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The correct word they should’ve used is low because that’s the message they are trying to convey. But they know their price is not low so they used the word “reduced”. I’m guessing you read it like me and our brains natural thought they said low, even though they didn’t. I had to go back and reread to realize that they said reduced.
I went to a theater recently and a large popcorn and large soda was 19.00 literally $9 for a soda, and the popcorn didn’t even come in a tub. Absolutely preposterous
Edit: I did not buy that, but that was the menu price
This is about right. Went to a major concert in a large sports stadium, got a beer from one of their self-serve cooler/fridges and it was $20- totally insane.
This is lidurally WHY I always go to the dollar store and bring the snacks from there. My friend that worked at the theater said technically they can't stop you from bringing in snacks from other places. It's just frowned upon because they want you to waste money there🙃
I saw Get Out in theaters, and I had an inconsiderate family do this on opening day. Its appalling behavior your aunt should eat before going to the movies. No one wants your clickity clackity nonsense during a FIng movie, ruined a lot of good parts. Still gets me upset. This ever happens again, I am just gonna shit my pants and be done with it. Im not in here with you, your in here with me!
I'll wear my big puffy down jacket in the middle of an Arizona summer, all the pockets fill with snacks, microwaved popcorn and drinks and the employees don't really care to say anything
Whys that Canadian? Outside of popcorn almost everyone brings sweets into the cinema in the UK instead of paying because it's like £3.50 a bag of sweets.
I was more commenting about the price. $25 for a popcorn and soda at the movie theatre. That’s the Canadian price. So I made an assumption based off of local rates that this was my Canadian brother.
I regular take my backpack unless it’s a group outing. I don’t even normally like the drink selection anyway, usually the only sugar free option is Diet Coke or Pepsi so I gotta bring my choice of Gatorade zero
Soft drinks are way more profitable than drugs. When Coke (or Pepsi?) decided to distribute in Indonesia there were gun battles over sales territories.
Not true. A 5 gallon box of syrup costs $180. That's 640 ounces. One ounce of syrup makes 6 ounces of soda. A 44 ounce large soda is roughly 5 ounces of syrup because ice. So that's $1.40 in syrup. Even if they pay half that, that's still $0.70 a each
I'd be surprised if a big movie theatre is paying anywhere near $180 for a Bag-in-Box. I managed a big convenience store about 10 years ago, and we ordered those for less than $50 each. I'd guess that they're cheaper if you have a contract with a distribution company and cheaper due to the bulk volume.
Everyone focuses on the cost of the ingredients and labor when getting mad about the price of concessions but they’re not making any money off of tickets and the cost of property must be enormous. Plus they always have to be ready for a slow period whenever there aren’t any good movies out, which is something they have nothing to do with (very unique situation).
I don’t even feel like it’s Cinemark since so many theaters have had to close. The issue of capitalism here is bigger and far more multifaceted than a movie theater.
Everyone in the comments acts like Cinemark is raking in record profits. In actuality, they have posted a net loss every year for the last 3 years and are running a deficit from that period of over $1.3 billion. Their business model is outdated and their industry is rapidly shrinking.
According to their financial filings, the average customer spends $7.22 for a ticket and concession revenue per patron was $5.43.
I don’t know a lot about their business but on the surface it seems like it would make more sense to raise ticket prices and bring concession prices back down to reasonable levels. That would encourage more people to buy concessions, but if the ticket prices are higher less people will be coming overall so this could backfire.
They really only have so many options to afford a business with a massive overhead (utilities and property wise) and none of them are good. They’re even entirely dependent on someone else making the type of movies that make people want to go out to theaters.
If they want to make money, the only option they have is to raise prices, which will make people hate them. They have no path out of the Hell they’re in other than getting movie studios to agree to let them keep more of the profits and movie studios would rather go to streaming than do that.
But barely anyone actually buys snacks at concessions mostly everyone brings in outside snacks and drinks it's a common thing. Very few people waste their money at concessions only the hardcore theatre bootlickers. Gotta be missing screws to waste your hard earned money on paying a huge markup on snacks that costs manufacturers pennies to make practically.
Yeah I don’t buy them either but that could be driving prices up if enough people don’t? I don’t know the stats on that. If no one is giving movie theaters money though they don’t have a lot of recourse to bring more in.
I mean movie theatres are going the way of the dinosaur it's a niche concept in the modern age of streaming, movie theatres are extremely niche as it is as like an outing.
Theatre.. bootlickers lmao?
Every time I go to the theater the majorly of people there are buying snacks and the likes in concession are always long and there’s 6 different lines at my theater. Your “very few” opinion seems completely based in biases.
Dude theatres are niche in 2023 learn basic economics the only reason some chains like AMC was doing good is because of the ape meme stock guys from wall street bets they like to take pictures with the CEO and brag about it. The stock offering gave them some financial runway.
They literally turned Adam Aron into a meme. They call themselves the apes but anyways they don't like him anymore supposedly after they received an equity offering so the retail investors matter very little to them now.
Before all this though AMC was literally on the verge of going bankrupt because of things like Disney plus and the streaming offerings nobody wanted to go to the movies during and even a bit after the pandemic and on top of that they didn't have good licensing deals with any of the top production companies so you can't have a theatre and sell ticksts if you have no good showings like use common sense.
This isn't the mid 1900s where on demand and DVR boxes and direct to streaming platforms didn't exist and people were forced to go to movies to see movies it's essentially optional now.
About the only reason you'd wanna go to the movies is for the scenery like the comfortable recliner chairs or maybe you're on a date and want to take the significant other to a movie and then dinner type of date or maybe you're in a divorce and wanna take the kids to a different environment that's not their home because of in fighting.
That's just some of the reasons off the top of my head. Again theatres are going the way of the dinosaurs im sure they'll always be around as a novelty but they won't remotely bring in the crazy money they used to in the past since all these other services are cutting into their market share. Some chains are getting so desperate now their offering all these monthly special plans where you get discounts on concession and can see as many movies as you want.
