Hello and welcome to Decoder, I'm your live detail editor-in-chief of The Verge and Decoder is my new podcast about big ideas and other problems. Today, we're talking about a big problem that needs big ideas, how and when to reopen movie theaters during this pandemic. My guest is Shelley Taylor, the CEO of Alamo Draft House. That's the quirky and beloved theater chain with locations across the country.
Now, Shelley's in a really interesting spot. She started her job as CEO on April 30th. That's this past April 30th after the pandemic had begun and after Alamo had already shut down 41 locations. Shelley had been an executive for Planet Fitness in Starbucks and Alamo's founder, Tim Leed, recruited and hired her before the pandemic to manage growth and expansion.
But instead, she found herself confronting the crisis. We talked about that transition and what stuff she had to take to get her company back on solid ground, where she could save money, and where she got caught with damage to the Alamo customer experience. I will tell you Shelley is not shy about saying the government has failed to manage the pandemic effectively. We also talked about what it will take to safely reopen theaters and what the future of the movies looks like, especially in the age of streaming.
Streaming already shifted the movie business towards blockbusters. All those mid-budget romantic comedies have kind of turned into Netflix movies, but the pandemic means even blockbusters shifting to streaming. Wonder Woman 1984 is on HBO Max's Christmas Day. It turns out there's more discussion between the big studios and theater chains about that you might think Shelley offered us a peak at those conversations.
Also, I completely love a business that has a high fixed cost before expensive whiteboards. Please do it. All right, here's Shelley Taylor, CEO of Alamo Draft House. Really?
Shelley Taylor, CEO of Alamo Draft House. Welcome to Decoder. Thank you. Glad to be here.
I was just reading your bio in the background here. I got to start with this. You came to see Alamo Draft House on April 30th, so you have stepped into chaos. I think Alamo actually shut down 41 theaters in March.
What was this recruiting pitch like? Do they call you and say, hey, are you interested? Was it already in the works? It seems like a wild way to become a CEO of a movie theater chain.
Yeah, it does feel wild, but it was in the works at Christmas. When Tim and I met and started talking and just drawn to this incredible brand and this opportunity to help take something iconic and grow even larger, right? And then all of a sudden, the pandemic, and here we are. So we've got this little issue to get through that we can go back to the original plans.
What was the first day April 30th you showed up? You got to introduce yourself to everyone. There's usually a script, right? Then you see what follows.
You say something like, first, I just want to listen. There's the usual stuff. Was it very different this time, or did you just come up running? A little bit, right?
You do talk about just really wanting to listen and get to know people. You don't have the advantage of the water cooler in the office in that proximity, but at the same time, there is nothing like a crisis to create a need for connection and speed to trust, and really fortunate that the company and the teammates have been so welcoming and willing to just assume good attempts and want to move forward versus having to do some of that initial stuff. So it was pretty fast, and no one's kicked me out. We're seven months in, and I'm still here, and things are going pretty well, considering.
So I was trying to ask everybody to begin about decision-making frameworks. Before on the draft house, you would see a large group of planet fitness locations. You were at Disney before that. Tell me about your general way of making decisions.
How do you think about evaluating your choices and then actually make coming to a decision? I think it's a couple of things. One is knowing who and what you are. It's the beauty of everywhere I've worked has had a really clear sense of their purpose and values and the problems that they're trying to solve in this world.
So always starting with that framework and driving from there. I think that one of the things that I took from Starbucks and had valued over the years is that you always put people into that equation. So when you're looking at a decision, it's the stakeholders, it's your customers. It's the people on your team having all those points of view, and sometimes it's the broader community, depending on what the product is.
So I think if you start there, and then you put in a good dose of data and a good dose of your gut, usually that's a great way to go. I mean, it's pretty simple and obviously depending on the complexity of what you bring in or don't bring in, but it really is values and people and direction. So the reason I ask that question is because right now you're managing in a crisis where there's a flood of data, you have a very physical plant kind of business people go to when we theater and sit down and say that for a while, how are you managing the influx of COVID information? There's a massively disjointed federal and state response.
