I just think they and their competition should do something different if they want to survive for the next ten years. If they continue operations the same way , I fear that movie theatres will soon go the way of drive In movies and 8 track tape players.
Thankx for reading my rant !
bigmike
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Open letter to Carmike Cinemas :
Mr. Gary Krannacker, VP Operations
Carmike Cinemas, Inc.
Carmike Plaza
1301 First Avenue
Columbus, Georgia 31901
Telephone: (706)576-3400
Dear Mr. Krannacker,
According to what I could find, you are in charge of Operations at Carmike. I would like to relay some observations to you about our continuing experience in your theatres with one caveat. The reason I am writing you is to be certain that Carmike understands the impact in a general sense, of what we experience when visiting your theaters. I have no underlying agenda, other than an improved experience and I am not interested in compensation, contact, coupons, or movie passes. I’m not looking for a job or trying to convince you to let me see movies free. My motives here are about being able to go to your theaters, to be served in a reasonable time and be able to see a movie in pleasant surroundings. My wife and I attend screening at several of your locations on a regular basis. We travel to Dalton GA, Cartersville GA and occasionally see movies in our hometown of Calhoun Ga. I’ve also lived in four other states and have attended screenings in your theaters all over the country. We also enjoy your competition. In general, it is an enjoyable experience, or at least sometimes, it is, if I can ignore everything else.
Look, I know you are in a very competitive business. I’ve read all about how the public doesn’t go to the movies anymore and all the reason the experts give for that decline. I get it that the industry has changed. There is more competition now than ever before, that there are more sources for entertainment now than ever before and it is cut into smaller and smaller pieces by new processes every day, and that every day a new challenge comes up that wasn’t part of the competitive landscape 5 years ago.
I would counter all of that with one statement.
“So what! Are you just going to quit being a movie company?”
Silly statement I know and the answer is of course not. Without regard to your measurement metrics, cash margin statistics and RPP (revenue per patron) analysis, I say you have unlimited room for the potential to grow, to achieve unheard of year over year results and the potential to lead the market, instead of being in the middle of the pack of the so-called “Big Four”. Things got to change if that is ever to happen though.
Some of what I see is nothing more than basic business and it all seems like a no-brainer to me. Others are big ideas that take capital investment and radical thinking to combat the natural business tendency to manage the business from the profit line upwards. I’ll not lecture you about your own business, however on the next pages I would like to share some thoughts. Feel free to do with them whatever you like including ignoring them or shredding them. It is possible that I am completely wrong and this letter has no value whatsoever, but, then again, who knows?
As I said, I am a customer, one of your customers who have been going to movies on a regular basis for a long time. This letter may read like a complaint, however really it is a desperate plea to save your industry from itself.
I am afraid what I see is going to result in the managing of this business through a decline and into a crash landing, metrics be damned. If it were an airliner, the result is called “Controlled Flight into Terrain”, where the pilot is behind the yoke, flying the plane and flew it straight into the mountain anyway. I mean no disrespect, however it looks like to me that no one is flying this plane.
Thank you for your time.
Sincerely Yours,
bigmike - (Actual letter is in the mail.)
How do you manage this business? From the Top Line down (revenues) or bottom line up (Profit)?
Everywhere I look in one of your facilities, I see expense (cut) decisions. Typically, those decisions are all about profit generation and budgetary expense control. I have no issue with that (Maximizing profit), if everything is already running right, the ship is tight and it is what it takes to return a fair profit to your shareholder.
What is the message you are sending to your patrons, associates and management however when: Marquees are damaged, floors are dirty, Sound systems don’t work properly, carpets are worn out, trim is missing, uniforms are dirty, the staff is slovenly, signage and lights are out, parking lot lights never get turned on, bathrooms are always filthy and it looks like the last time any paint was applied was when Ronald Reagan was president?
I’ll tell you what it says to me. It says, “We are Cheap, even if our items are not”. It also says you invest no money in inspecting your facilities and ensuring a high standard is met.
The mission ought to be how to get more people to come back more often. Instead, the mission is perceived as “Don’t spend any money on the theatres”. Tangible expense control is very important, however if you also do not demonstrate to me , your patron, that intangible Guest Good will is as important , I’ll stay home and watch Netflix on my big screen TV, with my home theatre system playing while my wife makes popcorn. You give me no reason to remember you as a destination, otherwise. You are leaving piles of money on the table by ignoring this important asset. If it looks like you value profit over me, I’ll see it and act accordingly. See the mountain in the way here?