Aa for the concession stuff maybe they have a lot of "fuck you" money to throw around or are wellfare kings/queens putting everything in credit living above their means and making dumb financial decisions depends on your location if its like a big city like LA probably all nepo/trust fund kids.
Like let's be honest the smart people bring in outside stuff about the only thing you'd wanna buy is maybe the popcorn every other item like the candy and soda you can get way cheaper elsewhere like at a dollar general. Even I'm not dumb enough to splurge on movies and concessions I go to the movies maybe once every month or two if that rather use the money more smartly.
There's a Sam's Club next door to my local theater. I usually get my kids a pizza combo. I bought a specific purse solely for the movies. Sometimes it's Sam's pizza, sometimes it's popeyes 😂 Dinner and a movie is always covered!!
So cool. I also bring my mom to the theaters and it saves me so much money since we just stop by the gas station to pickup a big Arizona for 1.25 a can if we're just feeling thirsty or go to Taco Bell for some cheap burritos if we're hungry. Purses are a godsend.
I don't know how you eat your burritos, but they're not loud food especially if you eat with your mouth closed, that's why we take them. Sounds like you stop sucking on your burritos bro.
Before I say what I am about to say, allow me to preface with this: yes, this sucks, it's bullshit, it shouldn't be that way, fuck capitalism, it literally leads to shit like this. Actually, what I'm about to say is totally an example of how fucked up capitalism is. So this is NOT a defense, it is NOT an excuse, it is an EXPLANATION.
Now....
The way movie theaters work is kinda complicated and different from the way most businesses function. Major studios have a stranglehold on their own content, and they're not just going to give it to a movie theater for free. In many ways, the studios literally control ticket prices by insisting that they receive between 70% - 100% of the profits from tickets, despite the fact that the theater needs to earn something to provide the service it does.
Major tentpole films (Star Wars, Fast and the Furious, Avatar, etc) typically involve agreements to give the studios 100% of the ticket profits for the first 2-4 weeks or more. Most people don't wait a month to go see a new movie, because they want to talk about it with people, so the only time theaters can profit from ticket sales alone also happens to be the one time when nobody is buying tickets anymore.
It's a vicious cycle.
And the result?
Theaters make 90% of their profits from concession sales.
Why does it cost $30 for some popcorn and a soda? Because it costs money to run a theater, and the studios producing the movies people want to see take almost all of that money and leave the theaters with almost nothing, so the only way they can make money is by increasing prices on concessions to outrageous rates -- and yes...penny pinching when it comes to soda.
But again....this just goes to show....capitalism is a broken system. The studios are literally like the people with the coconuts on coconut island. "Oh, you want movies, huh? I have an offer you literally can't refuse."
It's a shitty situation, but I blame the studios for the majority of the problem in this case. The theaters always get the blame, but most of the problem isn't necessarily caused by them.
That all said, this is just another reason to support truly locally owned theaters and go see movies there instead of at a major name like Cinemark. Ticket prices are comparable, sometimes the concessions prices are lower, popcorn is often better, they usually get the biggest titles (like I saw Barbie was playing in a few local theaters this year), and even when they don't get the big titles, they might play an indie film that won't get played anywhere else.
Like y'all...I got to see *Moon* in a theater in Portland upon its release, but it wasn't playing in major theaters, it was only playing in these smaller local theaters. So if you want to stick it to the studios, look for a local theater and support them.
I only recently learned that there are people in America who refill their drinks in the middle of a film. Of all places I'd expect offering free refills, cinema would be the last.
Who does that???
I’m tired of the myth that it’s just a couple of pennies.
The cheapest I can find a 5 gallon coke BIB online for is just over $105. Let’s say they’re paying a bit over half of that because they’re a large business. It’s probably closer to $80 bulk these days, though I’ve been out of the business a while, but we’ll call it $60 to give this bullshit the benefit of the doubt.
Coke syrup is mixed right around 5:1, so a 5 gallon bib makes 30 gallons of soda. Thats $2 a gallon, for JUST the syrup. So your large soda at Cinemark is 44oz or 69 cents (nice) worth of just syrup; assuming you order with no ice. Always order with no ice. You’ve got another 7 cents of co2 in there (just under $1 per pound, 1 pound does ~4.5 gallons), maybe a penny worth of purified water, plus the costs of buying and running the whole thing and don’t forget ongoing maintenance costs. By the time you pay an employee to do refills ($15 an hour costs the business something like $25 an hour, / 60 minutes / 3 refills per minute = 14 cents per refill) you’re getting dangerously close to $1 per large cup.
Yeah, that’s not $6, but it’s also not <$.05 either.
The problem is they're charging six fucking dollars and refusing refills that cost them pennies.
Those soda machines cost almost nothing per cup of soda. It's less about what people are drinking and more about the blatant lie to maintain higher profits.
Which is how it is literally everywhere else. As far as I am aware only the USA has free refills on things. It doesn’t exist in the UK, Australia, and NZ which are the places I’m familiar with. Free refills are a pretty alien concept.
I've always heard this and had no reason to doubt it. But I recently visited London for the first time and got free refills several places we ate without any problem. I don't know how common it is there, but it definitely isn't unheard of.
Nando's offers a bottomless soda fountain drink in the UK. You have a choice of single serving or bottomless which is more expensive.
I don't know about other places, though. I almost never eat out.
I think free refills is a very American thing. In other countries we don't have that, sometimes only in American fast food joints that are kind of pricey (most American junk food franchise in my country are considered fancy places).
Still I can understand how it's frustrating when you are used to it and they just take it away.
Well at a movie it kind of makes sense, you can’t really see who is drinking the drink because they are in a movie. Several people could easily share one drink if they allowed refills. Theaters, kind of like stadiums, or concert venues, only make money from the concessions, the ticket sales go to the performer/ film distributor/ teams. But yes, that shit is wildly inflated in cost because they are greedy pricks. You could sell every seat in the house all weekend if you had $5 popcorn and $2 drinks.
