Poll of the Day > groupon is apparently terrible for businesses.

(+) Yeah! (+)

Ive never used it but a lot of places like the idea. give customers a deal one time, then some will come back at regular price if they like it. Apparently most people take the deal and never come back, so the business likely lost money to serve them and wont get em again. But a reddit thread i read was recounting groupon stories from the point of businesses, and one had me dying:

"I used to be the manager for a large 18 screen movie theater. My corporate office decided to roll out a groupon - one ticket and one large popcorn for 5 dollars. This was a luxury theater. We were the first in our area to do the full leather recliners, get a bar, get better than horrible food, etc. So a value of ticket + popcorn is normally going to be like 20-30 dollars. You can see the attraction.

Anyway my cinema was selling out of literally every single show from 9 am to midnight, every day. About 90% of our customers for this summer were groupon customers. There were customers who had misunderstood the groupon fighting with assistant managers literally constantly. I had to start scheduling managers for "groupin misunderstanding" shifts. Cops were called 3-4 times a week because of groupons.

The worst part was that we were turning away most customers just because we were sold out of literally every showing (it was summer 2015, biggest movie summer in decades). People thought that having a groupon was their ticket, not that it allowed them to purchase a ticket and food at a discounted rate. So they thought they already had a ticket but teh show would inevitably be sold out. The wording was super ambiguous. There were a ton of other logistical issues which were only solvable via a ton of boring labor or allowing mass fraud.

Ultimately the theater ended up losing about 10-12 million dollars that summer. Groupon customers refused to buy anything that wasn't their free popcorn, and a ton of ticket revenue was lost. Our average food spending per customer went from like 12 bucks to under 2. I don't know what the situation looked like across the entire chain but I'm pretty sure it was a 100+ MM fuckup. Tons of theater-level managers quit over it (your bonus is super reliant on food spending) and the corporate office had a ton of firings.

TLDR Groupon ruined my summer 2015, led to 5+ employee breakdowns, 10+ customer fistfights, 1 full on brawl, and tens of millions of dollars in lost profit."

$5 for a ticket and a popcorn of any size is absolutely insane. Oo Not sure that any theaters in my area still even offer a $5 matinee. Did the original Reddit thread reference what chain this was?

I can see these kinds of offers absolutely killing businesses, although that story is crazier than anything I might expect.
---

No it did not.

the OP in the thread was about how a person went into a business at closing time with a groupon getting angry after being told they were closing in five minutes.

"but you close at 9!"

No, the hours for the groupon help line close at 9, not the business itself.

I went to the theater for Spider-Man not long ago and a basic popcorn/drink combo was something like 13 dollars, it's absolutely ridiculous. This theater is in a mall with a large grocery store too, so I imagine it's incredibly easy to smuggle things in.
---

i know theatres make money off of concessions rather than ticket sales, but i usually just eat beforehand and can go 2 hours without eating.

Havent used Groupon in years

It used to be good but the last time I checked it there was nothing but offers for a bunch of dumb stuff I would never want
---

I can go without eating, but I really need to drink so I've usually just sneaked in some water bottles when I've gone. And while I'm sure that most of their money is made on concession given the absurd markups, the cost to a theater per showing *should* be theoretically fixed so they're making a little incremental money even when people sneak stuff in just by having the extra bodies in there.

However, with ticket prices being outrageous and the theater experience being a little unpleasant, I usually just wait for stuff to hit NFI, etc. I think the *last* movie in an actual theater I saw was Deadpool.
---

the theater here doesn't care if you bring in your own drinks. food, they care though.

and no alcohol, i guess.

The Harkins theaters by us have cups and shirts. You buy them once and get $1 sodas and small popcorns for free for the year.
---