Don't be salty

After my lapse last week, I’m back again with more theater fun for you.

When you think of movie theater snacks, you think popcorn, maybe hot dogs, nachos, pretzels and candy.

When I started there, we had all that and more. Flavored pretzel bites, mozzarella sticks, chicken tenders and curly fries. Just enough fried goodness to keep people happy.

It was a good menu, too. But things change and we had to keep up with the theaters where you could order whole meals.

We added four or five different kinds of hot dogs, a pretzel the size of a steering wheel (for the everyday low price of $15) and sliders. It was insane.

We were fortunate on some shifts to have someone whose sole job was to make food orders as they came in. This was good because if you were working cashier most of the time, you had next to no idea on how to make any of the new foods.

The more complicated orders always seemed to come at the busiest times, too. But the real treasure when working concessions was when people would order any of the hot foods and would forget to pick it up.

Want to make a service industry worker’s day? Buy food and forget it there. At least at our theater, we got to eat the food if it hadn’t been claimed in a certain amount of time. I can’t say if that rite still stands in the COVID era, but it was sure nice when it happened.

As for the popcorn, we were blessed and cursed with self-serve butter stations. More buttery goodness for the guests, more buttery mess for us to clean.

Here’s a fun fact for you about movie theater popcorn: did you know the salt they put on the corn is proven to draw more customers?

We all know that movie theater popcorn is just superior, but we don’t think why. Well, the Flavacol salt that gets put on the kernels is why. I distinctly remember reading a sticker we had on the popper that claimed the salt would increase sales or customers by a certain percentage. Crazy, right?

If you want that taste at home, I’m pretty sure you can buy some on Amazon. Just don’t send me any medical bills because that stuff is definitely best in moderation.