Why Do Movie Theaters Sell Popcorn?

For millions of moviegoers, the idea of visiting the local theater automatically conjures memories of popcorn. But this wasn’t always the case – so why, out of all snacks, did popcorn become the #1 snack for film?

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
Welcome to brain Stuff from how Stuff Works. Hey, brain stuff,
it's Christian Seger. When you see a movie in the theaters,
you expect certain things like a heck of a good time,
some amazing sound, and a story played out on a
gigantic screen. You also probably think about popcorn. But that's weird, right,

(00:25):
How of all the snacks on earth did popcorn become
the mainstay of movie theaters. Well, it starts with a
bit of history. See, popcorn had been around for ages,
and it was a popular snack at nineteenth century fairs
and carnivals, especially after the invention of the first steam
powered popcorn popper back in eighty five. People love the crunchy, salty,

(00:51):
inexpensive snack, and movie theaters hated it. During the era
of silent film, these companies followed many of the same
rules as traditional the eaters, and they did not want
to be associated with a loud food that could distract
from the show. Additionally, there was a little bit of
a class consideration here, since audiences had to read the
dialogue on the screen, they had to be literate a

(01:15):
k a. A better sort of people with superior education.
Allowing popcorn inside was in the opinion of these theater
owners kind of like throwing sawdust on the floor and
just saying, sure, just spit wherever you want. Talkies or
films with spoken dialogue emerged in nine and this brought

(01:35):
movie theaters to the common folk. Suddenly anyone could cough
up some change, grab a seat, and understand what was
going on. This was also the time of the Great Depression,
when Americans from coast to coast pined for cheap, escapist entertainment.
So the average Americans finally found the cinema, and they
brought their snack culture along, and the depression affected theaters

(01:57):
as well. Theaters with the best chances of surviving were
the ones that gave customers what they wanted. If they
wanted to eat popcorn while watching a film, well so
be it. At first, independent vendors sold popcorn outside the theater,
profiting from the casual passers by as well as future
movie patrons. Since corn kernels were dirt, cheap, popcorn became

(02:21):
even more popular and things escalated. Movie theaters allowed vendors
to sell popcorn in the lobby for a small fee.
Eventually they cut out the vendors entirely, acquiring their own poppers.
During World War Two, popcorn sales saw another bump. Sugar
was rationed, which made many conventional sweet snacks and drinks

(02:42):
more expensive, at least that is when they were available
at all. Popcorn, of course, only required salt and popcorn kernels,
neither of which were hard to come by. But by
then the association between movies and popcorn was firmly established
in the mind of the American public. This association can
and use today. But there's another wrinkle to the story.

(03:03):
And you might be saying, Christian, Okay, popcorn was cheap
in the depression or whatever, But what happened when did
it become so expensive? Good question. The price hike really
kicked in on all concessions back in the nineteen seventies.
See Contrary to popular belief, your local movie theater doesn't
actually make that much bank off the films it screens. Instead,

(03:27):
theaters use concessions to stay in business. According to the
Stanford Business School, concessions comprise only about of a theater's
gross revenue, but of its profits. This makes sense when
we consider how theaters must split ticket revenue with distributors,
but can pocket of whatever they managed to sell at

(03:48):
the snack counter. The bulk cost of the ingredients is
laughably small, and the profit margin is huge, and don't forget,
the stuff is still addictively delicious. Check out the brainstuff
channel on YouTube, and for more on this and thousands
of other topics, visit how stuff works dot com