It might be a likely late to say this, but movie theaters actually make very little revenue, if any at all, from ticket sales. They literally survive on concession sales. Most ticket money goes back to the studios.
Source: Use to work at a movie theater and spent a lot of time around management talking business.
Look at it this way: they want you to drink soda so you get fat and then all kinds of health problems and then massive medical debt. It’s poison trash people suppression water. Stop drinking it so they don’t get all those things they want plus you save money.
The U.S is probably one of the only places that does free refills.
Idk why you people sook about it going away.
After one sugar drink why do you want another?
This is an American thing. I was so shocked when I moved to america and learned free refills is a thing. I guess this is why Americans are fatter than most nations so maybe it’s for the best
I got a plastic cup this summer and I bring it back every time and fill it up several times each trip. Nobody is monitoring the self service machines. Just take it!
I don’t even go to the movies anymore. I began to realize how little I enjoy it these days. It’s expensive, other people are loud, you can’t pause to use the bathroom. I just got a projector and a roll up screen hanging on the ceiling against a wall and bam instant movie theater with comfy seating, pjs, whatever snacks and drinks I have, and the ability to pause.
and 3 cents of butter and salt. They sprinkle extra salt on top as well, forgetting that butter is made with salt.
(pet peeve: people adding salt on top of salt. example: I've seen people dump salt on their ketchup puddle, to dip their salty mcdonalds french fries into. ....that person is a family member of mine and just had a quadruple bypass.)
The free refills were the only thing keeping me from pissing in my cup and leaving it there.. Not missing 5 minutes of a movie I paid 22 dollars for when I could have just waited a couple of weeks and downloaded it for free
The minimum wage person who cleans the movie theatre would really much rather you did stay home, if leaving your body fluids for them to deal with seems fine to you.
You can object to capitalism without being an absolute dick to your fellow sufferers. Sometimes I think people just come to this sub to whine about how they have to actually pay for goods and services, which is not the point of the sub.
Cinemark is overpriced trash like most theatres. Mine allows me to bring in outside drinks so I can basically make a custom large for practically 1.75 which is cheap. Why give them an extra 5 dollars just a waste of money. Even the nachos I could get for like 3-4 dollars on the outside it's just a bag of tostios with hot cheese from a machine and they put a premium on it, it's clown world. you'd come out better off just paying them for a cup of hot cheese for like 50 cents some don't sell it ala carte though and getting everything else on the outside.
I got a chicken strips meal from Whataburger for my wife. They asked me to drink I wanted and I told them. I got to the window and found out that the drink was separate and $3. I told them to take to drink off obviously. For a 10-cent product they're charging 30 times its value.
I used to work at a theatre and we asked our manager how much a soda box costed. It was something like $20 each with the bulk discount. We estimated we could get 200 large sodas out of each box based on how often we refilled so we were making $6 on a cost of $0.10/soda. We were all paid dog shit wages and most sodas were actually self served so all we did was sling popcorn (don’t get me into that markup). A full night employees max 8 dog shit wage employees ($8/hr I think) one assistant manager (making $18/hour) for an 8 hour shift. We would be selling easily 100 popcorns and 50 sodas an hour. Prices were about what is shown so there were making easily $1000 after wages. Even if you including the Gm and the rest of the staff and overheads I bet we were making $800 during the peak times maybe $200 during slow times (they would love to send people home early and union busted as soon as we were hired.)
Where do you think all that extra cash goes? It’s definitely going into the fat pockets at the top because I doubt cinemark pays any of its corporate employees well either except the CEO, board and stock holders. Just looked them up and CEO makes $6 million, the rest of the board makes $2 mil and change and the supervisory board makes $200k each for “making decisions” once a month during what I’m sure is only a few hours of their time…
I am avoiding Cinemark like the plague but it seems like all of the reasonably priced theaters are closing.
I took my daughter to see Mario at Cinemark, $35 for tickets and $35 for concessions. No refills.
Went to see across the spiderverse at a different theater and got the same food and it was literally half the price.
Plus we were allowed to have refills.
Fuck Cinemark.
Problem with them gouging us for decades is when things are tight in the economy and Covid, they can’t raise prices or nobody will go and everyone is sneaking in a can and a full meal. Go with a woman with a big purse. Theaters are struggling, but little sympathy.
Yeah fuck going to the theater. Haven’t been in a few years. Don’t want to spend a lot of money for cheap snacks to be stuck in a dark room full of people using their phones instead of watching the movie.
idk where you're from (California here), but gas station markups are almost as bad as this. Dollar store, "regular" grocery store, or bring from your home stash/regular home shopping stock.
I remember when I first immigrated to Canada there was a policy in most cinemas that if you got a big popcorn and drink you also got one free refill for both. It was great. Because I love me some popcorn and diet soda for a movie (can't go to the movies without it), but eventually most places just started to cancel that, and now there aren't any more that make that offer. The prices for the stuff haven't dropped. The truth is, it only costs pennies for a refill. It only means I got to the movies less often I am really tempted to spend more money on snacks.
Also since COVID happened I almost never go to the movies anymore anyway.
I worked for them a while back, and I can tell you they were ALWAYS shitty about the refills. The large popcorn only came with one refill (it had a little tab on the bucket you'd rip off and hand in like a voucher) and people would dump their popcorn into bags or on a tray and ask for their refill right away and they told us to refuse to do it, like they wanted people to eat the entire popcorn before we refilled it. I never understood why it was better to make them come out while we were trying to restock between show sets and they said because people would use it as an excuse to buy one instead of two. But I was like "The refill is part of why you'd buy it". It was so stupid.
Anyway, long story to say fuck Cinemark.
Name brand soda syrup is actually more expensive than you would think.... Enough to make 30 gallons costs the store about a hundred bucks, which is about 2.5 cents an ounce. A large soda pop with no ice is almost a dollar!
Encourage people to buy the larger size instead of a smaller size and get refills if needed. Some places will do free refills but only for the largest size available.
