagine some kid leaving his 1/3-eaten sandwich sitting on the chair arm at the beginning of a movie so...... nope.

[Marcel Birgelen]

Last time I visited an AMC they sold pizza slices, chicken fingers, deep fried mozzarella balls and hot dogs... I don't think that hot dogs will go well in a Turbochef, but there you have your inspiration of what can be done.
I don't know if you can go from frozen to perfect temperature in mere seconds though, most stuff I've seen them put in there is already defrosted.

[Jack Ondracek]

We've sold Dippin Dots for several years. They're very popular but storage is risky. They turn to one large glob pretty quickly if the freezer goes out. That happened to us this year, making about $3k worth of product unusable.

If you do get into this, I recommend you have a spare freezer on-hand and put a temp alarm in your active one.

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

I did work for a large independent that had about about a hundred screens in Utah, Nevada and Idaho and they sold the living daylights out of dippin dots. So much so that the distributer that supplied them to the chain also supplied the freezer to store them in. I don't remember them ever having a freezer failure. Seems like the freezers they had were way colder then your average at home freezer was.

[Mark Lane]

We looked into this and put it on the back burner because it was not the right time and the health department wanted a full menu and how we were going to prepare each item. With rising prices I could not give them a confirmed menu. I had to use the food that I could get at a profitable price. It did not seem like the right time.
We did bring in soft serve ice cream hoping to get some outside to-go orders.. It only made the pre-movie rush busier.
During the pre-movie rush, can your staff add a two minute pizza made in a turbo chef? That is going to be when you get the most orders.. at least to start with. This is a problem I face. Our young staff can process someone’s order in approx. 20 seconds. Our lobby is small and we don’t have the room to have people standing around waiting for their pizza to be cooked.. but once the movie starts, we have all the time in the world. I want to use that free time to make money without tossing a monkey wrench into the movie concession operation.

You might want to work with a local pizzeria so you could sell their pizza by the slice. This would require a warmer but it would give you an idea of customers would be willing to buy a slice without spending a lot of money.

I am thinking a food truck/trailer that can park outside where there is space and be more what to-go customers would expect. I have not worked out all the details on how my operation would work so I am looking forward to seeing how things work out for you.

Today, I was talking to a independent movie producer about premiering their movie at our theater and was looking into bring dinner to be served at the theater for this event. There are a number of challenges to over come, including an upgraded food license, getting the health department involved and training.

[Brad Miller]

With so many new movies releasing direct to streaming, why not offer a deal along these lines..."save your large popcorn bucket and get a half price refill on a different day for takeout". The idea there being to get people to come back to your cinema to get a big bucket of popcorn for their Disney+ and a movie premiere night at home. (As an added bonus, this will theoretically help get people to take their trash out.)

Just remember when you go to refill the bucket to take a big marker and write VOID on the bottom of the bucket so people can't just keep refilling that same bucket for movies at home over and over and over. It should be a "one-time takeout refill" at half price.

[Armand Daiguillon]

Does anyone sell hot food items that would be cooked in a fast oven like Turbochef? We're thinking of adding 4-5 hot food items when we redo our concession stand.

We also want to consider scoop ice cream offerings as something fairly simple instead of a soft serve machine which is way more work. Does anyone sell ice cream?

Our hope is to sell some extra items that people can stop in and buy even if they're not coming to the movie. Something that can help increase profits for when our staff is idle during movies and need something to do.

We have a full menu and use 2 turbochefs. (buy em used or else it may not be worth it) It does require someone to be solely on "kitchen duty" but we find its a nice distinction between us and competitive theaters.
We also serve hard ice cream out of a freezer. We had soft serve initially but found the maintenance to be annoying. Ice cream in a freezer (4x5) doesn't take up room and needs no maintenance. (and doesn't go bad) The only issue is that in our state (Florida) adding on extra food meant we had to be regulated by a different governing body, since we were now considered a "restaurant" not just a "movie theater". That was annoying .... but yes, if you are in a competitive area its always good to offer things the competition doesn't, however .... if not competitive, forcing them to buy higher margin things like popcorn can be better than offering an alternative that's lower margin and staff intensive.

[Randy Stankey]

..."save your large popcorn bucket and get a half price refill on a different day for takeout".

What about tuits?
(Plastic poker chips with your business name stamped on the face.)

White for a small popcorn, red for a medium and blue for a large.

You could use them for eat-in or takeout.

Parents could give them to their kids to ensure that they can have popcorn for their movie but can't spend the money on something else.

[John Eickhof]

randy, you talin 'round tuits' or 'get-a-round tuits'? nyuk nyuk nyuk!