If you’ve spent any amount of time randomly going down a rabbit hole on YouTube, or if you’re a big fan of cinema, then chances are you’ve seen this vintage ad for movie theater concessions before:
And you’ve more than likely had “Let’s all go to the lobby, let’s all go to the lobby, let’s all go to the lobby to get ourselves a treat!” stuck in your head – exactly as it was intended to. Back then, midcentury advertising relied on catchy jingles and clever copy to get people to head to the concession stands during intermission to buy snacks.
These days, ads for concessions rely less on pure marketing copy and more on appealing to the senses. Advancements in audio, like Dolby, have turned the puffy bursts of popcorn popping or the crackling fizz of a newly-opened carbonated drink into something that elicits a Pavlovian response in us. Even if you’re not thirsty, you almost certainly want a Coke by the time this spot ends:
But movie theater concession ads have a long history that dates back to long before the 1950s. Movie theater “snipes” – that is, anything included in a projection of the movie that isn’t actually the movie itself – have been around for well over a century. In particular, the history of ads for concessions has evolved hand-in-hand with the history of movie theater concessions themselves, and together, they saved the theater business.
Movie Theater Ads Have Been Around A Long, Long Time
Movie theater ads planted their roots all the way back to the silent era in the tail end of the 19th century. The days of silent film weren’t just full of slapstick comedy and melodramas dotted with intertitle cards of dialogue. It also included newsreels, documentaries, industrial instruction videos, and, yes, even advertising.
Advertisements for railroad corporations were the earliest form of “product placement” advertisements, but other industries soon caught up. By the late 1890s, film companies in New York (this was still a decade before the movie industry relocated from the East Coast to Hollywood) were making film ads for Pabst, Dewar’s and cigar brands. One of the earliest examples we have of these silent era ads was William Heise’s “Admiral Cigarette” ad from 1897:
So product ads have been around far longer than you realize, with big money behind them. But they would evolve in a meaningful way in just a few decades.
Nickelodeon Theaters Changed The Theatergoing Experience
Shortly after the turn of the century, in 1905, nickelodeon theaters changed the landscape of entertainment. No longer were stage plays and vaudeville the only forms of entertainment. Americans began flocking to nickelodeons, paying five cents to watch silent films accompanied by a live orchestra. Nickelodeons sprang up by the thousands across the country and by the mid-1910s, an estimated 27% of Americans were going to the movies every single week.
Back then, however, theater owners had not yet thought to combine selling food with their silent films. Instead, restaurants and concession stands popped up near nickelodeons and people would buy food from outside and then bring it into the theater with them – a far cry from today, when bringing even a box of candy in your purse makes you feel like you’re trying to smuggle drugs past a U.S. Customs agent. Along with people buying food outside, independent peanut and popcorn vendors walked up and down the aisles hawking their snacks, similar to beer and food vendors in stadiums today, and they became a staple of places like nickelodeons theaters and burlesque clubs.
Popcorn vendors, as a matter of fact, have been around as long as the 1840s, popping (heh, pardon the pun) up at any event where there was a crowd. It was an easy sell: The crowds in the mid-1800s were still fascinated by the kernel to popcorn process and the smell of freshly-popped popcorn was one that wafted easily over a crowd, enticing them to buy a bag. Plus, the portability of popcorn made it the perfect snack for public events.
And peanut vendors have been around almost as long. In 1893, Charles Cretors invented a steam-powered machine that could pop popcorn in oil as well as roast peanuts. That same year, he took his new popcorn & peanut wagon to Midway of Chicago’s Columbian Exposition, and interest grew. By the turn of the century, his machine was all over the U.S. and popcorn and peanuts became the ubiquitous snacks for group events, including movies.
But Upscale Movie Houses Of The 1910s & 1920s Banned Concessions
In the 1910s through the 1920s, however, nickelodeon theaters were replaced with fancier, classier theaters, with opulent settings and grand ballroom design. The post-WWI Roaring Twenties lifestyle was one of excess and celebration and entertainment followed suit. The theater “palaces” emulated the architecture and style of Europe. Simple stages gave way to gold leaf and marble columns; wooden floors gave way to crystal chandeliers and rich carpeting. The Golden Age of Hollywood required theaters that were as glamorous as the stars themselves, and soon, the everyman nickelodeons were squeezed out by the opera house-like palaces.
But with the opulence came stricter rules. The theaters sometimes cost upwards of a few million dollars to build, a huge sum for then. Take, for example, Sid Grauman’s Chinese Theatre (now the TCL Chinese Theatre), which cost $2.1. million to build in 1927. Today, that would be roughly the equivalent of $31.4 million dollars. Understandably, theater owners wanted to court more upscale patrons and keep their staggeringly expensive venues free and clear of peanut shells, trash and debris, along with not wanting their theaters to cater to the snacking associated with burlesque shows. Yet, people continued to buy popcorn from vendor carts outside and munch away, despite theater owners’ best efforts to curb them.
Around the same time, candy brands that are now synonymous with the moviegoing experience started to pop up. In the five years between 1922-1927, Bob White (now known as Sno Caps), Goobers, Milk Duds and Raisinets were all born, as well as licorice upstart Classic Raspberry Vines, later known as Red Vines. Between popcorn and candy, theater owners were fighting a losing battle with keeping food out of their theaters, but they still stood firm on the no food rule.
