Hosting Drive-in Movie Nights During COVID-19

As businesses prepare to open their doors and start accepting customers, many struggle to entice people to come back out. Store owners will have to be both creative and safe to get people to engage with them again. One such popular idea is for creating customer engagement is by having drive-in movie nights.

We recently published a How-To Guide on Safely Hosting Drive-In Movie Nights during COVID-19. We’ve received an overwhelming amount of positive responses and also a fair amount of questions, so we decided to write this post to address the most important concerns.

Before reading this article, we encourage you to read the guidelines packet to gain a better understanding and context.

Consumer Confidence

One of the questions we received multiple times was:

My local town isn’t requiring us to take the precautions you mentioned in your guide, so why should we?

The most important part of successfully opening back up is gaining consumer confidence. We’ve seen several cases where state officials have reopened and people were fearful to come out.

Imagine yourself in the shoes of the customer who have thoughts such as:

• How do I know the waiter/waitress does not have COVID?
• They are touching so many credit cards, are they also touching the food?
• Can COVID come through the air vents of the car?

The list of fears goes on. When we suggest protocols such as “have your employees go through weekly COVID testing”, it’s to gain consumers trust and assuage their fears. You want them to feel like they have some control of the situation, and that you have their best interest in mind.

Another suggestion is to take it a step further by publishing your protocols for your customers to see. That can be of the form of:

1. Post your policies on your website, social media and on the event page
2. Having your policies posted during the screening
3. Giving out paper pamphlets of the policies at the event

The more confident and safe people feel about how they are being protected, the more likely they are to show up at your place of business.

Working With Local Officials

Another key point to touch upon is how we indicated the need to first talk with your local government officials before doing a screening or any sort of promotion to attract customers. There are a few good reasons.

1. Police

In many areas if your event is not approved, the police may shut it down. And it’s not good business to have people show up and then be forced to leave. Working with your local officials can prevent this situation from occurring.

2. Publicity

Another important part of working with officials is the potential for free publicity. Your local government wants people to spend money and businesses to generate revenue to make payroll. Part of gaining their support can lead to free publicity.

3. Permits

Some events require permits. That can be permits for using a public space, permits to allow noisy events, and any other requirements your town or city might have. Make sure you have all the permits needed to legally host your event.

4. Alcohol

Alcohol has huge markups for businesses that generate great returns. But selling alcohol legally is not always feasible, especially with something like a drive-in theater. But your local officials might be able to make exceptions. For example, in Atlanta GA, bars were allowed to sell curbside cocktails (drinks to go) during their shelter in-place. Talk with your local officials on what’s possible.

Calculating Your Expenses

In our guide, we provided a worksheet to help you calculate what you can expect to make from a movie night. Below we will talk you through the revenue, expenses and few secrets to maximize profit.

Equipment + Licensing Costs

First we want to understand the equipment costs. This will most likely be projector, projection screen, sound system and film license. We mention both in our guide and below how to save money, but these expenses will likely cost between $100 and $500 per event. For our example let’s go with $200.

Smallwares Costs

The next cost is the food delivery and auxiliary costs. This can include disposable menus, forks, knives, trays, trash bags, etc. And if you cater out to a location, there are other costs like burners to keep the food warm, aluminum trays, etc. Expect these costs to be between $20 and $100, but in our example we’re going to say $50.

Staff Costs

Now the final costs to factor is in the staff. As an example, let’s have 2 people that cook the food, a person to act as the waiter, and a different person to deliver the orders to the car. If you are paying them $15 per hour, and give 3 hours to cook the food, that is $90. For the waiter and delivery person, working a 2 hour movie which includes clean-up, that is another is $60. Your total staffing cost will be around $150.

To add up all the costs: $200 for equipment, $50 for auxiliary costs, and $150 employees — the total is $400. I personally add $150 of padding for things that might be overlooked. This is also making the assumption that the parking lot is free because it’s the restaurant’s lot. Our example total cost is $550.

Maximizing Your Revenue

Now let’s say as an example your average dish price is $10. First because you are providing an experience, raise the price a few dollars, so $12 a dish but you could go higher. Next account for costs of buying the food, cooking it and any other costs that go into your food preparation. In our example, this is $2 per dish. A $12 dish — $2 in prep=$10 net made per dish. If total costs are $550, you will need to sell 55 dishes to break even — which can be easy with a few secrets! Read below how.

Family Movie Benefit

There is a little secret that people usually do not go to the movies alone, especially to family movies. When you are picking a film to show, you can increase your chances of being profitable by choosing a family movie to attract a higher attendance rate per car. If an average of 2 people come per car, you only need 27 cars to break even. If an average family of 4 come per car, you only need 13 cars!!! That’s not so hard to accomplish given the costs and revenue described above.

Ticketed vs Free Screenings

Another little secret to understand is free screenings vs ticketed screening. Choosing to do a free screening means you will pay a higher license price, upwards of $200 to $400. But free screenings attract families who are on a budget and will likely spend more on food. Ticket screenings lower your risk but also lower the amount of people that will show up and order food. For information on getting a license, read the next section.

1000% Mark-up

The last secret is understanding your margins and why movie theaters serve popcorn. When a theater sells a bag of popcorn for $7, that bag only cost them around $0.37 cents to produce. The mark-up for popcorn at that price is 1,700%!!! Customizing your menu for the movie night with highly marked up items can significantly bolster your margins and profit.

Licensing Of Films

The last commonly asked question we received was:

Do you offer more titles than what is in your catalog?

And the answer is yes. If you have certain movies that you want to show, just ask! We can find the license holder and get you the rights for the movie. Our role in movie nights comes down two things:

1. Securing the rights to legally show the films
2. Assist in marketing

Neither of these services we charge you for either! Given that you are opening back up and budgets are tight, we have suggested several ways you can lower expenses. Examples include:

• Instead of buying/renting speakers, use an FM Radio or our app to play in people’s cars
• If you have a flat smooth white surface, that can become a projection screen
• Instead of paying a license fee, take a ticket sales split with the film licensor
• Negotiate, negotiate, negotiate. There is always room for negotiation when hosting events.

What’s Next?

Hopefully we’ve answered many of these questions you might have as a restaurant or venue owner for not only drive-in movie nights, but any kind event that will entail a public gathering. If you are interested in hosting a movie night or have more questions, please do reach out and we will be happy to work with you.