CLEVELAND--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Aug 29, 2023--

As I sit in the dark of Screen 2 at Oxford’s Curzon cinema, a woman a few seats away from me does something I’ve not seen before: she orders pizza. Specifically, she orders £64.85 worth of pizzas and chips for her and her family. A few minutes later – after the film has started, in fact – the food is brought to her, as though she was sitting in any regular restaurant and not in a cinema. Eating at the pictures is becoming ever more sophisticated, with ushers bringing you food as fancy as sushi without you having to move a muscle. Is it getting a bit silly? It’s no secret that cinemas have endured a range of crises over the past few years, partly thanks to the rise of streaming and then the pandemic and even more streaming. Cinemas across the country have shut down and forecasters predict that screens won’t be as full as they were pre-Covid until 2025. Some of the cinemas that survived, like AMC, are saddled with billions of pounds worth of debt. Just showing people films may not cut it in this difficult new era. As they fight to survive, cinemas are having to up their game. They have to offer “experiences”. Christina Flourentzou, operations manager at Curzon, says they learned that customers wanted more food and drink with their film thanks to their feedback service, Feed It Back. This happened before Covid struck, she points out, but post-pandemic the company rolled their restaurants out on a bigger scale. “What we’re trying to do is elevate the guest experience,” she says. “For us it’s about giving the guest the best possible experience; so anything that they want, we can give them, essentially.” At my local Curzon this includes padron peppers, mushroom and truffle croquettes, and vegan hot dogs. What Curzon has discovered, according to Flourentzou, is that when at-seat food and drink service is offered, the spend per customer goes up – often by as much as £2 per person. There is a different mindset when ordering at your seat compared with ordering at the till: “You take your coat off, your hands are free, you look at a menu, suddenly someone comes to you and says, ‘What would you like?’ Your mentality changes.” On any new site Curzon will now endeavour to install tables at seats, in order to allow for this in-screen service. Eating entire meals in your cinema seat is becoming more and more popular but it isn’t a brand-new phenomenon. Studio Movie Grill, born in Texas but with sites in states including California, Florida and Georgia, has been offering at-seat food and drink since 2000. Tearlach Hutcheson, the company’s vice president for film, calls this kind of operation a “cinema eatery”. He agrees that it isn’t just the pandemic that has caused a shift in customer priorities; it’s been happening over the past 20 years as home entertainment systems have become increasingly more sophisticated and cinemas have had to compete. “I think that people are looking for a different experience when they go to the theatres,” he says. “We have to provide a more luxurious catering experience to the guest.” I think the immersion is only going to get more and more. I think that everyone is going to adapt because this is what people want. I don’t think the cinema is enough now ... I don’t think it’s ever going to go back to popcorn and drinks Amy Fernando, creator of Taste Film At Studio Movie Grill, food revenue is more than twice that of ticket sales, and its CEO says that business is better for the company than before the pandemic. In cinemas, profit margins have always been higher on food than on tickets – though these margins are far smaller for cooked food than for popcorn and Coke. The kitchen staff at Studio Movie Grill are often dishing out six meals per minute. A recent innovation was a kitchen printer that printed orders faster than ever before. Servers are allowed to bring food and drink to guests at any point (unlike Curzon, where, Flourentzou says, it should strictly happen during the adverts and trailers) but the bulk of orders are placed within the first 30 minutes of arrival. Studio Movie Grill could represent the future of the cinema-going experience: it might soon be completely normal to bundle the film-and-a-meal experience into one. What Hutcheson is confident about is that cinemas will become more of a “destination spot” in order to entice people to leave the comfort of their homes. Flourentzou doesn’t think I’m right to call it “panic” but it does seem like cinemas are urgently fighting to stay alive. One person who knows all about using food and cinema to create an experience is Amy Fernando, creator of Taste Film, an enterprise that shows films to customers while serving them food featured in those films. Watching Goodfellas in 2016, Fernando was inspired by the infamous