Welcome to BigScreenBiz.com

Some use butter, some us a variety of oil toppings. We use Topsit! at the moment. What are your thoughts? I'd particularly welcome real Butter devotees discussing longevity of the butter, spoilage, cost, suppliers, etc. I used to feel much worse about the hot toppings until I really read the ingedients and saw that it was basically flavors and oil. I don't use the suff but it doesn't read any worse than a Big Mac, FF, and a Coke. Not to mention whatever Swedish Fish or M&M's are made of. What do you use?

We use a product called Dressall--it's mostly soy bean oil and all the other wonderful stuff they put in stuff like that. Sometimes I wonder when we are going to get into trouble for calling it butter, even though everyone knows it's really not. Does everyone charge extra for the butter, real or not, for their popcorn? We don't, and are not even thinking about it.Can't imagine the complaints something like that would cause.

You use "Golden Shower."

We use Odell's Anhydrous Butterfat. Anhydrous means that all the water and milk solids have been removed. All that is left is the oil. It tastes delicious. It doesn't spoil. It is stable at room temperature. It melts in a dishpan of hot tap water. And it is great to cook with.

The only downside is that it is four times more expensive than the "Golden Shower."


[This message has been edited by Large (edited November 15, 2002).]

I use the real thing. I run a single screen and unfortunately don't have droves of customers usually, so I melt real butter in a small glass syrup container before we open and keep it warm inside the popcorn machine. It doesn't spoil. I only heat small quantities, if we run out we heat more. I store a few pounds in the freezer and keep one in the fridge. I charge $.50 extra for the butter on any size with no extra charge for the large refill. I buy it at Costco. I might try some of that Odels stuff though, just to compare. Whatever they use at Cinemark is NASTY. My customers don't complain about the extra price for the butter. My SML prices are $2, $3, and $4 with butter.

I prefer real butter, but many of our customers don't care. Some customers call the fake stuff, "WD-40" or "transmission fluid"!
Any time you deal with real butter you should be careful with storage, how old it is, etc. Some health depts. are finnicky about using real butter.

We use Odells and Orville you know who. We actually had some guy ask for 20, count 'em, squirts of this stuff in his large popcorn. Ouch.

Is Orville "you know who" real butter like the Odell's? I take it you just buy it from your concession supplier? I think I'll have them do a study on the actual cost/ how much we use/etc. 4 times the cost doesn't mean much if it's 100.00 vs. 25.00. When it's 4000.00 vs. 1000.00 we're talking real money! Any idea what quantities you use?

Looking at it from the patron point of view? I think its what you get used to. If you visit the same theatre over and over again I think you get used to what ever they use. I know that I prefer the Topsit because that's what we use. Going to the theatre in the next town and getting popcorn is not the same. They use real butter and I notice it right away.

Mike,

We buy our Odell's Butterfat from Sysco and this week it cost us $155.70 for a case which is 4 10 pound bottles of butterfat. That's $3.89 per pound but remember all the milk solids have been removed so that it doesn't spoil, so it is essentially clarified butter. Bump your corn prices up .25 or .50 per size and switch to butterfat, your customers will love you for it. By the way, we don't play the refill game and when customers ask why not, we tell them its because we use quality ingredients including real butter which is 4 times as expensive as the fake stuff. Most people think its great that we use real butter. O'dells also has copious amounts of marketing materials to help promote real butter - they've even got a trailer!

Is "Odell's Anhydrous Butterfat" now just called Odell's Original Popcorn Butter or is that something different?

Did you ever have your study done, Mike?

Now that I have the butter warmers, I am thinking about switching from having to heat up and constantly stir real butter to something more simple, but it depends on the cost difference.

we use odells anhydrous butterfat and it as described above (delicious). It is expensive but we don't go through that much of it to make that big of a difference. the customers love it. They do have another topping that is not butterfat but something different. Check them out here: www.popntop.com

Okay, thanks leeler. I am giving it a two-tub-try.