BoxOffice® Pro - May 2012

SNACK TIME
OriginatAir popper. How is Cretors addressing
that concern?
Andrew: The theater industry has seen at least
a couple of instances where you see this push
for healthier snacks at concession stands, but
it never sticks. And some of these guys have
warehouses of fruit cups that are about to go
out of date because they get the mandate from
corporate that says, “We must offer this,” and
they offer it, and people aren’t buying it. So
I think the moviegoing public recognize that
it’s a treat. If you eat a bucket of popcorn a
day, is it going to be good for you? It depends
on a lot of things. But I think most people go
to the movie theaters looking for something
that tastes good, something that they know
isn’t as healthy as a plate of broccoli. But the
OriginatAir at least gives the theaters the option
that they can offer to their customers a
healthier snack.
So you’re finding that theaters are buying
the OriginatAir as an option, not as a
replacement for their current equipment.
Andrew: Right.
Environmentally friendly technology is also
trending at the moment. Tell us about your
“Green Your Machine” (GYM) refurbishment
program.
Andrew: Part of what makes or has made
our machines a better mousetrap is just that
they hold up so well. Through the late ’90s,
a lot of theater chains were growing and we
were putting out loads and loads of machines.
Here we are 15, 20 years down the road, and
a lot of those machines are still in service but
needing some rework. So we had started a
program where we would estimate the cost to
repair a machine—and a lot of times, we can
do the estimate remotely if they send detailed
pictures—and then if they wanted to move
forward, they would send it in, and we would
conduct the refurbishment. Really what we’re
doing is tearing the whole machine down and
repairing certain doors and things if they’re
dinged up but still functioned. But they just
mainly wanted the popper case to look better,
get the kettle all cleaned up, and obviously we
would replace worn electrical items. Just as a
matter of course, we’d replace the thermostats
because as a safety device, it’s important to
make sure those are functioning properly. So
we’ll do that for about half the price of a new
machine. We had an interesting story where
the head of a theater chain saw one of our
refurbished machines in his warehouse and
went to question the purchasing people saying
he didn’t authorize the purchase of new equipment—and
that’s when he learned that it was
actually one of our factory-refurbished units.
That, to us, is a great compliment at the level
of work that we do for our refurbishment.
But ironically, that refurbishment program
… in 1893 when my
great-grandfather took
a little popcorn machine
to the Columbia
Exposition, this was
one of the first instances
of a mobile concession
stand. Until then,
you had street vendors
that sold waffles or
sold ice cream. They all
sold one thing, but the
Cretors popcorn wagon
sold peanuts and popcorn
and a couple of
other little things that
they could put in there.
This was a mobile concession
stand, and this
was how our birthday
party—if you want to
call it that—morphed
into the concession
industry.
got stopped short when we introduced our
Mach 5 popcorn machine because the Mach 5
machine was the next generation to our Diplomat,
which was the mainstay movie theater
machine for many, many years.
Charlie: Yeah, I had done all the design work
into it, and if it ain’t broke don’t fix it. But the
reality is it needed breaking, so we started out
with a brand-new clean piece of paper. The
Mach 5 was a true clean-sheet-of-paper job
and brought the cost down, maintained all
of the functions of the reliability of strength
in the Diplomat, but it brought us into a
price competition situation, which is what we
needed to do.
Andrew: But like I said, with the refurbishment
program you could get your machine refurbished
for about half the price. So somebody
with the old Diplomat, they’re looking at the
refurbishment price and then they’re looking at
the price of a brand-new Mach 5, and it wasn’t
that much more. Our customers were actually
upselling themselves to the Mach 5, and so we
scaled back the refurbishment, which is the
most green you can get. I mean, you’re recycling
a whole machine without smashing it into a box
and melting it down.
Are you seeing other ways that theaters
can “green” their operations?
Andrew: Yeah—I’ve talked to theater operators
who are looking at everything right down to
electrical consumption, so we’re being challenged
to find more efficient electrical means of
popping corn.
Charlie: Shelly Olesen and I were out visiting
customers, and we walked into a theater and
realized that the popper kettle was turned on.
And the manager said, “Oh, yeah, when we
walk in the door, we turn the kettle on.” That’s
the first thing they do in the morning, and
the last thing they do in the evening is turn it
off. Well, that’s five kilowatts. That’s a lot of
electricity. And in addition to that, which the
theater manager wasn’t aware of, that in an
effort to control costs, the engineering departments
within the theater chain had ordered an
interlock in the machine so that the exhaust
fan above the hood didn’t go on until the
kettle was on. So there’s this guy, turning on
the kettle, using electricity to keep the kettle
hot all day long and running the exhaust fan
all day whether he needs it or not. That kind
of thought process led to the development of
something we call “One Pop,” so that when the
operators pop the corn in the kettle, when the
kettle’s done, it turns itself off—and of course
this in turn would turn off the exhaust fans
and anything else that is interlocked with the
machines.
Andrew: And that’s a patented feature that’s
available on all of our machines, everything
from the home-size machine. For the fancy
home theater they put a lot of money into, this
62 BOXOFFICE PRO MAY 2012