Ideas to Improve Cinemas (Movie Theatres)
See Any Movie
Allow patron to see any movie, not necessarily the latest releases. Not all good movies are new. Not all old movies are bad. Imagine a movie theatre where you could not only pick a latest release, but you could also see Casablanca or The Empire Strikes Back or The Godfather. Regardless of what movie is seen, the theatre still charges for it, and so can make a profit. The rights holder can be paid as well, so they profit. Everybody wins. There is no technical reason why this could not happen, only bureaucratic/inertia reasons. One obvious and immediate counter-argument that comes up is that there are millions of movies to choose from and yet a theatre has a small finite number of screens and possible show times, so how do you figure out which subset of all possible movies get shown? Again, straightforward solution to this. Several options. One way is to have staff or 'experts' pick which movies to show. Arguably, this happens already even with new releases: there are more new releases than can all possibly be shown in the current big chain system, and therefore special people have to decide which subset actually get booked. Just extend this idea to the non-new movies. Also, we can let patrons decide. You could have a system where through either a website or a mobile device app (or even on premises at a kiosk), a patron or potential patron can submit a vote as to what movie he'd like to see. To give greater weight to the vote we can require that he commit to buying a ticket if the movie he voted for actually "wins" and is granted a showtime. He could even vote/book a particular screen and particular showing day or time. The theatre management has final say on what actually gets shown and when, and therefore can fine tune to the actual showings to maximize their profits -- or whatever other goals they may have -- and so they are still in control. But at the same time, patrons are empowered and given an exciting new innovation in the kind of service you provide. It is true that some old movies may not get enough votes or pledged ticket buys to justify the cost of doing a showing of it. In that case, the theatre management simply doesn't show that movie/showing. However, if a particular screen/time slot would not otherwise have a profitable use booked to it, then why not let some old movie with only a few ticket buyers use it? It's a bit like empty seats on an airliner: the airliner wants to sell out all seats, so if they can't sell a seat at $180 they'll gladly do it at $150, if not at $150 they'll do it at $75, and so forth. Whatever yields an overall profit maximization on their assets, is a win. They could even fine tune the level of their maintenance services to match the magnitude of tickets sold for a given showing, so if there's a showing of an old film with only 1 patron in some screening room, then perhaps management only assigns 1 employee to go in afterward to clean it, and it would very likely be pretty fast, perhaps under a minute. The details don't matter so much because there are many dials we can turn if we are willing to brainstorm creatively about the things that are possible. This is at the heart of all profitable innovation.
No Minor Showings
I'm sure everyone has had a memory of seeing a movie in a theatre where a baby is crying or kids are being to loud, or teenagers goofing around. Even when a movie is rated R there are still parents/adults who bring kids and babies in with them -- WTF, right? Let's allow some showings (showing = movie + time + theatre room) to be designated as 'no minors allowed'. Either by staff, or, perhaps by majority vote of patrons. Say there's some awesome new movie coming out (or perhaps it's an old one but this theatre has also implemented the See Any Movie idea), I'd gladly pay an extra buck if I could ensure there would be nobody under 18 or perhaps even under 30 in the screen room at the time, just to help maximize the quality of the experience.
Digital Delivery
Deliver films to the theatre purely through electronic or Internet means. Don't physically ship a can of plastic film reels. Ship bits. It's much more efficient and better for the environment. Bits are reuseable. Yes you'll need a fat data pipe, but that's doable, and a long download time is workable because you don't have to do JIT delivery, you could begin downloading the film to a theatre as far ahead of show time as needed.
Personal Seat Covers
One drawback to having a community facility is that due to both the large number of visitors, and the cleanliness standards of some, the shared surfaces get dirty. Seats, especially with cloth outer surfaces. When you sit in a seat to watch a movie you never know who was sitting in it before you. Someone with lice? Someone with a communicable disease? Perhaps they experienced incontinance and traces of it got onto the seat. You have no way of knowing what happened, and if something unhealthy did happen, you have no way of knowing if the staff has cleaned it adequately afterward. And it's extremely unlikely that they did. Maybe sweep off big obvious things like spilled popcorn kernals, or candy wrappers, or a large ketchup stain, but that's about it. If there are "cooties" on that seat, you wont know until it's too late. Now this is not say that all seats, all the time, will have some kind of cooties on them. But it's always smart to look for easy wins in life, and smarter alternatives. If every patron was given (or allowed to buy as an option) some sort of personal seat cover overlay (plastic?), either disposable or washable/reuseable, then by using it they'd gain an added measure of protection, at most, or at least psychological comfort, at least. Either way, it's a simple and trivial innovation to provide. So let's do it.
Sell Caffeine-Free Soda
This idea seems almost lame compared to the others but I'm including it for the sake of completeness. I'm a big fan of caffeine-free diet soda, and so are many others. It's not healthy, of course, and so we should not be drinking it anyway, but regardless it is an opportunity to improve things. To wit, it's always struck me as weird that almost every chain movie theatre I go to will have racks and racks of caffeinated and sugarful drinks and drink dispensers, but never a caffeine-free option. Yes I know there's always water, but that's not the point. The point is that some people want it, they're willing to pay for it, and it can be delivered just as easily as the other drink types. The weird thing is that most of a movie theatres business is nights and afternoons. Those are precisely the times of day when people should not be drinking caffeine, because the later in the day you have caffeine the much more likely you'll have trouble sleeping late that night. So I and others have a policy of not drinking any caffeine from noon onwards. Yet I go to a theatre and can't get my fix. Unless I smuggle in a drink, which is also often against the rules (and leads to another recommendation below).
Allow Outside Food & Drink
People are smuggling stuff in anyway. It's smart for patrons to do so because it's both cheaper, you can bring in healthier stuff, and choose from a much wider variety of stuff, than what's available at the theatre's snack bar. Yes I know than the typical chain uses the snack bar as a profit center, and that's why they charge such high prices for the stuff they give you. But it's extremely high priced compared to alternatives, and most of it is unhealthy. Some people do want to "go out to see a movie", see a latest release, get the little adventure of doing that, have a social experience, and yet at the same time they don't want to spend any more money than they really have to, and to still eat & drink healthily. Why not allow those folks and that segment of the market to do business with you, openly? Yes, if people bring stuff in there might be a greater chance of there being increased cleanup costs on the part of the theatre, and therefore in order to maintain profit levels you'd have to pass that on as increased prices. So be it. Let people choose. There's a way to monetize all parts of the market, and all kinds of movie fans. You can still run a snack bar, even when you allow outside food & drink, because there is still a convenience benefit for folks using your snack bar, plus, some people are lazy, and some people are ignorant/dumb. Therefore, there will still be a demand for that. Another idea you could implement as an alternative to allowing outside food & drink (if you're too afraid of reduced income and/or increased cleaning costs) is to simply (a) lower prices at your snack bar, and/or (b) offer a wider variety of stuff, including healthier items. Regardless of what changes you make, the current standard is a sham, because outside stuff is coming in, you're not getting the profits in those cases, and are incurring the cleaning costs. There is probably room here both to innovate and still achieve a win-win both for the business and the patrons.
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