There's people who are refusing to wear masks. Right before we came on New York City closed at schools again, it feels like there's just a flow of information about the pandemic and how it's going and how we're handling it. You're saying there's like, add a lot of data that the data's messy, the points of you are messy. How are you just managing that?
Yeah, that's a great question. And I appreciate it. And I really want to reemphasize the lack of coordinated government approach is like crippling the nation. And if there's a message, and I know lots of people are saying this, but if there's a message to our government right now, you know, it is critical that they have a coordinated approach.
You know, and the way that we're approaching it is, you know, one, you know, just my own pair of experience living in China and seeing how this has been approached in the past, you know, helps watching countries that are, you know, and businesses and countries that are making good decisions helps. And then we have just been, you know, just trying to take a very steady approach. And that is with the information that we do know, and that is not constantly changing and some of that is, but there are a few constants out there, you know, is how can we make our experience as safe as possible from purchasing your ticket to the many leave of the theater? And we haven't wavered from that.
You know, we've done a lot of, you know, pretty scrappy, fast innovation for online ordering both of the tickets of food, you know, how you come into the theater doing the spacing of people, so that six foot distance. We had before it was popular, you know, we said that we were going to force mass for everybody. We thought about our kitchens, creating a smaller menu so that we can social distance within our kitchens. How do we not read on food, touch food?
How do we help people exit the theaters and you just name it, we've taken every single precaution that we can and we've gone as far as we could. So we've just said, what is the safest friendship possibility? And yes, there's going to be this constant influx of information, but until there's something that comes in that says differently, we're not going to waiver. And that's just on our approach.
And I don't know with all the variables out there, how anyone can do it differently. Is that a set of advisors and team members you needed to build? I feel like maybe theater changed and had a lot of epidemiologists on staff before COVID, but now all of us are, you know, we're all looking for that expertise, we're all looking for those guidelines. How have you built that muscle and that skill to evaluate those decisions?
Well, we do have a really great source of a lot of people who are willing to help us, whether it's, you know, our RPE firm, Ultimate Capital gives us a ton of information and advice, whether it's, you know, our insurance and, you know, workers on that side bringing that kind of advice. And then, you know, we've got strong relationships with the University of Texas UT, you know, and the information that you can get, you know, publicly. So, you know, we've probably done with a lot of people do. We don't have a ton of money right now.
Our resources are very skinny. So, we've had to kind of do it yourself as best as possible. And, you know, we'll continue to probably operate in that method, but it comes back to that need for a coordinated government approach to this. And the government really could be doing a better job at providing clear guidance that does not consistently change to businesses.
And quite frankly, as equitable to businesses. I just saw examples in some cities we're not allowed to open or we can open, but we can't serve food, yet the restaurant next door can serve food. That doesn't make sense, you know, and how you operate, you know, what's the logic and, you know, set a simple clear set of criteria that everyone operates off of. Because part of the problem is this, the noise and the confusion that goes out to the customers and our guests, you know, it's safe here, but it's not safe with you, and people can't discern that.
You know, so it really should be agnostic to the business. What is safe and what's not to the best that we know today, right? Yeah, asking for a lot probably. Well, you know, there's an administration.
We'll see how it goes. One of the things about the pandemic that I've heard from many CEOs executives is that this is accelerated trends that we already saw coming. In some cases, trends are positive. We've seen a massive acceleration in e-commerce, every hour is not coming.
We just turned it off. But there's been a pretty loud conversation for years about the future of movie theaters. And some of that is played out in different ways, like rom-coms don't really get me but probably would, but every other Netflix show is like basically a rom-com. And so we've just seen the dynamics of the industry change.
I've always thought of being slightly different than your average gigantic chain movie theater. You have food, it is an experience. You're running old movies. People come there as a social event.