shaving garlic scene to marry the two things she cared most about. Seven years later, she has swapped teaching for running the business full-time. “I think the beauty of coming to the cinema, or doing an experience like this, is sharing it with like-minded people,” she says. “Post-Covid there is something special in getting dressed up, going out, and sharing the experience with other people.” When I go to watch Taste Film’s version of Mrs Doubtfire, I agree. I didn’t think of the film as one featuring all that much food but at appropriate moments we are served a savoury birthday muffin; chilli salt and pepper chicken wings; a meringue martini; tiger prawn skewers with chips and salad; a pina colada; and a chilli and chocolate mousse. As Fernando says, the frisson of fun is largely to do with two communal experiences: everyone not just watching the film at the same time but eating the same food at the same time. This won’t be replicable in regular cinemas (a Taste Film ticket is £75, for example) but the company is going from strength to strength, partnering with the big streamers, and its growth is indicative of people’s updated expectations around film. “Guests want more,” says Fernando, “and younger people want more.” Ultimately, of course, it will be the quality of films that govern whether or not cinemas stay afloat. This summer has seen an unusual boom in quality and business, with Barbie and Oppenheimer proving critical darlings as well as excellent earners. But where the cinemas can’t control how good the films are, they can control the various offerings they provide around them. “I think the immersion is only going to get more and more,” says Fernando. “I think that everyone is going to adapt because this is what people want. I don’t think the cinema is enough now.” Hutcheson and Flourentzou agree. Hand in hand with this development, Hutcheson says, will be a resurgence in “purer cinematic experiences” – people wanting to experience cinema with as sophisticated a picture and sound experience as possible. He believes that it won’t be long before cinema eateries – at the moment confined to more modest theatres – will also enter the IMAX space. Look at the signs and it certainly seems as though it will be difficult to put the genie back in the bottle – which means cinemagoers may need to brace themselves for an exciting new range of smells. Fernando is probably right when she says: “I don’t think it’s ever going to go back to popcorn and drinks.” Read More Too gay, too weird, too pregnant: The most controversial Barbie dolls in history Doing things alone isn’t ‘self-love’ – we don’t need to make everything empowering Sizzling kitchen drama The Bear is spicing up the dating game for chefs ‘It started with a radish’: Chef Simon Rogan reflects on restaurant L’Enclume at 20 The true story – and murky history – of Portuguese piri piri oil 30-minute summer recipes for all the family to enjoy

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Defining Dishes is an IndyEats column that explores the significance of food at key moments in our lives. From recipes that have been passed down for generations, to flavours that hold a special place in our hearts, food shapes every part of our lives in ways we might not have ever imagined. There is a family scene I would love to engrave into my memory that involves my father, myself and my son, all making prawn wontons in one kitchen. Prawn wontons are so simple, like all good dishes, and they have a really special place in my heart. I have very fond memories of making them with my father, who is from Hong Kong, when I was growing up and it is my favourite dish. Now, it’s my five-year-old son’s favourite dish as well and he’s the same age I was when I first started making prawn wontons with my father, so it makes me excited to share the dish with him. When my son was younger, his Ye Ye (grandfather) would bring homemade wontons whenever he came over to my house in Peckham. But just recently, we were over at my parents’ home, and he made his first wonton. We were all very proud! It’s so nice because it’s a dish that has run right through my family, it was brought and championed here by my dad. He moved here in 1975 and has the classic first-generation immigrant story. He worked three jobs, moved around a lot, saved money and opened his first restaurant in 1985, 10 years after arriving in England. He finally retired in 2017, but he couldn’t get away from my restaurants. I opened my own establishment, Mr Bao in Peckham in 2016, and then Daddy Bao in my father’s honour. Even now when he comes around to visit, I make him talk more about restaurants. I think he enjoys it, though, and it reminds him of home. That’s really important now because ever since the 2019-2020 mass protests in Hong Kong, the country is a sad place at the