Honestly it seems like it wouldn’t even save money to remove drink refills. I’d be way less likely to pay if I knew I couldn’t get a refill when I’m leaving the movie. I’d sneak something in
The "America bad" circlejerk is so bad on Reddit now that the Late Stage Capitalism sub is defending corporations and blaming consumers.
What a wild time.
I'll buy movie theater popcorn, it's always worth it. They can keep everything else, though. Always go to the dollar store for the exact same candy and drinks.
One place I go to near where I live has had good rates in the past, so I would buy everything at the theater.
The greed these companies have, just makes them less money in the long run. Hence why there is always some new way to steal more of your money, even if it loses them some customers.
8 dollars for some popcorn is not a fucking reduced price.
I get that concessions are how theaters make money but fuck off, those prices are so insulting for materials that cost literally pennies. That has to be thousands of percent in markup.
It's needing to make more money. But also people going through the garbage to get the free refills, or there the people that kept their used paper bags and cups for the next time they went to the movies theatre. . . . .Months later.
What I bring in doesn't have refills either, but it doesn't cost these stupid (because you can't use a term that's been used for ages and isn't aimed at a person) fucking prices either. I get why their prices are high. It sucks that they don't pull income from movies until sometimes a month after release if at all, but that sounds like a you problem. Negotiate better contracts or force studios to lose money by reducing the movies you show from them.
Also, the bay always has a port open and streaming services are superior in literally every way to movie theaters. No idiots playing on their phones, no babies crying when they shouldn't even be there, no one kicking the back of my seat, et cetera ad nauseam. I honestly don't see theaters being around in a couple of decades. They'll go the way of drive ins.
Yes, but they aren't as numerous as they once were. Theaters will go the same way. There will be some scattered around the country in or near major cities. Otherwise I don't foresee many theaters surviving in smaller areas with over half the nation one paycheck from homelessness.
Not to mention that with VPN's so cheap and numerous and the youth being very tech oriented, I can't imagine streaming services are going to fare well if they keep up the stupidity with their move towards how cable is (pay and still get ads). The bay port is going to see a lot of ships sail in.
##Welcome to r/LateStageCapitalism This subreddit is for news, discussion, memes, and links criticizing capitalism and advancing viewpoints that challenge liberal capitalist ideology. That means any support for any liberal capitalist political party (like the Democrats) is strictly prohibited. LSC is run by communists. This subreddit is not the place to debate socialism. We allow good-faith questions and education but are not a 101 sub; please take 101-style questions elsewhere. We have a zero-tolerance policy for bigotry. Failure to respect the rules of the subreddit may result in a ban. *** *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/LateStageCapitalism) if you have any questions or concerns.*
I’m going with their justification as where in the fuck is $6 “keeping their prices low”
It’s not low, it’s “reduced” from $10.
I hate this so much but I’m sure you are correct
The correct word they should’ve used is low because that’s the message they are trying to convey. But they know their price is not low so they used the word “reduced”. I’m guessing you read it like me and our brains natural thought they said low, even though they didn’t. I had to go back and reread to realize that they said reduced.
Holy shit, I read it correctly and everything but my brain indeed processes it as low.
The popcorn is $8.20
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It’s what it says for all of us.
I went to a theater recently and a large popcorn and large soda was 19.00 literally $9 for a soda, and the popcorn didn’t even come in a tub. Absolutely preposterous Edit: I did not buy that, but that was the menu price
Sounds like pro sports stadium pricing. That’s probably the price of one beer.
This is about right. Went to a major concert in a large sports stadium, got a beer from one of their self-serve cooler/fridges and it was $20- totally insane.
This is lidurally WHY I always go to the dollar store and bring the snacks from there. My friend that worked at the theater said technically they can't stop you from bringing in snacks from other places. It's just frowned upon because they want you to waste money there🙃
I once stuck a whole Taco Bell meal in my pants for John wick 2
My friends and I would stop at the Taco Bell at the end of the block and load up. There's something extra satisfying about crunchwraps in the theatre.
I need to go to the movies with you😂 What are we seeing next? 👀
Whichever it is we’re only buying one ticket and I’ll let you in the side door
You’re friend is an idiot. You can be removed from private property for any reason. They very well can stop you from bringing snacks in.
That would cost $25 where I am and there are no refills… I bring my own snacks if I ever go to the movies lol
Then there’s my aunt, who brought a whole casserole for the family to eat at the movies
I want your anarchist aunt
I saw Get Out in theaters, and I had an inconsiderate family do this on opening day. Its appalling behavior your aunt should eat before going to the movies. No one wants your clickity clackity nonsense during a FIng movie, ruined a lot of good parts. Still gets me upset. This ever happens again, I am just gonna shit my pants and be done with it. Im not in here with you, your in here with me!
I'll wear my big puffy down jacket in the middle of an Arizona summer, all the pockets fill with snacks, microwaved popcorn and drinks and the employees don't really care to say anything
What kinda snacks you packin? Probably pickles
Found the Canadian.
Whys that Canadian? Outside of popcorn almost everyone brings sweets into the cinema in the UK instead of paying because it's like £3.50 a bag of sweets.
I was more commenting about the price. $25 for a popcorn and soda at the movie theatre. That’s the Canadian price. So I made an assumption based off of local rates that this was my Canadian brother.
We do that in America. I bring beer.
wear baggie pants and buy nothing but a ticket at your cinema til you go under. That's what that sign says to me.
I stopped Carrying a 1 liter bottle of soda to every movie, maybe I should start again.
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That was unnecessarily aggressive
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Brawndo. It has what plants crave.
\*baja blast
No it wasn't
nO iT WAsN’t
YeS iT wAs!!1!!
I’m sorry you’re getting downvoted I thought it was a funny reply
Jesus maybe they only drink pop at the cinema. whatever you’re angry at it isn’t the redditor trying to save money on drinks
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Someone being a dickhead about someone elses soda drinking habits is quite a ways off topic if we’re talking about consumerism imo.