How much you charge me for a ticket or on what day the special runs is only important the first time. After that, you have to execute and your staff has to perform. Even if you charge me $1.50 per ticket and I buy nothing else, how many times do you think I’ll come back when it takes 20-30 minutes to get them? Buy two drinks and one bag of popcorn and stand in line for 30 minutes? Really?
Force every purchase through the concession stand, including tickets, make us wait forever, force a parent to try to buy tickets, buy concessions, control 2 toddlers who are bored and screaming and ask yourself if this is the law of unintended consequences at work? Is this the way you want to to be? How many times will this aggravated mother of two, who could finally afford to take her kids to the movies because the prices dropped to $1.50, bother to come back after she is annoyed beyond consideration because the method of doing business changed? Should there be a sign that says, “Low staffing in place” or “The ticket seller called in sick”, on the front door? Do you think the ticket price will actually matter on any future purchase decision?
Realize that your business is really all about people and is not the movies, the concessions or expenses. Nobody and I mean nobody cares if anyone in your theatres is wearing a jacket. It may be part of your look, your ethos, how you distinguish management from associates or whatever but it doesn’t mean anything if that person in the jacket never says a word to a patron. It really has no value at all either when the jacket is stained with butter and soda either. I’d rather see clean T-Shirts than stained jackets.
No one talks to you and guess what? No one smiles either. I have literally stood in line with my wife for 20 minutes paying attention dozens of times, watched her order while I just stood there, and never saw anyone talk to a patron, ask a question, or smile one time. Your staff typically never talks to its customers anymore. They are more interested in filling the cup than in saying hello. The only things I ever hear are related to pricing, stocking and task orientation. Efficiency is good, watching five people do the Thorazine shuffle is not. Heads down, popcorn bins filled, cups brought up yes, but literally no guest interaction, beyond size and price conversations. It certainly isn’t a staffing problem. You’ve replaced the staff many times and Lord knows they change often enough. I’d say it might be a training problem or a selection problem, but not staffing. If this is how you intend it to be, just admit it, cut out the intermediary, and encourage patrons to bring their own snacks while buying their tickets through fandango, so you will never have to interact with them at all. Then, you could have a scanner at the theatre door let us in with our on line ticket bar code and cut the labor expense entirely.
Is the trend towards Self Serve theatres?
How long before your internal discussions begin to be about closing locations, if that hasn’t already begun?
If the trend is that movie Theatre’s are a dying breed, are you just waiting around for the end to come? I’m no operations or marketing genius. I don’t have all the answers. Hell for all I know I am completely wrong and I have no idea about this. It seems to me however, that if you struggle to fill theatres and attract more guests and the competition is stupid fierce, that you have to do things a bit differently in order to achieve desired results. Stimulus Tuesday is a good Idea. $1.50 Tickets are a great idea. It won’t bring me back a second time however to experience ice age service, with a bad sound system to a place ran by sullen no talking staff, to wait on pre-popped popcorn, in long lines , outside the front door surrounded by aggravated people in the wintertime.
Are you kidding?
The atmosphere in your facilities is depressing. I noticed when you started using a digital projection scheme. It is better picture quality and makes for a better movie. My opinion is the same for the upgraded sound systems. Great Idea. The problem is I didn’t notice either one of these things until I had to endure the soup lines from the great depression to get to them.
Here what it feels like sometimes:
You get out of your car in a parking lot at night that is not well marked, and are trapped in a lane that has no exit. There are no parking lot lights burning, so you couldn’t see that. You feel isolated and alone. After you figure out how to park your car, you walk up to the front doors (in the mall units this is where it starts), you then notice that the ticket booth is closed and they are selling tickets and concessions at the same time. You wait outside in line, in the cold, with a group of aggravated parents who are getting more and more agitated by the minute. Finally, the line moves a little and you open the doors to go inside and smell …nothing. The sounds you hear are crowd buzz, teen agers making noise talking to each other, mechanical background sounds like doors, people handling items, and the noise associated with a number of aggravated people standing around. No one talks to you, No one smiles at you, and no Music is in the air, there is no atmosphere. You wait. You shuffle forward. While waiting you may go to the bathroom, if there is one to use and it smells terrible. No one has looked at it in a while and there is a mess all around the sink and floors. When you finally make it up to the concession stand, that is selling the same items they’ve always sold since 1942, you are hurried though your purchase by a harried under manned staff whose interest seems to be to get you to go away, and the sooner the better. You have your hands full and you go to find your theatre. No one is taking tickets, no one is directing traffic, and still no one is talking to you. You find your theatre, open the door and find you seat. The screen starts to play coming attractions and now I notice you have a digital projector.
