Movie munchies have come a long way since popcorn, Coke and choc tops.
Not that these humbler menu items - which are still popular and highly profitable - have been replaced. But to entice people from their homes and streaming services many cinemas, including Dendy Canberra and Palace Electric, are making moviegoing more of an experience, especially when it comes to eating and drinking.
We're talking about treats such as charcuterie and cheese boards, wine, craft beer, ciders and cocktails, brewed coffee, burgers, tacos, nachos, tiramisu and sesame prawn toasties.
Cinemas have to pay distribution companies a percentage of films' box office earnings - Palace Electric chief executive Benjamin Zeccola said this ranged from 35 to 50 per cent of the take, depending on the film. This means that foods and beverages - where the cinema gets to keep all the revenue - provide a substantial part of cinema revenues.
Dendy Canberra's general manager Leigh Barnett, who is also in charge of the company's food and beverage innovation, said, "Our candy bar and premium kitchen are there to support the business. It's fair to say, without them cinemas wouldn't exist."
Likewise, Zeccola says at Palace food and drink account for "around half our revenue - they're really important for us."
And both have a far wider and fancier range of food and beverage offerings than would have been thought of a few decades ago. Different items are tried and the preferences of different populations are noted and taken into account.
It's a long way from the days of kids rolling Jaffas down the aisles -neither cinema sells the red orange-chocolate confectionery (apparently there's no real demand) though other chocolates and lollies are available.
The Canberra location is one of two Dendy cinemas in Australia so far with a full premium lounge (the other is in Brisbane). Barnett said Canberrans loved it.
Sales of the premium lounge menu items were increasing, Barnett said, part of Canberra's enthusiastic embrace of the experience.
"We worked tirelessly with an executive chef consultant and our head chef to ensure the menu was an upmarket yet approachable move away from your traditional sliders and pizza," Barnett says.
"Our Dendy Deluxe with Cheese Burger is hugely popular ... our pulled pork nachos, Dendy three-piece feed, grilled flatbread with hummus, potato scallops, lobster rolls and our churro sundae are all crowd pleasers."
There is a children's menu in premium lounge - including a healthy Make Mum Happy platter (which tends to be ordered more by grown-ups). But mostly, Barnett says, it's adults who partake of the premium experience.
Getting back to the basics, popcorn - cheap for cinemas to buy, straightforward to make, highly profitable - remains a cinema staple as it has since the depression of the 1930s. Both Dendy and Palace take it seriously.
Barnett said,"Our popcorn is 100 per cent vegan, and popped with coconut oil that is infused with butter flavouring. One small spoonful of popcorn salt is added to the kettle when cooking."
Zeccola, who grew up working in Palace, said the chain switched from coconut oil to the healthier olive oil to cook its popcorn about 15 years ago.
Not surprisingly, the food and drink being consumed in a darkened cinema can be spilled easily.
Barnett says, "Popcorn makes a mess" - after a children's films there can be a lot of it about, but it can be cleaned up quite efficiently.
The worst products in terms of spillage, he says, are probably sticky drinks and chocolate on seats.
"You may have noticed cinema carpets tend to be a multitude of colours and patterns," Barnett says,
"These carpets are extremely hard wearing and are good at disguising those raspberry Fanta spills until we can get our steam cleaner on it."
Choc tops have been a favourite for decades in Australia but aren't known everywhere: when British-born Palace Electric general manager Aziz Kallala started working at a Palace cinema and was told he would be making them, his response was, "What's a choc top?" He soon found out, from first-hand experience, so to speak.
Palace and Dendy both sell choc tops made with Connoisseur ice cream and hand dipped by staff on site in a variety of flavours, though the classic vanilla remains the most popular at both venues.
"We love playing with the choc top, we recently produced a bright orange one for Garfield," Barnett says,
Also common to both are post-mix Coca-Cola products - Barnett says they're more popular than the bottled versions. He said the base flavour concentrate, delivered in 15-litre bag in boxes, was mixed in specific amounts with carbonated water. Original Coke is the most popular flavour overall though at some interstate suburban cinemas, Fanta varieties also sell well.
Barnett said that there were standard seasonal menus for Gold Class cinemas as well as speciality items tailored to particular movies and dates: for Killers of the Flower Moon, three and a half hours long, there was a six-course set menu that included chicken parfait, stuffed zucchini flower and lamb loin skewers.
At the regular Candy Bar there have been creations such as lamington choc tops for Australia Day, an orange Garfield choc top and a school holiday Unicorn Freezy (frozen Fanta topped with fairy floss).
Some menu items are permanent, while others come and go.
Palace Electric no longer sells hot pasta.
"It's very hard to maintain the high quality," Zeccola said - and without that, he says, it wasn't worth doing.
Although Palace Electric doesn't have a premium lounge cinema - there's not enough space - Zeccola said there's still plenty of thought and care going into the wide-ranging menus.
There are special items made for special events such as film festivals. For the Italian Film Festival, Zeccola says, the offerings included tiramisu choc tops and popcorn seasoned with paprika and garlic.
Both cinemas have well-stocked bars and liquor licenses with and staff trained in the responsible service of alcohol.
Zeccola says, "In Canberra we can run a more diverse and expensive wine list than anywhere else in Australia."
He compiles the cinemas' wine lists and says locally made Clonakilla Shiraz is a particular favourite: "Canberrans seem to love it."
It's served in real wine glasses, which people appreciate.
And local beers from Bentspoke and Capital Brewing are popular,
In winter the cinema makes its own mulled wine on site.
At Dendy there are ciders, cocktails (including on tap cocktails), spirits, sparkling wine and champagne.
Barnett says alcohol-related problems with customers are uncommon: "They pop up from time to time as they do in any hospitality business, but it's not really the environment you go to drink yourself silly."
Palace's Canberra-based head of operations, Lilly Ford, looks after most of its food and beverages says the cinema offers a wide range of beers in Canberra including foreign brews such as the Italian Peroni and Japanese Asati.
But the beverage side is not all about Coke and alcohol. Both cinemas sell hot drinks, too.
Dendy offers coffee produced by grinders and offers several different types of tea, chai and at some venues mulled wine.
Barnett says, "We currently serve cafe style slices and muffins and cake with coffee and are looking at expanding our Candy Bar offering in the near future. Watch this space!"
"We're very proud of our coffee," Ford says.
Palace staff are trained to be baristas and they make the coffee using the St Ali brand from Melbourne, with flat whites and long blacks topping the popularity list.
Charcuterie and cheese boards do well as do coffee and cakes and Zeccola said, "I want to bring back the most decadent toasties - we're waiting for supply."
Palace Electric sells Jono's Jerky and sandwiches from Double Drummer, both local suppliers.
The most popular sandwich is the chicken piadini - chicken, avocado and lettuce.
Palace Electric source biscuits and muffins from Bob & Pete's in Sydney: since these items don't sell as well, the Sydney company is cheaper than buying here and there's a cafe directly across from the cinema in the same building.
"We like to focus on what we do well," Zeccola says.
While cinema food has gone upmarket, the regular menu items won't be disappearing any time soon.
And while there might not be Jaffas on offer, Ford said, "Maltesers roll well in my experience and we definitely sell a lot of them!"
