AMC Entertainment (AMC) knows that its core business -- selling tickets to movies that play in its theaters will never recover. The company never says that and CEO Adam Aron has to make it seem like theaters will go back to being important in a post-pandemic world, but knows they will only recover to a point.
You can blame Covid, but the reality is more complicated. Movie theaters struggled before the pandemic because streaming services release so much content and most people have a huge TV with high-quality sound right in their living room. Yes, Covid accelerated the process, but the writing was on the wall well before the pandemic.
Now, unless a film features Spider-Man, something fast and furious, or maybe a bunch of dinosaurs more people are preferring to stay at home and stream rather than head out to the movie theater. So AMC is now hoping that if it can’t entice you to go to one of its locations, then maybe you’ll be willing to bring a small bucket of AMC home with you.
The beleaguered movie theater chain has shared that Ellen Copaken, formerly of Frito-Lay and Hostess Brands, will join AMC as the vice president of growth strategy beginning Feb. 18. Copaken will be in charge of helping to grow the brand’s reach, starting with a push into the retail popcorn market.
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Who is Ellen Copaken?
Copaken got her start as a marketing manager at Frito Lay in 2005, and then worked her way up to the position of senior marketing director of global brand innovation by 2012, according to LinkedIn,
.From there, she spent three years at Hostess Brands as vice president and general manager in the growth channels.
Since 2017, she’s been a managing director and partner at the consulting firm Sterling-Rice Group, with an emphasis on food and beverage, retail and household goods, launching dozens of new food and beverage products.
So with a resume like that, she has experience in getting people to buy snacks.
Aron called Copaken “an extremely important hire for us,” adding that “she has a superb track record in brand management and innovation at Frito-Lay, PepsiCo and Hostess Brands. Her executive ability combined with her significant grocery experience will be a vital asset to AMC as we explore and deliver on current and future opportunities, starting with our new popcorn initiative.”
What Is This Popcorn Initiative All About?
Last fall, AMC declared that it would push into the retail popcorn industry with a four-pronged approach, offering the signature snack it’s been serving to moviegoers since the 1920s.
- AMC Theaters Perfectly Popcorn will be available in kiosks, counters, and stores at select mall retail locations around the country.
- The company will start delivering its popcorn, freshly popped in nearby theaters, through delivery-to-home services.
- AMC’s popcorn will be available in “To Go” packages at its theaters for takeout or pickup, in case you want to grab something on your way out of the theater.
- Finally, AMC is “also exploring opportunities to offer prepackaged and ready-to-pop microwaveable AMC Theatres Perfectly Popcorn, in supermarkets, convenience stores and other foodservice venues around the country.”
Now, everyone likes popcorn. It can be modified to be as low-calorie and healthy (light salt, vegan butter and a splash of lemon juice) or decadent (lots of butter and cheese, for starters) as you like. But why is AMC making an aggressive move into the snack food game?
Why Is AMC Pushing Popcorn?
AMC has to find more ways to make money and this one is just its latest attempt to do that.
Ticket sales have been trending down since before the COVID-19 pandemic, as the movie-going audience has increasingly been trained to wait at home for smaller and medium films, only leaving the house big-budget franchise installments.
Even if audiences are interested in seeing a prestigious type film, they are well aware that they’ll usually hit streamers only a few months after they hit theaters, which has been the case with buzzed-about but underperforming films such as “The Last Duel” (now on HBO Max (T)), “Nightmare Alley” (available on both Hulu and HBO Max) and Steven Spielberg’s remake of “West Side Story,” which didn’t exactly light the box office on fire in December but was just nominated for several Oscars and will hit Disney+ (DIS) and HBO Max on March 2.
That’s great news for streaming services, which are always looking for ways to keep subscribers and get new ones. But it’s bad news for theater owners, which need people in seats.
The pandemic led to a box office drop of 81.4%, but even before that, AMC “had a reported net loss of $13.5 million in 2019, even as total revenue was up 2.4% to $1.44 billion from the year before.” The record-breaking success of “Spider-Man: No Way Home” and Aron’s plans to refinance AMC’s debt have bought it some time, but clearly the company needs to do something.
But will popcorn be enough to turn things around for AMC? Keep in mind that you can just buy a big tub of Orville Redenbacher's Gourmet Popcorn Kernels for less than $10 in most grocery stores and then just make it yourself, which has to be cheaper than ordering a freshly-popped batch from Seamless.
That said, ready-to-eat popcorn sales are strong, having seen a jump during the pandemic (people do need their snacks for movie night) and popping $1.7 billion in sales last year, an increase of 9.1% over one year ago, according to Convenience Store News. Its report did attribute some of the growth to “on-trend flavors such as sea salt, caramel and dark chocolate are on the rise,” so if AMC is really serious about this as an income-generator, it better plan to up its snack game before it hits the market.