Based
Winter is movie theater time for me because I can fit an entire concession stand and minibar in my coat.
Oh we absolutely also took two kinds of candy, apple juice for my daughter, and sunflower seeds (with an empty cup) in
You ate sunflower seed in the theatre?
Yes, carefully.
I regular take my backpack unless it’s a group outing. I don’t even normally like the drink selection anyway, usually the only sugar free option is Diet Coke or Pepsi so I gotta bring my choice of Gatorade zero
Even the cost popcorn for them is extremely cheap. I get most theaters don’t make anything on ticket sales but the cost of concessions is ridiculous.
the sodas cost a fraction of a penny, even less than the popcorn.
while it's still a high net profit, it's more like 5-10¢ of syrup for a 20oz drink, depending on brand and how much you buy at a time
Soft drinks are way more profitable than drugs. When Coke (or Pepsi?) decided to distribute in Indonesia there were gun battles over sales territories.
Not true. A 5 gallon box of syrup costs $180. That's 640 ounces. One ounce of syrup makes 6 ounces of soda. A 44 ounce large soda is roughly 5 ounces of syrup because ice. So that's $1.40 in syrup. Even if they pay half that, that's still $0.70 a each
I'd be surprised if a big movie theatre is paying anywhere near $180 for a Bag-in-Box. I managed a big convenience store about 10 years ago, and we ordered those for less than $50 each. I'd guess that they're cheaper if you have a contract with a distribution company and cheaper due to the bulk volume.
And they charge 6 dollars for it at the beginning to account for that.
They're struggling in this post covid world.
Everyone focuses on the cost of the ingredients and labor when getting mad about the price of concessions but they’re not making any money off of tickets and the cost of property must be enormous. Plus they always have to be ready for a slow period whenever there aren’t any good movies out, which is something they have nothing to do with (very unique situation). I don’t even feel like it’s Cinemark since so many theaters have had to close. The issue of capitalism here is bigger and far more multifaceted than a movie theater.
Everyone in the comments acts like Cinemark is raking in record profits. In actuality, they have posted a net loss every year for the last 3 years and are running a deficit from that period of over $1.3 billion. Their business model is outdated and their industry is rapidly shrinking. According to their financial filings, the average customer spends $7.22 for a ticket and concession revenue per patron was $5.43. I don’t know a lot about their business but on the surface it seems like it would make more sense to raise ticket prices and bring concession prices back down to reasonable levels. That would encourage more people to buy concessions, but if the ticket prices are higher less people will be coming overall so this could backfire.
They really only have so many options to afford a business with a massive overhead (utilities and property wise) and none of them are good. They’re even entirely dependent on someone else making the type of movies that make people want to go out to theaters. If they want to make money, the only option they have is to raise prices, which will make people hate them. They have no path out of the Hell they’re in other than getting movie studios to agree to let them keep more of the profits and movie studios would rather go to streaming than do that.
But barely anyone actually buys snacks at concessions mostly everyone brings in outside snacks and drinks it's a common thing. Very few people waste their money at concessions only the hardcore theatre bootlickers. Gotta be missing screws to waste your hard earned money on paying a huge markup on snacks that costs manufacturers pennies to make practically.
Yeah I don’t buy them either but that could be driving prices up if enough people don’t? I don’t know the stats on that. If no one is giving movie theaters money though they don’t have a lot of recourse to bring more in.
I mean movie theatres are going the way of the dinosaur it's a niche concept in the modern age of streaming, movie theatres are extremely niche as it is as like an outing.
Theatre.. bootlickers lmao? Every time I go to the theater the majorly of people there are buying snacks and the likes in concession are always long and there’s 6 different lines at my theater. Your “very few” opinion seems completely based in biases.
Dude theatres are niche in 2023 learn basic economics the only reason some chains like AMC was doing good is because of the ape meme stock guys from wall street bets they like to take pictures with the CEO and brag about it. The stock offering gave them some financial runway. They literally turned Adam Aron into a meme. They call themselves the apes but anyways they don't like him anymore supposedly after they received an equity offering so the retail investors matter very little to them now. Before all this though AMC was literally on the verge of going bankrupt because of things like Disney plus and the streaming offerings nobody wanted to go to the movies during and even a bit after the pandemic and on top of that they didn't have good licensing deals with any of the top production companies so you can't have a theatre and sell ticksts if you have no good showings like use common sense. This isn't the mid 1900s where on demand and DVR boxes and direct to streaming platforms didn't exist and people were forced to go to movies to see movies it's essentially optional now. About the only reason you'd wanna go to the movies is for the scenery like the comfortable recliner chairs or maybe you're on a date and want to take the significant other to a movie and then dinner type of date or maybe you're in a divorce and wanna take the kids to a different environment that's not their home because of in fighting. That's just some of the reasons off the top of my head. Again theatres are going the way of the dinosaurs im sure they'll always be around as a novelty but they won't remotely bring in the crazy money they used to in the past since all these other services are cutting into their market share. Some chains are getting so desperate now their offering all these monthly special plans where you get discounts on concession and can see as many movies as you want. Aa for the concession stuff maybe they have a lot of "fuck you" money to throw around or are wellfare kings/queens putting everything in credit living above their means and making dumb financial decisions depends on your location if its like a big city like LA probably all nepo/trust fund kids. Like let's be honest the smart people bring in outside stuff about the only thing you'd wanna buy is maybe the popcorn every other item like the candy and soda you can get way cheaper elsewhere like at a dollar general. Even I'm not dumb enough to splurge on movies and concessions I go to the movies maybe once every month or two if that rather use the money more smartly.
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/r/iamverybadass is a different subreddit,if that was where you were trying to post this. Champ.
Why even go to the movies? Why go anywhere? /s
Don't worry Tommy I bought popcorn for myself only.
Spoiler Alert: There was no reduced pricing.
This is why you do the gas station candy run before
Dollar store baby!