moment if you’re from there. But it’s still an amazing place. My favourite part about making wontons from scratch was always the time spent with my dad. The chit chat between us, me kneeling on a stool and him standing at the counter. My hands were not as dextrous at that age and I certainly wasn’t practised, but he would be there to help show the right way to make the little parcels and finish them up for me. The bonding moment is what I cherish the most. Mum is English and she got involved too, she is actually amazing at it. Prawn wontons are also part of Christmas time for my family. Our big tradition is to have a massive steamboat on Boxing Day, which most people of Chinese descent will be familiar with. It usually involves a big, steaming pot of soup on a constant boil, and everyone sits around the table cooking fresh, raw ingredients in it and eating as they go. Prawn wontons are a big, big part of that meal for us, especially now that we have a couple of young kids running around at Christmas time, they really love it. The thing I remember most about making wontons with Dad is the filling. He has his own method for making the prawn mince that goes inside the parcels. He gets his prawns and chops them up, mixes them with any additional ingredients like garlic, and then he would make me pick up a handful of the mixture and throw it back down onto the chopping board, pick it up and throw it back down. It somehow aerates the mince and softens it, and makes it stickier so there aren’t big chunks of prawns floating around. I haven’t really adapted Dad’s recipe for myself, aside from the type of dipping sauce I like to have with them. We keep it very traditional. Oh, I suppose I do have a slight modification, actually. I like to mix gambas (white) prawns from the southwest coast of Spain with North Atlantic shrimps, which are tiny, tiny little crustaceans the size of your nail. They have got a really good flavour. I like to chop those up into the mince with the bigger prawns, add a bit of salt and white pepper, stir it through and then do the throwing method as my dad does. We usually make our own wonton skins. In a pinch, we’ll use shop-bought ones, but when we know we’ve got time we’ll make our own. At the moment, Dad makes handmade dumplings with my sister for her business so they have a dumpling skins machine – but we used to make them by hand, old-school style. He would roll them out because he could get the thickness of the skins right. It wasn’t possible when I was young as I had no idea and was clumsy! They have to be thin, but not so thin that they break or the wontons will open up in the water. It’s something I haven’t managed to master, but there’s still time. Some places don’t even use the regular wonton skins, and they are still amazing. One of my favourite restaurants ever was in Hong Kong – it has closed down now – but it was a hole-in-the-wall type of place that served two types of wontons: classic wontons or fish skin wontons. That was their entire menu. They used fish skins instead of pastry skins to wrap their wontons, and they were something like £1.20 for a bowl at the time. It was definitely the best meal I had with Mum, Dad and my sisters in Hong Kong. The wontons get boiled for two minutes. You can make a wonton soup with a base stock, using ginger, spring onions, salt, pork bones. Boil that down and skim off the top. Or, you can dip the wontons into a chili garlic sauce, which is how my dad likes – although another way I differ from Dad is that I like to add black vinegar to the sauce of soy sauce, garlic and chili, to add an extra layer of acid. You can also eat them as they are, they are completely delicious. My stomach is rumbling as I think about them. As my son gets older, it will be really nice to be able to make wontons altogether, the three generations of us at the kitchen island, chatting away. That’s what I’d like my son to take away from those sessions, the memory of doing it with his Ye Ye and me. I’d also like him to, in time, be able to link quality to food and what you’re putting in your body. I want him to understand that even though it’s so easy to go to the shop and buy something, everything starts out as a living thing. A prawn is an animal and a chive is a real plant grown in the soil. You don’t have to make it yourself and you should go to restaurants to support them, but when you do go, you’ll have a better appreciation for it. Frank Yeung is the chef-owner of Mr Bao and Daddy Bao in London. Read More The dish that defines me: Alex Outhwaite’s Vietnamese bun cha The dish that defines me: Eddie Huang’s Taiwanese beef noodle soup In Horto: Hearty, outdoorsy fare in a secret London Bridge garden Five dinner ideas from around the world to try this week Hi Barbie! Nine cocktails inspired by the doll’s most iconic outfits