Do you see it as this accelerating trend that was already coming or, you know, you started by saying, we'll just get back to work once over. Do you see this as an aberration on the planet you already had for your company? Well, I mean, so yes, the world is accelerating in many ways. What won't go out of style is community and social experiences.
And so I think while the industry was right for disruption and we're seeing that almost secret sauce really, right, is creating these communal experiences for people, bringing the community together to laugh, cry, gas, whatever, but have fun together. And that won't go out of style. And so for us, it will be going back to the secret sauce of what makes us special. And it is coming into, we show over 2000 films a year.
It's more than double what other chainshow because we bring in a really thoughtful slate to our audiences. And that's what they want. They want more than just the big blockbusters. And then we do create great food.
And sometimes that food ties to the film, which is really fun and all the different experiences that we do create. And so that won't go out of style. I do think what's accelerating and things that were on our list is we wanted to do the mobile food ordering in advance or if people want to figure out what they want to eat and order that with their tickets and not have to do that in the theater, we wanted to do that. So we brought it forward.
And Alamo on demand, that was something that was in our hopper of a great idea of how to recreate really different streaming opportunities for our audiences that the big streamers aren't and probably will never do. You know, so we have brought things forward. And I think as we move into the future, there'll be some other things that we think about. But the core won't change, you know, that community, that experience and creating something that you can't get at home.
That won't change won't go out of style. We're gonna take a break, but we're gonna come back. I'll ask Shelley about what was into creating the physical experience of seeing a movie and all the drafts, the seats, the screens, the food, and the cycles. This week on Never Been Shell, I'm joined by Tang Sinatra, the mean king, with over $15 million across tank good news, influencers in the wild, and its personal account.
Tang is breaking down what the meme economy really is, how much a single sponsor co-pays, why major brands are throwing serious money at jokes and how mean culture, thinks preparation age, starter packs, and a perfectly timed screenshot is actually reshaping how we think about money and value. Get ready for a conversation that'll change the latest role, make your rethink what going viral is really worth, and prove that sometimes the most serious money moves are wrapped in the silliest of jokes. Listen, wherever you get your podcasts, or watch on youtube.com slash your rich BFF. All right, we're back with the decoder.
Alamo draft house is built itself. It's more than just a movie theater. It's an experience. So I wanted to show you about how she thinks about the basic parts of operating a movie theater and where it goes from there.
I spend a lot of time talking to tech CEOs and they shouldn't even know it's great and certainly they have lots of people working offices and they have physical plans to manage, but your product is a physical experience for people. So I'm curious, how do you think about seats? We're going to have to install some seats. What is the decision-making process to choose the seats in the theater and maintain them over time?
Do you go to competing theaters and sit in their seats and think, we're going to have to improve them? That's a set of decisions that I rarely get foregrounded, but it seems clear that you have to think about them all of the time. Yeah, so Tim, the guard founder, I don't think he went to competitors and said, some degree, what are they doing? He's created some of the eatery experience, but what he does is he's such a huge super fan.
He's like, how do I want to experience this? And one simple detail that you wouldn't necessarily notice is the space between the screen and the first row. I think we have eight to ten feet on any other theater. We go back, so we kind of squeezed in another row or two, but we said, no, we want to make sure that even if you're in the front row, that is a seat worth having.
When we look at beer on tap, and again, it's just all these details, but when we look at beer on tap, we go to the local market, we're like, what is important for this community? We buy local beers, we still have some of the traditional beers that you would expect. But we think about all those things because we're like, if you're going to spend the money, if you're going to go out of your house, come to the theater, all that and spend the money, what do you want? You want something where someone who loves movies has curated it and thought about all that.
And it's like our pre-show and no texting and no talking. Like, hey, you sell a lot of money. We know you don't want to hear all your neighbors next to you. It's all those little details that Tim has spent and the company, but Tim is a visionary, has put into creating this experience.
