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The title says the overall goal but first i would like to say thanks for anyone who gives opinions, theories or advice.

My goal is to add a single screen 400 seat movie theater on to my existing restaurant/brewery. I will show movies that are not "new" and on their way to blockbuster. My main goal is to house 400 seats in a stadium seating way. There will be a row of seats and a row of table(s) to place food and beverage on (row of tables, row of chairs, row of tables row of chairs). The tables would not be very wide 2 1/2' to 3 1/2'. In the back i will look at placing 4-6 horse shoe shaped 6-8 person booths with a table in the middle for selective/reserved seating. What size structure am i looking at to gain these goals? The tiered seating does not need to be extreme as the new theatres but slightly tiered stadium for descent viewing. Thoughts on size on size of the facility, type of projector and size of screen would be very helpful as i have no clue into how to get this idea moving forward form my head to the ground. Thanks again.

1ST I dont think you would want to go over 350 seats.Any theater over would require an elevator for stadium seating.For 350 seats a ceiling hight of at least 24 ft is needd.What the kind of theater you are talking about is called second run.

Are you planning on having servers? If so, you'll need a comfortable buffer such that servers can get to each location without bumping into the people sitting in the next row forward.

Frankly, Movie Tavern (first run) has a pretty good layout for this. Basically, seats are simply high backed office chairs. These are arranged along what is essentially a counter that functions as the "table". When the chairs are up against the counter -- as when someone is seated and eating -- there is a good 2-3 feet of space for the server to wait on the people behind. Each seating location takes up about 3 feet of linear space. It is not a dense pack.

I've been to other theatres that were converted standard auditoriums. They remove two rows between every third, placing a raised counter in the empty space in front of the rows of seats. No servers, so they didn't leave much space between the table and the next row forward. The major drawback to this layout, is that people are going back and forth in front of people -- just like a "normal" theatre -- but with real food, sometime very hot real food. And there's nothing worse than eating from a table that you constantly have to lean back from to let someone through. Oh, and, because you have to have enough room for the patrons to get in their seats, to "sit" at the table, you have to sit on the front of the seat. Ugh.

I'm not sure how you would get 400 seats in any sort of reasonably sized auditorium. I used to work in an 800 seat theatre -- and a commensurately enormous auditorium. I'm guessing we would have only been able to handle 300 people max in any sort of comfortable way using the second scenario, far fewer in the Movie Tavern mode.

-David

400 seats...why not try for a smaller count and go for 2 screens with the same idea you have!

Thanks for all the opinions and ideas. I agree that the 400 may be a bit too much. Running two screens is now a thought. I was thinking i would need a 45 foot screen. 24 foot high ceilings, would that be enough space to house a screen that size or would i look at a different sized screen? Your thoughts on ceiling height and screen size. Thanks.

Any suggestions on the slope/grade i need to have auditorium or stadium seating that can accommodate a row of chairs, row of eating/table space. Thanks.

This has been very helpful and is now giving me a better idea on planning. Cheers.