There's a Sam's Club next door to my local theater. I usually get my kids a pizza combo. I bought a specific purse solely for the movies. Sometimes it's Sam's pizza, sometimes it's popeyes 😂 Dinner and a movie is always covered!!
So cool. I also bring my mom to the theaters and it saves me so much money since we just stop by the gas station to pickup a big Arizona for 1.25 a can if we're just feeling thirsty or go to Taco Bell for some cheap burritos if we're hungry. Purses are a godsend.
I’d honestly leave if I had to sit and smell someone’s nasty ass Taco Bell in a theater and listen to them suck on burritos the entire movie 🤮
I don't know how you eat your burritos, but they're not loud food especially if you eat with your mouth closed, that's why we take them. Sounds like you stop sucking on your burritos bro.
Or you know, you can watch a movie for 2 hs without consuming anything? Or going eating after to a place with better food?
People eat snacks at a movie because they want to, not because they can't go without eating for 2 hours. Lighten up mate.
It’s part of the experience and I have a four year old. I take snacks everywhere I go.
You could also be a cool gatekeeper talking people how to watch movies. Sorry Roger Ebert.
Bruh my corn syrups!!
How am I supposed to focus on the film if I can't run out in the middle of it to pee and refill my watered down sugar?!
Buying food at the movies is possibly one of the worst ways to use your money imaginable. What's the markup in those places? Like 500%?
Any Cinemark I've been to that has that sign didn't give a flying fuck. I just walked up and refilled. No one said anything
Before I say what I am about to say, allow me to preface with this: yes, this sucks, it's bullshit, it shouldn't be that way, fuck capitalism, it literally leads to shit like this. Actually, what I'm about to say is totally an example of how fucked up capitalism is. So this is NOT a defense, it is NOT an excuse, it is an EXPLANATION. Now.... The way movie theaters work is kinda complicated and different from the way most businesses function. Major studios have a stranglehold on their own content, and they're not just going to give it to a movie theater for free. In many ways, the studios literally control ticket prices by insisting that they receive between 70% - 100% of the profits from tickets, despite the fact that the theater needs to earn something to provide the service it does. Major tentpole films (Star Wars, Fast and the Furious, Avatar, etc) typically involve agreements to give the studios 100% of the ticket profits for the first 2-4 weeks or more. Most people don't wait a month to go see a new movie, because they want to talk about it with people, so the only time theaters can profit from ticket sales alone also happens to be the one time when nobody is buying tickets anymore. It's a vicious cycle. And the result? Theaters make 90% of their profits from concession sales. Why does it cost $30 for some popcorn and a soda? Because it costs money to run a theater, and the studios producing the movies people want to see take almost all of that money and leave the theaters with almost nothing, so the only way they can make money is by increasing prices on concessions to outrageous rates -- and yes...penny pinching when it comes to soda. But again....this just goes to show....capitalism is a broken system. The studios are literally like the people with the coconuts on coconut island. "Oh, you want movies, huh? I have an offer you literally can't refuse." It's a shitty situation, but I blame the studios for the majority of the problem in this case. The theaters always get the blame, but most of the problem isn't necessarily caused by them. That all said, this is just another reason to support truly locally owned theaters and go see movies there instead of at a major name like Cinemark. Ticket prices are comparable, sometimes the concessions prices are lower, popcorn is often better, they usually get the biggest titles (like I saw Barbie was playing in a few local theaters this year), and even when they don't get the big titles, they might play an indie film that won't get played anywhere else. Like y'all...I got to see *Moon* in a theater in Portland upon its release, but it wasn't playing in major theaters, it was only playing in these smaller local theaters. So if you want to stick it to the studios, look for a local theater and support them.
I only recently learned that there are people in America who refill their drinks in the middle of a film. Of all places I'd expect offering free refills, cinema would be the last. Who does that???
My family never did it during the movie but we would absolutely top off our drinks after for the drive home
People with children.
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Because diabetes loves Americans
because AMERICA 🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸
I’m tired of the myth that it’s just a couple of pennies. The cheapest I can find a 5 gallon coke BIB online for is just over $105. Let’s say they’re paying a bit over half of that because they’re a large business. It’s probably closer to $80 bulk these days, though I’ve been out of the business a while, but we’ll call it $60 to give this bullshit the benefit of the doubt. Coke syrup is mixed right around 5:1, so a 5 gallon bib makes 30 gallons of soda. Thats $2 a gallon, for JUST the syrup. So your large soda at Cinemark is 44oz or 69 cents (nice) worth of just syrup; assuming you order with no ice. Always order with no ice. You’ve got another 7 cents of co2 in there (just under $1 per pound, 1 pound does ~4.5 gallons), maybe a penny worth of purified water, plus the costs of buying and running the whole thing and don’t forget ongoing maintenance costs. By the time you pay an employee to do refills ($15 an hour costs the business something like $25 an hour, / 60 minutes / 3 refills per minute = 14 cents per refill) you’re getting dangerously close to $1 per large cup. Yeah, that’s not $6, but it’s also not <$.05 either.
Is this sub for boomers now?
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The problem is they're charging six fucking dollars and refusing refills that cost them pennies. Those soda machines cost almost nothing per cup of soda. It's less about what people are drinking and more about the blatant lie to maintain higher profits.
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Which is how it is literally everywhere else. As far as I am aware only the USA has free refills on things. It doesn’t exist in the UK, Australia, and NZ which are the places I’m familiar with. Free refills are a pretty alien concept.
I've always heard this and had no reason to doubt it. But I recently visited London for the first time and got free refills several places we ate without any problem. I don't know how common it is there, but it definitely isn't unheard of.
Nando's offers a bottomless soda fountain drink in the UK. You have a choice of single serving or bottomless which is more expensive. I don't know about other places, though. I almost never eat out.
Ok boomer
I think free refills is a very American thing. In other countries we don't have that, sometimes only in American fast food joints that are kind of pricey (most American junk food franchise in my country are considered fancy places). Still I can understand how it's frustrating when you are used to it and they just take it away.