And even in COVID, we thought about that. We're still making our pizza from scratch quite frankly. We haven't changed what makes our great quality great. How do you think about the technical side of just showing a movie, right?
That's changed a lot over the past decade. You're talking about sound and screen. There are audio formats and speakers. How much of a tech operation are you actually running just to hit play and make sure it all sounds good and looks good?
Yeah. Well, this is not my area of expertise yet, but I'll tell you, our projectors are amazing. They've come a long way. They're a very expensive piece of equipment.
What we do differently than most of our competitors is that we're changing our bulbs out regularly, and we don't wait for them to get to the end of life. And that seems like in a very expensive $1,000 for one of the bulbs, but it makes a huge difference in the quality of the screen and that film that you see. So we do a lot of things like that in a technical, and we have some of the best people in the industry who work for us that guide us in that and stay on top of it. Definitely not where I can speak fluently yet.
Just to be clear, you see how it's April 30th, you start. You're like, okay, showing the P&Ls and someone's like, well, we've got this COVID problem. Also, here's our light bulb cost. That's a real, and you're like the sign of the distribution.
We're good with it. Well, yeah, I mean, I'm super curious. I want to see, even if we're not showing films, take me up and show me the projector and geek out and say, show me all this stuff. So I spent time at theaters, I've worked a few shifts, not enough, but I'll get out and do more, and trying to learn it rapidly.
But our focus really is on survival. It's working with our banks. It's working with our landlords, all of that, and then quite frankly trying to take care of our people in the situation. That's a lot to do.
I'm so focused on the light bulb thing because it's such a good stat, right? We spend more money on light bulbs because we care. But there's never been an instinct to say, hey, we're in a crisis. We could save a ton of money if we just run our projector bulbs longer.
Yeah, no, that's not our goal. I think there are places where we can improve our P&L, and we are finding those and making improvements across the board. But it won't be in the experience, and it won't be how we treat people, whether it's our teammates or our guests, that's not where you save money. You save money on how you negotiate contracts and all the costs behind the scenes that don't touch people.
That's where we need to be more disciplined and where we haven't had to focus. And quite frankly, now we are like the spotlights there, but it will not ever be on quality. So tell me about the question. In reading before the interview, it sounds like your landlords are working with you.
They're developing new cost structures. Do you think that that is a, well, some of those are, and then do you think that that will last through the pandemic, that landlords are working with theaters because we know these are important in the community, or do you think it will shift back to your standard business? Yeah. So first of all, it is a huge range.
We have some landlords who are amazing and get the fact that there's burden sharing throughout the supply chain for any business. I mean, these are different times than normal. And then we have some landlords quickly who they just don't care. And they just want the terms as they are today and are very difficult.
And so we've got the gamut and everyone does. But the conversation that we're having, whether it's with landlords, whether it's with banks, vendors, this isn't like a poorly run business and I speak for thousands of businesses across the United States right now, not just know, I don't know. But there are many businesses like us that were super healthy until March. And now all of a sudden, we're in a crisis situation and bankruptcy is not the solution.
Bankruptcy is a solution for needing to shed off a bunch of your real estate assets or assets. And that's not necessarily the case. And so the way that we're going to change our economy or jumpstart it again when we come out of this and elements are aspects of the economy. Some tech is thriving or some tech, but for service industry and those that are impacted by people physically walking in the door, it has to be burden sharing from all everyone, from the banks, your debt, your creditors, to your landlords, to your vendors, but you as a business have to burden share too.
And right now, we do have people that think it should be all about the business. It's an impossible scenario. And so I think for everyone to look out and say, how do we, again, this isn't about win-lose because if it's a win-lose, the nation loses. It needs to be a win-win for everybody right now.
And it's just not going to be a great win-win for a while. But if we can survive 18 to 24 months, the economy will come back. We know that. We are resilient as a nation.
