Snippet Dave Young: Welcome to the Empire Builders Podcast, teaching business owners the not-so-secret techniques that took famous businesses from mom-and-pop to major brands. Stephen Semple is a marketing consultant, story collector and storyteller. I'm Stephen's sidekick and business partner, Dave Young. Before we get into today's episode, a word from our sponsor, which is, well, it's us. But we're highlighting ads we've written and produced for our clients so here's one of those. [Maven Roofing Ad] Dave Young: Welcome back to the Empire Builders Podcast, Dave Young here alongside Stephen Semple. And Stephen just told me what we're going to talk about today, and it's not really, I mean, it's an empire sort of. It's an empire in terms of its category, right? Stephen Semple: Yes, yes. Dave Young: But it's not so much like you can't put your finger on a brand name for it. So we're talking about movie concessions and how things got started. So I'm guessing in the early days, you didn't buy a big old thing of popcorn. You just sat down and watched a movie. Stephen Semple: No, that was what I found, so I found interesting about this, and I thought, and when I went down it, I was actually researching one particular business. And then what I suddenly realized is that, no, there's a couple of things that converge together that really made the modern movie concession. And there's three players that went into this, and all three of them ended up building fortunes in the process. That's Joseph Blumenthal, Jack Beresin and Milton Holloway, all kind of came together to make movie concessions happen. As we know today, movie concessions are like a multi-billion dollar business, and concession sales are like close to half of movie theater profits so they're a big deal. Dave Young: Where I am in Austin, we're, I don't know, half a mile from an Alamo Drafthouse, and I don't go to the theater as often as I did before all the things. But Alamo Drafthouse is known for pioneering like you have a menu and you sit down, you order a meal while you're, and they'll bring it to you in the theater. Stephen Semple: Yes. Dave Young: We've always known that you're going to spend more on popcorn and drinks, than you did it on the movie ticket. Stephen Semple: And they've taken it to a whole other level, but wasn't always that way, Dave. In June 19th, 1905- Dave Young: 1905? Stephen Semple: ... was the first movie, like the first movie showing kind of in a theater sort of setup, and they were called nickelodeons. That's what they called the early movie houses because it was nickel and all that other stuff. And it was super successful, and pop-ups started happening all over the place. And as we know, the early movies were silent. So what would happen is people would buy a ticket to go to the movie, like vendors would buy a ticket to go to the movie, and they would walk up and down the aisle going, "Popcorn, popcorn. Who wants..." and selling stuff just like they did at the ballgames and there was- Dave Young: Or the circus, yeah. Stephen Semple: But there was no connection to the theater. These were like, literally, Dave Young would buy a ticket, show up, and then basically walk up and down the aisle selling whatever food he had to sell. Dave Young: And they just let him. Stephen Semple: So concessions were not a thing at all. At all. Dave Young: Okay. Stephen Semple: So Jack Beresin is working at an opera house, and he's looking at a way to make some extra money, and he saw people buying and eating food at a nickelodeon. So he approaches his manager with the idea of, at this opera house now, you can't go up and down the aisles in the opera house. The whole idea, let's set up a table and do concessions during the intermission. Dave Young: Sure. Stephen Semple: Now eating in the opera house was kind of considered uncou...
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23 分
2025/10/1524 分