San Francisco Mayor London Breed recently allowed the city’s movie theaters to reopen, albeit with some restrictions. Those caveats apparently went too far in the eyes of the theater owners, resulting in the National Association of Theatre Owners of California/Nevada (NATO of CA/NV) collectively refusing to reopen.
After cautiously choosing not to allow the reopening of theatersas quickly as other citiesduring the most of 2020, Mayor Breed finally relented with the stipulation that theaters would be banned from selling concessions. To many moviegoers, this may seem like an acceptable trade-off. Movie snacks are expensive anyway, right? Well, there’s a reason for that. Movie theaters charge so much for food because that’s how they make most of their money.
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As such, theater owners in San Francisco deemed this compromise unacceptable, politely declining the Mayor’s offer. President Milton Moritz of the NATO of CA/NV explained their decision in a statement, saying, “the restrictions in place present aninsurmountable financial challengefor our members to [reopen] and are preventing thousands of workers from returning to work.” Given the already rather brutal effect the pandemic has had on theaters, it makes sense that owners would prefer to go for an all or nothing approach, rather than mostly breaking even with a barebones operation.
Interestingly, San Francisco has already allowed restaurants to reopen for indoor dining, prompting many to question why theaters aren’t being offered the same courtesy. Moritz went on to state that the city’s theaters have dutifully followed other guidelines such as mask mandates and social distancing requirements, seemingly implying that their decision to remain closed was not simply out of misguided spite.
While on the surface it might not make sense for theaters and restaurants to be held up to different food standards in this regard, it could be argued that the nature of theaters don’t allow for conditions as sanitary as the average restaurant during food preparation. Those in chargemay also be unawareof how crucial concessions are to the financial wellbeing of any given cinema. After all, this might not even be common knowledge, considering the rather common practice of moviegoers bringing their own snacks to theaters.
But this issue is worth some attention, not only for the sake of the theaters who need food sales to survive, but also in the interest of one day perhapsfinding a different solutionthat allows both the cinema and the audience to thrive without gaming the system.Movie theaters are in a bad place right now, and if some real thought isn’t put into how to save them, they might never go back to the way things were.
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