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We use the flavored colored salt. No one has ever complained about it. Do you use regular salt or the flavored?

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Michael Hurley
Impresario

I use Flavocal: butter flavored and colored. My customers like it and say I have the best popcorn around. I personally love it and still eat a hefty quantity of popcorn every day.

Flavacol all the way!

if you don't like it because of the added food coloring, Gold Medal makes it in a NONcolored version also, since most of the color comes from the popping oils anyways I doubt it would be a big deal...

I like Flavacol too but it is such a fine consistency that it comes out of the shakers too fast. I'm considering real salt for the shakers AND flavacol to use during the popping.

leeler-
I may have a solution for your salt shakers. If you're using those clear shakers that you fill yourself with the tan top, just take the top off and put some masking tape on the inside covering up half the holes. Then it doesn't come out soo bad. I would never use relular salt on popcorn, its called popcorn salt for a reason,it just sticks to the corn better
jeff

Just to clarify:
I use Flavacol during the popping process and put popcorn salt in shakers for my customers to sprinkle on their corn if they desire more salt.

We pop with Flavacol and have the fine white popcorn salt in shakers plus all the no more naked popcorn flavors and still have people asking for Flavacol in a shaker. Of course, when we put the Flavacol in a shaker, most people thought it was cheese flavoring.

Flavacol used here too for popping. It is the best! I wouldn't be interested in popping without salt/butter flavoring as it would taste like cardboard and most people expect the flavoring to be on it already.

We use popcorn salt in the customer shakers and have one with a 50/50 mix of flavacol and popcorn salt. It comes out too fast because the flavacol is so fine and most people do think that it is cheese flavoring, but we tell them otherwise. (Incidentally we tried real cheese flavoring for a while but found that people poured 1/2 the shaker on their individual corn. At $25 for a large jar we couldn't afford to feed their habit).

As with most here our loyal customers love the popcorn here. We were successful in transferring the same corn flavor between the two theaters but it took some work to switch the corn, salt and oil along with kettle maintenance that needed to be done before it tasted exactly like our usual corn. Many people complimented us on having fixed the popcorn here. However, I am sure that there are people who love the corn at our chain competitors too even though we get many comments about their awful corn.
As with most things it is impossible to please everyone:
I got a guy who complained that our corn was burned the other night. He threw it away in front of me. I looked and couldn't imagine better looking corn, so I grabbed a batch of corn for myself and found it to be excellent. I've had someone tell me that the corn was stale when they clearly watched me catch it coming out of the popper. Heh, I had a lady tell me today that we don't have latches on our stalls in the ladies room. (We do and they all work!).

I noticed Gold Medal has an extensive line of colored and/or flavored popcorn.

Has anyone experimented with any of these?

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Thanks,
Jay

[This message has been edited by theater magic (edited March 15, 2004).]

We use flavacol too when popping corn, for the customers we have regular salt, Salt & Vinegar, Dill Pickle, and Ketchup. There are several other flavors available, BBQ, Nacho Cheese, Ranch, White Cheddar etc... The last 3 mentioned are about twice as expensive as the other one because of the cheese flavoring. Customers seem to love it, but it does make a mess and it does cost $$. In my opinion it does not generate more sales. The other theatres in town also have these flavor salts. If anyone took them away now there would be an uproar.

This week we also tried Gold Medals glaze pop. IT was so easy! and no mess. I was so surprised. You just put the normal amount of seeds, white canola oil (regular non colored available at any grocery store) and then add some of the glaze pop powder. It tastes quite good an there was no residue or sugary grime left in the popper. We are thinking of pre-bagging it in plastic bags and selling the glazed stuff on weekends. I would NEVER limit 1 of our poppers to glazed only.

Ok, here I am the lone voice out in the wilderness.

Plain Salt!

Did you hear about that guy who just won $20M from the microwave popcorn place he worked for the damage that those nasty chemicals did to him? Too bad he's going to die soon, but at least his wife will be a merry widow.

My mother has banned microwave popcorn from her office.

[This message has been edited by Large (edited March 16, 2004).]

Hello all,

I am new on this board. There is really insightful content discussion on here. Thanks.

I have a question regarding popcorn flavorings.

1. What prompted you to start offering flavors?
2. How big is a regular flavoring jar and how much popcorn is that supposed to be able to flavor (if the customer uses recommended amount)?
3. What flavors are popular (what area are you in)?
4. Do flavors drive more popcorn sales or drink sales?

What I think they are talking about in this thread is Plain Salt vs Popcorn Flavored Salt called Flavacol, which dyes the popcorn yellow and intensifies the flavor.

A second topic that you are thinking about is popcorn toppings that the customers can put on the corn. Which we last discussed in this thread.

We just do it ourselves. We bought shakers from the local restaurant supply store and we purchase the condiments locally.
Regular Salt
Basil
Italian Seasonings
Parmesan Cheese
Spike or Seasonall
Garlic Salt
Lemon Pepper
Chili Powder
Nutritional or Brewers Yeast
Soy Sauce
Chulula Hot Sauce
Cinnamon Sugar
We want to be different than the other guy.
Our jars are about 4oz. Kernal Seasons are about 12oz. Customers can use what they wish.
For Kernal Seasons, White Cheddar and Parmesan are the fastest sellers. For us it's Parmesan, Garlic Salt and Brewer's Yeast.
No more than usual.

The cost to offer popcorn toppings is negligible.

[This message has been edited by Large (edited March 18, 2004).]

I never use Flavacol in shakers, too strong flavor and TOO expensive!

We use Mortons POPCORN SALT, a smaller grain white salt for the shakers...

Today found 2 bags of Microwave popcorn on the floor, It baffels me why anyone would bring crappy cardboard tasting microwave corn to a theatre?

I have not bought it in a long time but I can't imagine it's THAT much cheaper than our $1 small REAL corn popped fresh?

Plus they know we do NOT allow outside foods in our theatre, yet they feel its worth smuggling in that crap?

hell, we even get Burger King stuff snuck in now and then...

People are funny...

Tony.

We pop with 1/2 teaspoon of Flavacol.

For shakers there is one plain salt and one Flavacol.

Flavacol is only $3.85 a quart and we probably only go through 20-30 quarts a year so it isn't that bad of a cost for how much people like it.