And then the Great Depression hit and everything changed.
The Great Depression Actually Helped Movie Theaters
The 1930s saw a sharp reversal of fortune for the U.S. with the 1-2 punch of the Wall Street Crash of 1929 and the Dust Bowl storms that devastated the Midwest a few years later. The Great Depression hit hard, with unemployment soaring up to 25%.
But if necessity is the mother of invention, then desperation is its father, and by the early 1930s, movie theater owners were desperate. The theater palaces of a decade prior fell out of popularity in favor of owners opening more down-to-earth neighborhood theaters and blue-collar theater chains, slashing ticket prices, and changing the language of their advertising to entice a broader crowd to the theaters. This along with the rise of “talkies” – movies with sound – saw an increase in the diversity of moviegoers. During those tough times, movies were still a relatively cheap way to escape the dreary grind of a post-war America in the middle of the worst economic slump the country had ever faced.
Theater owners were forced to wave the white flag and join forces with concession vendors, forever cementing the relationship between movie theaters and snacks. The owners had finally figured out what had been in front of them all along: selling snacks could be a brand-new source of revenue with a big ROI. A $10 bag of popcorn kernels could keep for years, and at 5 to 10 cents a bag, most people could still afford to buy popcorn with theater owners turning a profit even in the midst of the Great Depression. They struck a deal with independent popcorn and snack vendors, leasing them space in their theaters to sell their goods. For vendors, business was soon booming. Just take the New York Times anecdote of widow Julia Braden, who built an absolute empire in Missouri in 1931:
“She persuaded the Linwood Theater to let her set up a stand in the lobby and eventually built a popcorn empire. By 1931, she owned stands in or near four movie theaters and pulled in more than $14,400 a year… Her business grew even in the midst of the Depression, at the same time that thousands of elegant theaters went bust.”
By the mid- to late-1930s, theaters had begun to cut out the popcorn vendor middlemen entirely and began to include built-in candy counters and concession stands. Foods like candied apples, gourmet chocolates and bonbons were sold with the hopes of catering to highbrow customers, but the mass production boom helped the boxed movie candies of the 1920s become more popular than ever and soon became the go-to confections for moviegoing audiences. And, of course, there was popcorn, the snack that quite literally saved the theater industry.
The Post-WWII Boom Saw An Explosion Of Movie Theater Concessions
During the 1940s, candy sales dropped due to the rationing of sugar during WWII while popcorn remained strong – by 1945, movie audiences accounted for over half the popcorn consumed in the U.S. After the war, however, even with the rise of television threatening the theater business, concession sales soared and increased fortyfold despite theater attendance being cut in half. Sugar reigned supreme, with audiences chowing down on Jujubes, M&Ms, Goobers, Junior Mints and others while soda, especially Coca-Cola, flowed like a river.
The ever-increasing revenue from movie theater concessions prompted candy and soda companies to invest more and more in advertising to moviegoers. Theater chain owners ran ads before movies and during intermissions to tempt audiences to hit the concessions and embraced the concept of upselling their customers (“Would you like to make that a large?” “Would you like to add a small bag of popcorn to that?”). It all led to the catchy, jingly, sometimes hilariously quaint concession ads that ran in the 1950s and 60s at movie theaters and drive-ins:
Post-WWII America was way into consumerism after years of rationing and war and they ate up the ads like – well, like candy, with ads soon becoming as inextricably linked to the moviegoing experience as the snacks they sold. The ubiquitous “Let’s All Go to the Lobby” ad, arguably the most memorable of these midcentury spots, was created by Filmack Studios in the 1950s and animated by Popeye and Betty Boop animator Dave Fleischer. It hit theaters around 1957 and it has been so popular since that Filmack estimates it’s played in 80% of independent theaters, as well as being referenced or parodied in a number of movies, TV shows, and even Fortnite.
Our Modern Era Has Seen A Rise In Dine-In Theaters For A Reason
Dine-in movie theater chains, like Alamo Drafthouse and Studio Movie Grill, have grown more common in the last decade while other theater chains, like ArcLight, have started offering wine and upscale food options at the concession stand. The reason is simple: Movie theaters don’t make nearly as much money from studios as you might think. On average, movie theaters only make about 50% of the ticket price but pay a hefty price for overhead between rent, electricity, air conditioning, and staff. Plus, thanks to streaming and the Golden Age of Television stealing away eyeballs, theaters are constantly upgrading themselves with nicer seats and newer technology to lure people away from their couches and Netflix and into theaters. It all costs dear.
Hence relying on concessions to make money. More than 40% of a theater’s profit comes from selling food and drink as the profit margin on concessions is an impressive 85%. But once-popular movie concessions like candy and popcorn are no longer novelties and not as much of a sure thing as they used to be. It’s no wonder theaters are starting to get even more creative and expansive with their offerings or that ads for concessions are becoming ever more tantalizing. If a studio is going to shell out buckets of cash for state-of-the-art sound systems, they might as well use them to lure audiences into paying them back in the form of popcorn purchases and candy consumed, right?
Now, we have the fun of being on the edge of a whole new era in the moviegoing experience. You can get boozy gourmet milkshakes, artisan flatbreads, juicy burgers and more right along with your Milk Duds and popcorn and Coke. As a big ol’ foodie, I, for one, can’t wait to see how movie theater concessions and food offerings continue to evolve over the next decade.
