Fox: What percent of your revenues come from concessions?
Whittenberger: On the sale of a movie ticket, for almost everybody in this room, the distribution company for the extent of the run will take 50 percent. The concession side of the business is where movie theaters make a lot of their profit.
Klasky: That's fair to say, because we're sharing a major portion [of the ticket revenue] with the studio.
Whittenberger: I'd say the per capita of concession sales might range from $1.70 per person in a lot of cases to $2.30. Every person coming through the door will spend at the concession stand an average of that much.
Wyman: Is that true at the Roxie?
Banning: No, we have dollar candy bars, we have dollar drinks. Our per capita is probably 50 cents; it's really low. When we were showing Freeway, we had a much better concession because we were getting younger people in. Our audience is somewhat older and they don't buy as much staff.
Monga: It also depends on the movie. You have a big action movie, people are eating, you know, lots of stuff. You get an art film that's slow, it's coffee and a candy bar.
Banning: Yeah, our Hong Kong films do a lot better.
Meyer: It's very important, no question about it. I think our per capita is about $1.25, maybe a little higher at the Embarcadero, where we have a more efficient stand. The cafe concept increases your revenue, but that does not necessarily increase your profits, because the costs of good product on the cafe side are much higher than the costs of popcorn.
Klasky: It can improve your profits, just not with the same margins; we have a lot of cafes now and they're doing really well.
Meyer: A lot of people buy a ticket, walk in, see a huge crowd at the snack bar, they want a seat, they walk into the auditorium, and a lot of people never come back out.
Banning: In Germany -- American audiences would never approve of this -- they show 15 minutes of trailers, half of them are trailer and the other half are just straight commercials, for the products they sell out at the stand, the ice cream and candy bars. I think one of the worst trends -- it hasn't picked up here yet -- is commercials on screen. United Artists will show them, I don't think AMC --
Whittenberger: No.
Klasky: In fact, I think that most of the western half of the United States is not doing rolling stock for the most part.
Meyer: The slides --
Klasky: That's different, that's before show time. Rolling stock is not something we are at all interested in. There's money, they're offering money.
Monga: The [commercials] look like they're on video.
Klasky: A lot are the same commercials you see on TV.
Monga: At Emery Bay I've seen some commercials that just look horrible. On top of just being commercials, it's on video. It's horrible.
Whittenberger: From our point of view, maybe in spite of what the public thinks, moviegoing is still a hell of a value. You compare it to a stage show, sports event, anything else; you plunk down $7 on a Friday night; it's still a great value.
Meyer: People complain about it because of the fact that it's a low-cost thing, they think it should be lower.
Wyman: That's not chicken feed, to go into a theater, sit in the front row, and the projection's bad.
Monga: But there's a newsreel! [laughter]