It feels like I had to walk through the swamp, to get to the junkyard in order to get into the museum in order to finally see the Mona Lisa. I’d bet a blind person would not be able to guess they were standing in line in a movie theater. I’ll bet you spent a literal TON of money on the projector and the sound upgrades. Then you hid them under the pile of construction debris and rocks before I found them.
None of this has anything at all to do with community support, unless you also consider that I’ll not let my teenaged daughter go to your theatre at night with her friends because the parking lot is a dark and potentially dangerous place. How safe do you think it is to see 20 kids gathered around the back of the building in the dark and what do you think they are doing? Yeah, I’d say not burning the parking lot lights is a brilliant strategy.
This feels like the mountain is coming and boy I am glad I’m not on the plane.
If you always do what you always did, then you always get what you always got.
Albert Einstein once said that the definition of Insanity is to do the same things repeatedly while expecting a different result. Thomas Edison said that he never failed in his quest to make a working incandescent lamp; he just found ten thousand ways not to make one. Babe Ruth struck out more times than anyone else. The point is that it looks like innovation is needed. Off the top of my head, I can think of several things that make sense to me; however, I’m no movie theatre genius.
Maybe it makes perfect sense to you to sell pre-popped cold popcorn in the name of efficiency. Instead of pre-popping the popcorn or buying, it pre-popped and storing it in the back room, I would have added more popcorn machines and put the smell of fresh popcorn in the air. Every person in line would see and smell popcorn being made. If three machines couldn’t keep up, I’d install three more. Cook less popcorn, but cook it more often. Make it part of the draw. I would never let a guest see me bringing popcorn up to the bin using a broken and cracked plastic tub with a dirty bottom.
You just lowered the value of the product by doing so and now I feel ripped off.
America loves Brand Names. We are land full of Brand name enthusiasts. Beyond Coca Cola, what brand names do you sell? You couldn’t prove it by me until I get to the counter to buy it and by that time, it just doesn’t matter. Looked at a Nascar race car lately ?
Why do you waste all that space around the front doors? Three old video games and one bench seat surrounded by dingy carpet is not appealing. Everything surrounding the entrance should be pristine, inviting and part of your marketing. Why cannot I buy trash and trinkets (shirts, cups, movie themed items etc) at a Carmike theatre, ala Cracker barrel? The ambience is part of the marketing. Staff uniforms are part of the marketing, the smell and the sound is part of the marketing. Alternatively, it should be anyway.
The job of marketing is to get me into your theatre one time, the first time. Operationally you have to execute to get me to come back. If I had to guess, I’d say that Stimulus Tuesday, $1.50 Tickets and other marketing ideas are all about the future of your company. You are trying to combat the rising competition, draw more patrons and get more people into movies and make more money. If you are, and I have read this correctly, then consider how it is executed as part of the plan and budget for it accordingly.
1. If you throw a bunch of money (reduced ticket prices for example) at the problem and then ask a slow motion reduced staff to execute it, how successful do you think it will be?
2. All you will have done is throw a bunch of money at the problem and you should have just set it on fire in the parking lot. Mission accomplished.
Radical serious innovation is needed.
1. Possibly some ideas centered on guest enjoyment, ambience, atmosphere, redesign and better service. It is possible that you need to think about how the product is delivered. It looks like the engine is blown on the car and you keep changing the carburetor in order to fix it. Try something new. These places should be cash cow casinos instead of piggy banks.
2. Get some pet projects to try in small markets, do some real satisfaction research. Find some different concessions, sell more products, put some music in the lobby just don’t do the same things repeatedly and expect it to be better magically, all on its own.