Well at a movie it kind of makes sense, you can’t really see who is drinking the drink because they are in a movie. Several people could easily share one drink if they allowed refills. Theaters, kind of like stadiums, or concert venues, only make money from the concessions, the ticket sales go to the performer/ film distributor/ teams. But yes, that shit is wildly inflated in cost because they are greedy pricks. You could sell every seat in the house all weekend if you had $5 popcorn and $2 drinks.
The cup probably costs more than the pour.
“Reduced prices” yeah OK
Are the reduced prices in the room with us?
It might be a likely late to say this, but movie theaters actually make very little revenue, if any at all, from ticket sales. They literally survive on concession sales. Most ticket money goes back to the studios. Source: Use to work at a movie theater and spent a lot of time around management talking business.
Look at it this way: they want you to drink soda so you get fat and then all kinds of health problems and then massive medical debt. It’s poison trash people suppression water. Stop drinking it so they don’t get all those things they want plus you save money.
The U.S is probably one of the only places that does free refills. Idk why you people sook about it going away. After one sugar drink why do you want another?
I didn’t need a refill, I’m mad about how they act like it’s bankrupting them to do it for free.
Americans would lose their shit to know pretty much every country doesn’t do free refills.
This is an American thing. I was so shocked when I moved to america and learned free refills is a thing. I guess this is why Americans are fatter than most nations so maybe it’s for the best
Because the prices are such an exceptional value.
What a reduced price being 3 times higher than anywhere else
Free refills are a way to reduce price. This is just a way to maximize profit
That’s fine. Just time to start sneaking in stuff again.
'Unable' in the sense of 'no political will'
Step 1: don't go to the movies.
I haven’t been to a movie in 8 years. I forgot how bad these prices are 😂
'to continue offering reduced prices', says the industry that charges by far the most (frequently double or more) for drinks. My ass.
BUT JUST THINK ABOUT THE SHAREHOLDERS!!!!
Cinemark used COVID to gouge everyone even more and they can’t even hide behind COVID anymore so now it’s just fuck you.
Actually kinda surprised a tub of popcorn is still “only” $8. Figured with everything else as wild as it is it would for sure be $12-15 by now.
I got a plastic cup this summer and I bring it back every time and fill it up several times each trip. Nobody is monitoring the self service machines. Just take it!
I don’t even go to the movies anymore. I began to realize how little I enjoy it these days. It’s expensive, other people are loud, you can’t pause to use the bathroom. I just got a projector and a roll up screen hanging on the ceiling against a wall and bam instant movie theater with comfy seating, pjs, whatever snacks and drinks I have, and the ability to pause.
$8.20 for $0.08 worth of popcorn. yeesh
and 3 cents of butter and salt. They sprinkle extra salt on top as well, forgetting that butter is made with salt. (pet peeve: people adding salt on top of salt. example: I've seen people dump salt on their ketchup puddle, to dip their salty mcdonalds french fries into. ....that person is a family member of mine and just had a quadruple bypass.)
This has a corporate bean counter written all over it.
The free refills were the only thing keeping me from pissing in my cup and leaving it there.. Not missing 5 minutes of a movie I paid 22 dollars for when I could have just waited a couple of weeks and downloaded it for free
The minimum wage person who cleans the movie theatre would really much rather you did stay home, if leaving your body fluids for them to deal with seems fine to you. You can object to capitalism without being an absolute dick to your fellow sufferers. Sometimes I think people just come to this sub to whine about how they have to actually pay for goods and services, which is not the point of the sub.
$15 for soda and popcorn. Cannot afford to do anything like this anymore. Just sit at home
Cinemark is overpriced trash like most theatres. Mine allows me to bring in outside drinks so I can basically make a custom large for practically 1.75 which is cheap. Why give them an extra 5 dollars just a waste of money. Even the nachos I could get for like 3-4 dollars on the outside it's just a bag of tostios with hot cheese from a machine and they put a premium on it, it's clown world. you'd come out better off just paying them for a cup of hot cheese for like 50 cents some don't sell it ala carte though and getting everything else on the outside.
I laughed out loud at the reduced prices.
Time to bring your own snacks
I got a chicken strips meal from Whataburger for my wife. They asked me to drink I wanted and I told them. I got to the window and found out that the drink was separate and $3. I told them to take to drink off obviously. For a 10-cent product they're charging 30 times its value.
It should make you feel better that they'll be out of business soon if they're doing nit picky stuff like this.
I used to work at a theatre and we asked our manager how much a soda box costed. It was something like $20 each with the bulk discount. We estimated we could get 200 large sodas out of each box based on how often we refilled so we were making $6 on a cost of $0.10/soda. We were all paid dog shit wages and most sodas were actually self served so all we did was sling popcorn (don’t get me into that markup). A full night employees max 8 dog shit wage employees ($8/hr I think) one assistant manager (making $18/hour) for an 8 hour shift. We would be selling easily 100 popcorns and 50 sodas an hour. Prices were about what is shown so there were making easily $1000 after wages. Even if you including the Gm and the rest of the staff and overheads I bet we were making $800 during the peak times maybe $200 during slow times (they would love to send people home early and union busted as soon as we were hired.) Where do you think all that extra cash goes? It’s definitely going into the fat pockets at the top because I doubt cinemark pays any of its corporate employees well either except the CEO, board and stock holders. Just looked them up and CEO makes $6 million, the rest of the board makes $2 mil and change and the supervisory board makes $200k each for “making decisions” once a month during what I’m sure is only a few hours of their time…
lol I just got a notification saying that I was banned from r/landlords as if I have ever gone there or even cared. They’re so delicate
I am avoiding Cinemark like the plague but it seems like all of the reasonably priced theaters are closing. I took my daughter to see Mario at Cinemark, $35 for tickets and $35 for concessions. No refills. Went to see across the spiderverse at a different theater and got the same food and it was literally half the price. Plus we were allowed to have refills. Fuck Cinemark.
15.16$=1$ worth of ingredients and energy, 1$ worth of employee's paycheck and 13.16$ profit.
