Self-Serve Butter

Went to see The Da Vinci Code last night for FREE*. I went to the brand new Cinemark theatre nearby my house. Having helped open a Sony Loews theatre in 1997 I was anxious to see our closest new theatre so I took my *Pepsi cash free movie ticket and avoided paying the $7.75 ticket price. I also used an in the mail coupon to get a FREE small popcorn. Before you laugh understand that I was able to upgrade to the large popcorn by paying the difference. All told my night at the movies complete with a large drink and large popcorn only cost me $5.25. I could have paid $15.75.

When I ordered my popcorn I asked for the "butter flavor" to be layered. The young man scooped some popcorn into the bag and walked to the end of the counter and pumped some yellow liquid(partially hydrogenated soybean oil) onto the popcorn. He came back and filled the bag with popcorn. He informed me I could top off the popcorn with oil on my own, self-serve butter topping dispensers.

I do like the idea of controlling how much butter flavor I put on my popcorn, but this makes it difficult to layer the flavor. With salt I am able to put some in a courtesy cup for later dispensing. It would be awkward to carry a cup full of butter flavoring into the theatre. Lucky for me last night I was the only one in line since it was 10:30 pm. On a busy night I guess I would have needed to leave the movie to spritz up the second level of popcorn. I could time it with my need to use the restroom since I do order the 44 ounce drink.

Nice theatre, great service, good popcorn, decent movie.