But we do have to find that path. Are you in addition to doing the corporate work you're talking about with contracts with vendors? Have you engaged on the political side? Are you out to the states you're in?
I would say, yes, I don't remember that seems quite messy. Is that work that you're doing as well on the policy side? So I would really be like NATO and Trump at the end, and you know, they're doing a lot of that heavy lifting, and we are thankful for their leadership in that lobby and how many... NATO is the National Association of Your Honors, not the defense organization.
Thank you. And it's a good thing you said that my first week on the job, I'm all, you're calling NATO, give me a break. So yes, and now it's part of my lingo. So yeah, so they've taken a huge leadership role, but we do have, you know, been talking, you know, to talk to, it was on the phone with the anti-plosities office.
I'll be on the phone with the City Council in San Francisco. You know, I've talked to local lawmakers here in Texas. You know, we are having those conversations because again, and when we have these conversations, it's not just about Alamo and what we matter and we care about Alamo. It's really trying to help everyone think about the broader business community and how do we move forward together?
Like, that is critical right now. Over the summer, one of the biggest controversies in Hollywood was whether or not to release Christopher No one's tenant into theaters during the pandemic. The biggest movie business Warner Brothers tenant from Christopher No one, it was that to be the first big theatrical release post-COVID in August. It's being pulled from the release schedule Warner Brothers saying it'll share a new release date for later in 2020, shortly.
The movie eventually came out. No one went. Tenet was supposed to be a huge hit, but as of right now, it's only generated 57.4 million in box office sales in West Canada and 300.4 million globally. And it's going to come out digitally on December 15.
So I want to tell you what that data point told her about the timeline of reopening and really about the future of movie theaters. Well, first of all, just a huge thank you to Jeff Goldstein and to Warner Brothers and the first studio to take a chance, right? And I think it wasn't, I think there's a couple of things that were happening. One is there's a lot of noise in the marketplace, even today, where people do not know if movie theaters are open or not.
So not even if they're safe, they just don't even know it's a possibility. And trying to cut through that noise has been really difficult. And so when I look at it, I don't see it as there was a message and I see it as the industry works in a certain way. And we just didn't have some of those key elements.
One is enough and not because of Warner Brothers, but because there's just so much noise, but a clear message out there to people that theaters were open and that they're open in a really safe way and in a fun way. You know, like the messaging that we did come out with as an industry was a little dry, like we're safe because of telling you versus come back to the theater, we've been super smart, but you're going to have fun. You know, so we've got to get better at that. And then, you know, no, no movie is going to stand on its own.
It's kind of like you don't want to be the only restaurant on a block. You want several. And it's the same with the movie slate. You've got to have a number of movies out at one time to draw in audiences.
And so again, Warner Brothers was huge in taking that first step. And shame on everybody else who pulled their movies out at the last minute and didn't follow through. You know, and so we, you know, for the studios, we've got to have a coordinated movie slate again and a coordinated message of we're open and not just out of no, but all movie theaters. It's really hard on the industry when you hear that certain chains are shutting down and not open.
It sounds like we're all closed, but we're not. Well, the private theater. So first of all, super proud, right? Like again, stood that up really quickly on with no budget and small resources.
So huge to my team and all the people that did it. And the private theater is super fun. It's turning out to be about 55% of our revenue. Wow.
Yeah. And you think about it, you pick them and you create your own community and you come together and get to have this great event for shockingly a pretty affordable price in prior to working at Alamo who never thought it was possible I could rent a theater out. Like that just felt beyond anyone's means. So we've proven we can do that and create this great experience.
We still have a lot of just general showings and people coming and have been asked this a lot and we haven't put a ton of energy around it. But anecdotally, I can see a wide variety of people. You've got the Alamo fans. You've got a pretty wide age range.
It's not just millennials or whatever. You know, so I think it's just movie lovers and people who are wearing masks have found a way to be safe and are picking a few things they want to do and movies are one of them. But when I was in high school, my friend was the manager of the local theater. She had a birthday party and it was the coolest thing.