3. Maybe you need smaller theatres with more movies on smaller screens with a full service twist. Maybe you need to make a big fat hairy deal out of movie premiers with spotlights and exterior stimulus. Heck maybe you need to have flea markets in the parking lot when you’re not selling tickets, but doing the same thing and tweaking the ticket price is a recipe for failure if you do nothing else.
4. Is Chik-fil-A the only business in the world that understands that if you involve the community and support it that they will support you? When is the last time you seriously competed for local market and marketing share?
Lastly if the business has changed, then so must the business model. I sure don’t have the answers, but ..,.
If carpets wear out and are expensive to replace, then maybe you need a different floor surface, not a carpet cleaner. The point is it makes no sense to let the floor look like it is worn out. Replace it with tile or vinyl or plain concrete painted in movie themes, just don’t let it be painted with foot traffic, grease, gum and spilled soda. The entrance is a high traffic area and it needs to be designed with that in mind.
If five people cannot keep up with the lines behind one counter, then maybe you need three counters and six more popcorn machines. I question that a service standard even exists in your industry and there definitely should be one. How long will you wait for food to be delivered in a restaurant? If the standard at concession is to wait no more than 5 minutes to be served, then how long will I wait in line if I am 10 back in a line that takes 5 minutes per person? Even considering queuing it will take a lot more than 15 minutes won’t it? How does closing the ticket booth solve this problem?
If you cannot fill 500 seat rooms, then maybe you need smaller rooms and more theatres, centered on a different service model. Maybe you need to reconfigure them to be 50-100 seat rooms with full service, real food, beer sales, internet access, party rooms, or anything else that will utilize the space productively and profitably and fit within the movie theme. Maybe you need private rooms, box seats, video game rooms and tournaments, season tickets or something that adds to the draw and produces revenue. Maybe you need four pool tables, 20 video machines, a jukebox, Televisions or a place to watch sports. Leave everything the same except the ticket price and expect it to be different? I think every square foot should produce an enjoyable experience and revenue for your company.
Right now, it just seems like a high portion of the space just sits there gathering dust and it feels like we are waiting on you to finally close up shop and move on.
If you can only sell four dollars of add on concession purchases, possibly you need to sell more items, not less and certainly not the same items as everybody else. If I understand your metrics page on your investor’s web site, you are about the same as everyone else. Was that the goal and will that blow away the revenue projections? The goal is to be in the middle of the pack, to produce mediocrity and be like everybody else? Really?
If neon costs a ton to upkeep, then maybe you need to switch out to LED’s. If Parking lot lights are too expensive, then maybe the theater needs better lights on the building itself. If the Marquee is 25 years old, is it time to be replaced? Is there a new technology you could use instead? Lights and signs should work all the time. They should look great and should say, “Come on in”. When you allow them to be out, broke, dingy or out of date they say, “We don’t care if you come on in”. Everything in your physical plant should be looked at like this. It should be a big, fat, hairy deal for the surroundings to look worn out, and trust me; it is not currently looked at like that at all.
If placing ads in the newspaper doesn’t work as well as it used to then maybe you need direct mail or bigger full page 4 color ads, not just an elimination of the ad itself.
If the revenue stream from ticket purchases or concessions isn’t what you need it to be, maybe you need more streams of revenue instead of lower entrance fees. Maybe you need ten times the amount of products you have now and it is possible you don’t sell what I want either. Why can’t I get a hot dog at a theatre? Why is no food products sold at all? There are No chips, snacks, hot pretzels, taquitos, etc? Is it because you don’t want to pay to clean up the theatre? Is that a viable customer centered response?
Should there be three tiers of products for sale instead of one overpriced tier? Look at the convenience store industry. If they used your model, they would have one style of lighter and it would cost 5 bucks per lighter. They would sell ten lighters a day. Look at fast food, get a burger and it can be a single, double or a triple, etc. Instead of centering on various sizes of the same products, in over priced combos, maybe you need to think about how to sell more variety at different price points. I cannot imagine what you are doing is going to sustain your future, if nothing else changes.
When I go to the movies, I always have more money to spend than I actually spend. The reason I don’t spend more has nothing to with what you offer, it has everything to with what you don’t offer. We always spend that money after the fact, in another place of business and you don’t get a penny of it. I wonder why not?
I’m sure there is a lot more that can be said, however I’ve used up enough of your time already. Have a great day.