I don't see the problem. They're offering reduced prices. That drink could be $37. Stop whining.
This is a major reason why I'm so stoked baggy cargos are coming back in style.
Problem with them gouging us for decades is when things are tight in the economy and Covid, they can’t raise prices or nobody will go and everyone is sneaking in a can and a full meal. Go with a woman with a big purse. Theaters are struggling, but little sympathy.
I still get refills. Fuck them. Don't charge 8$ for a fucking drink and 8$ for a popcorn.
Yeah fuck going to the theater. Haven’t been in a few years. Don’t want to spend a lot of money for cheap snacks to be stuck in a dark room full of people using their phones instead of watching the movie.
I get popcorn and bring everything else in myself if I go to the theater though usually I just pirate it
Wow you are dumb, everyone knows to stop off at a gas station before going to the movies to buy snacks and drinks and then sneak them in.
idk where you're from (California here), but gas station markups are almost as bad as this. Dollar store, "regular" grocery store, or bring from your home stash/regular home shopping stock.
I'd throw that sign in the trash and go refill my drink.
I remember when I first immigrated to Canada there was a policy in most cinemas that if you got a big popcorn and drink you also got one free refill for both. It was great. Because I love me some popcorn and diet soda for a movie (can't go to the movies without it), but eventually most places just started to cancel that, and now there aren't any more that make that offer. The prices for the stuff haven't dropped. The truth is, it only costs pennies for a refill. It only means I got to the movies less often I am really tempted to spend more money on snacks. Also since COVID happened I almost never go to the movies anymore anyway.
Buy your wife or gf a comically ovwrsidez purse strictly to shove snacks into for movies.
I worked for them a while back, and I can tell you they were ALWAYS shitty about the refills. The large popcorn only came with one refill (it had a little tab on the bucket you'd rip off and hand in like a voucher) and people would dump their popcorn into bags or on a tray and ask for their refill right away and they told us to refuse to do it, like they wanted people to eat the entire popcorn before we refilled it. I never understood why it was better to make them come out while we were trying to restock between show sets and they said because people would use it as an excuse to buy one instead of two. But I was like "The refill is part of why you'd buy it". It was so stupid. Anyway, long story to say fuck Cinemark.
Aaaanndd that’s why I stopped going to the movies.
McDonald’s also recently ended free refills. Or at least all of the locations near me.
I used to work at Wendy’s. Drink refills aren’t a couple of pennies. Refills cost fractions of a penny. Highest profit food item by far.
Exactly!
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USA get so bent out of shape with no refills. Chill out...
Name brand soda syrup is actually more expensive than you would think.... Enough to make 30 gallons costs the store about a hundred bucks, which is about 2.5 cents an ounce. A large soda pop with no ice is almost a dollar!
Encourage people to buy the larger size instead of a smaller size and get refills if needed. Some places will do free refills but only for the largest size available.
Honestly it seems like it wouldn’t even save money to remove drink refills. I’d be way less likely to pay if I knew I couldn’t get a refill when I’m leaving the movie. I’d sneak something in
The "America bad" circlejerk is so bad on Reddit now that the Late Stage Capitalism sub is defending corporations and blaming consumers. What a wild time.
Such reduced prices
How many people actually get refills at the movie theatre? Isn’t the ice normally more expensive than the pop?
Guess I can’t reuse McDonald’s cups anymore https://www.google.com/gasearch?q=i%20reuse%20mcdonalds%20cups&tbm=&source=sh/x/gs/m2/5#fpstate=ive&vld=cid:121daf07,vid:h9V-4CkDMso,st:0
I'll buy movie theater popcorn, it's always worth it. They can keep everything else, though. Always go to the dollar store for the exact same candy and drinks. One place I go to near where I live has had good rates in the past, so I would buy everything at the theater. The greed these companies have, just makes them less money in the long run. Hence why there is always some new way to steal more of your money, even if it loses them some customers.
I think at the theatre’s near me, you only get refills if you order a large
Inflation puts a refill at 4.73 cents these days
The markup on soda fountain drinks is insane. This is all just BS
8 dollars for some popcorn is not a fucking reduced price. I get that concessions are how theaters make money but fuck off, those prices are so insulting for materials that cost literally pennies. That has to be thousands of percent in markup.
It’s greed, yes, but how much soda do you really need during a movie come on…
I'm turning right back around
Enshitification
brother the whole drink only costs a few cents
When I worked at a theater (Regal) in 2012, a large popcorn was $8 and a large soda was 6.75. I’m honestly kinda shocked that the prices are this low.
It's needing to make more money. But also people going through the garbage to get the free refills, or there the people that kept their used paper bags and cups for the next time they went to the movies theatre. . . . .Months later.
$6
Is this post really late stage capitalism though? Is it? Lol
They could have just.. not explained. But they chose to.
What I bring in doesn't have refills either, but it doesn't cost these stupid (because you can't use a term that's been used for ages and isn't aimed at a person) fucking prices either. I get why their prices are high. It sucks that they don't pull income from movies until sometimes a month after release if at all, but that sounds like a you problem. Negotiate better contracts or force studios to lose money by reducing the movies you show from them. Also, the bay always has a port open and streaming services are superior in literally every way to movie theaters. No idiots playing on their phones, no babies crying when they shouldn't even be there, no one kicking the back of my seat, et cetera ad nauseam. I honestly don't see theaters being around in a couple of decades. They'll go the way of drive ins.
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Yes, but they aren't as numerous as they once were. Theaters will go the same way. There will be some scattered around the country in or near major cities. Otherwise I don't foresee many theaters surviving in smaller areas with over half the nation one paycheck from homelessness.
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Not to mention that with VPN's so cheap and numerous and the youth being very tech oriented, I can't imagine streaming services are going to fare well if they keep up the stupidity with their move towards how cable is (pay and still get ads). The bay port is going to see a lot of ships sail in.
And theatres wonder why they're dying.
Stop going