In early December late November 2010 my brother sent me a picture text of a job listing for a Movie Theater he was working at. It was for an assistant manager position. I applied because I thought it would be awesome to work at a movie theater (and it is). I didn't have any previous theater experience however I had a good deal of management experience in the service industry such as working for Marriott Hotels. By the time I made it back to Illinois and through some additional interviews the owners decided to promote me to GM and put me in charge of all operations and rebuilding the theaters reputation.
The Holiday Theater opened in 1950 as a single screen with a terrace. Some years later an experienced theater man took it over and made major changes. He split the auditorium into 4 screens and turned an adjacent store into a fifth.
The man did very well with the theater and I remember really enjoying it as a child. For some reason or another he decided to sell the theater and that is when things starting going down hill. New operators came in only with the intention to make a buck. They didn't maintain anything as they should have and put nearly 0 money back into the business. This of course caused a huge decline in the quality of the movies and the environment in which they were being shown causing low attendance. Ultimately they left the business.
Then came along a man with a vision making big claims to change around the theater. He did put in a lot of effort and made some good changes such as upholstering one of our theaters since it hasn't been done in 40 years. Apparently he wasn't quite who he said he was and he was removed from the theater as owner. (
for an interesting read here is the link)
Now after this is when the current ownership took over. Management was in dismay and this is when I applied for the assistant job. By the time I made it out to Chicago the current owners (who also never have been in the theater business but took it over for financial reasons) decided to let me run the show.
This was great because I had already put myself to learning the business first by reading this forum. When I got to the theater I studied the projectors and their manuals and have learned as much about them as I can so far. Regardless we were far from smooth sailing. Our equipment being old and not maintained properly consistently failed us. "Projectionists" were not trained properly and would leave movies playing out of frame. Now I corrected these issues re-trained everyone. Our movies will still give out on us occasionally as fail-safes didn't work and movies would brainwrap. I wanted to fix the issue but at the time we were only grossing $200 a night, if that.
The owners and I worked on marketing and they put a lot of their own money into the business and we are now seeing decent attendance. Our equipment has gone through thousands and thousands of dollars of repair and after 6 months we are showing movies at an excellent quality.
We are selling a good product and we are even looking into investing in some Barco digital projectors. We accommodate many youth groups in the area offering them specials such as $6 for a ticket and a kids pack.
Everybody here has told me that we lose business in the winter. I do absolutely do not want to go back to $200 nights. What is the next step? Where can I go from here to increase attendance and keep bringing people in during the winter months?
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