Northern Light
Superstar
Cineplex, under the current management has done more to deter regular moving going in general than I ever would have thought possible.
To be sure, streaming has hit the business, and the pandemic wasn't kind, but Cineplex has by wilful ignorance driven the industry down for almost 2 decades.
In this case, The Beach cinema has pretty much always struggled. Its just a bit too far west to work with the 'restaurant row and Kew Gardens and such, the area around it was never conducive to a nice stroll or a night on the town. Sure, that could be had just 3 blocks east, but people are hard to please. Added to that, no on-site parking (yes, its across the street) but in a locale that is not subway adjacent or with core-like density, cinemas rely on the drive-to crowd inordinately.
Years ago, Cineplex shelved weekday matinees here entirely. That is some very large writing on the wall, when you're trying to get the venue to pay for itself with only 40 open hours per week (Box Office hours).
Back to the overall industry, Cineplex had made the following serious errors:
1) Its over-priced itself, particularly during non-peak times. Weekday matinees at many venues used to rely on seniors or those on fixed incomes/benefits with pricing being roughly 50% of the evening show rate, even for working-age adults, and then you had seniors/youth discounts on top of that. Today, most venues operate at ~$16+ tax or about $18.40 a ticket at all times. If they had retained the old structure, you could either, have gone with $10 matinees daily, but Seniors/Youth $7. Or, you could remove the age component and go with $8, straight-up. If they did that, they would build traffic. Weekend matinees could also get a small discount, $12 a ticket instead of $15. That's how you grow your audience.
2) Relatedly, concession prices are excessive, even relative to historical norms. A medium pop, and a small popcorn will now run you $16+ making it ~$35 a person to see a movie. That's not an impulse buy. Movies are historically the fast food of out-of-home entertainment and should be priced accordingly. I accept a high-markup premise on concession, but they need to dial it back to no more than $12 for a standard drink + popcorn. That would get the basic price point down to ~$30 for an evening show, and $21 for a matinee (with concession).
What they did here was a clear strategy to maximize revenue per guest, instead of maximizing the number of guests. Imagine if McDs adopted this line of thinking, and the price of a typical combo rose to $25. For a real world example of how this doesn't work, see the ever shrinking KFC.
3) Programming. Cineplex has been lazy, in the early 90s, Cineplex had its dedicated Art House, the Carlton, with marketing that highlighted all the different countries and languages of international cinema there.
Additionally, the Highland was used to showcase British Cinema, while Canada Square often got French Cinema and between they and Famous Players, they also had date-night worthy venues like The Eglinton, and The York and 'The Uptown'.
Today, they've turned most venues into generic suburban boxes that lack character inside and out.
Even the Varsity, arguably Cineplex's Prestige Product venue, has diminished. One active aspect is that for a brief time, they actually had a piano in the lobby and had someone in playing on Friday and Saturday, but another, is failing to address their cinemas 7 and 8, which are the original Varsity. The former is tiny and lacks stadium seating, while the latter is large, but again lacks stadium seating and with a shallow rake to the floors, sight lines are poor when the venue is crowded.
The former Paramount (now Scotiabank Cinema) not only has a terrible sounding, class-less name, but also had its association to Paramount Pictures (the Klingon Ship, suspended over the escalators) removed, but also its nightclub vibe neutered. They rarely have even 1/2 the concession stands open; and their idea of how to tackle this, when redevelopment happens is just to cut the number of screens back to 8. Sigh.
Such lazy thinking hasn't been seen since Metrolinx planning a transit project.
*** end rant ***
To be sure, streaming has hit the business, and the pandemic wasn't kind, but Cineplex has by wilful ignorance driven the industry down for almost 2 decades.
In this case, The Beach cinema has pretty much always struggled. Its just a bit too far west to work with the 'restaurant row and Kew Gardens and such, the area around it was never conducive to a nice stroll or a night on the town. Sure, that could be had just 3 blocks east, but people are hard to please. Added to that, no on-site parking (yes, its across the street) but in a locale that is not subway adjacent or with core-like density, cinemas rely on the drive-to crowd inordinately.
Years ago, Cineplex shelved weekday matinees here entirely. That is some very large writing on the wall, when you're trying to get the venue to pay for itself with only 40 open hours per week (Box Office hours).
Back to the overall industry, Cineplex had made the following serious errors:
1) Its over-priced itself, particularly during non-peak times. Weekday matinees at many venues used to rely on seniors or those on fixed incomes/benefits with pricing being roughly 50% of the evening show rate, even for working-age adults, and then you had seniors/youth discounts on top of that. Today, most venues operate at ~$16+ tax or about $18.40 a ticket at all times. If they had retained the old structure, you could either, have gone with $10 matinees daily, but Seniors/Youth $7. Or, you could remove the age component and go with $8, straight-up. If they did that, they would build traffic. Weekend matinees could also get a small discount, $12 a ticket instead of $15. That's how you grow your audience.
2) Relatedly, concession prices are excessive, even relative to historical norms. A medium pop, and a small popcorn will now run you $16+ making it ~$35 a person to see a movie. That's not an impulse buy. Movies are historically the fast food of out-of-home entertainment and should be priced accordingly. I accept a high-markup premise on concession, but they need to dial it back to no more than $12 for a standard drink + popcorn. That would get the basic price point down to ~$30 for an evening show, and $21 for a matinee (with concession).
What they did here was a clear strategy to maximize revenue per guest, instead of maximizing the number of guests. Imagine if McDs adopted this line of thinking, and the price of a typical combo rose to $25. For a real world example of how this doesn't work, see the ever shrinking KFC.
3) Programming. Cineplex has been lazy, in the early 90s, Cineplex had its dedicated Art House, the Carlton, with marketing that highlighted all the different countries and languages of international cinema there.
Additionally, the Highland was used to showcase British Cinema, while Canada Square often got French Cinema and between they and Famous Players, they also had date-night worthy venues like The Eglinton, and The York and 'The Uptown'.
Today, they've turned most venues into generic suburban boxes that lack character inside and out.
Even the Varsity, arguably Cineplex's Prestige Product venue, has diminished. One active aspect is that for a brief time, they actually had a piano in the lobby and had someone in playing on Friday and Saturday, but another, is failing to address their cinemas 7 and 8, which are the original Varsity. The former is tiny and lacks stadium seating, while the latter is large, but again lacks stadium seating and with a shallow rake to the floors, sight lines are poor when the venue is crowded.
The former Paramount (now Scotiabank Cinema) not only has a terrible sounding, class-less name, but also had its association to Paramount Pictures (the Klingon Ship, suspended over the escalators) removed, but also its nightclub vibe neutered. They rarely have even 1/2 the concession stands open; and their idea of how to tackle this, when redevelopment happens is just to cut the number of screens back to 8. Sigh.
Such lazy thinking hasn't been seen since Metrolinx planning a transit project.
*** end rant ***
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) Ellis is retiring at the end of the year so that might make things change over at Cineplex.