So you're right. And that's one of those things that everybody dreams about. It's cool that you can do it. But you're not getting first run movies such as they are anymore.
That's Jurassic Park and the Goonies and older movies in that experience. What does that tell you about the value of the experience of going to movies versus the novelty of the blockchain coming out? Well, it goes back. I think we need both, right?
I don't think it's an either or. But I do think that it speaks to the fact that people are looking for experiences and that we truly have been for a while and I think into the future we're an experiential economy. And so the fact that people can come and find out their favorite movies, they can create their own parties and dress up or do something fun around it is critical. First run movies and blockbusters are still going to be important.
People want new content and they want to come and see that huge experience, that film, that filmmaker is putting their life into telling these amazing stories and spending a ton of money. And they want that to be on a big screen, big sound with a large audience. And people want to see that too because it's great at home, but it is not the same at home as it is in the big theater. So I think it's both.
I think the private theater will easily carry into the future. We think there's something there. We're going to continue to work with that product and see how it evolves and grows. But we need both and that will be probably one of the changes for the industry as it evolves.
It won't be either or it won't be or it's both. Because I'm looking at the big film studios, Disney Warner, they all have their own streaming services now. They're very excited about them. Disney puts out Mulan, they try new pricing model on top of their existing subscription and went okay, maybe they'll do it again.
Obviously, Warner has HBO Max, they're like whole companies pointed at that product. Do you think there will be a shift to releasing stuff on the streaming services at maybe a high price and in theaters at the same time? Yeah, first of all, we take a lot of hope in watching the fact that more and more blockbusters are being held and waiting for theatrical. If that were the case, there's a whole bunch of movies that could have easily been put on a streaming immediately.
And I'd like to think it's that the studios understand, the filmmakers understand, there's a lot of lost revenue if you skip theatrical. And there's a way to probably do both have incredible theatrical and then go on to streaming. And to the short change, that process probably doesn't make sense. Do you think that theater owners, I realized I was a very different kind of theater chain than the big ones that have held back in the media side.
But do you think the theaters have held back some of that consumer innovation? I always thought to myself, I would just pay $100 to watch this movie at home and rent it for just for night. But there's no way I'm going to go to theater or watch this like a big market movie. Just like let me watch it here now and I'll be done with it.
That has never happened. The theaters have always been opposed to it. The theaters have been opposed to it. And that's going out to awards because there's been a lot of that noise here that seems like maybe a lot of pandemic discussions will get resolved.
But what is that relationship between theater owners and studios as studios try to innovate? And quite honestly, use this moment as leverage to get some things you've always wanted. I think there's a couple of things. I think first of all, if theaters and studios think that the battle is between us, then we've lost all of us.
The battle is with COVID and the battle ultimately is how to best serve your guests. And so first coming together to fight COVID and then get into this new world, I think is going to be important. And when we get into it, it's to me, it's silly to think that there's streaming or theater. There's this or that.
Content is coming out as faster than ever. No one knew that YouTube would be huge. I mean, just take whatever innovation over the last 10 years with content. And people are consuming more content than they've ever consumed.
So I think the question is how do studios and theaters continue to say what are the best ways that we can serve our guests and create incredible experiences for storytelling? And so yes, we may be different, but we also do not want our fellow theaters going out of business. We need theaters and we don't want to be the lone survivor. That doesn't make sense.
But I think it really is unifying around how do we serve our guests? And for us, the secret sauce is incredible experience. We sweat every little detail. We think about the napkin.
We think about how clean our theaters are. We think about the popcorn. We think about the quality of the sound. We do incredible amount around our screens and sound.
So that experience is always perfect. And then we're going to continue to innovate of whether it's in the theater or whether it's at home, but it's going to be both. And people are still going to come to the theater. I can't imagine a world without a theater.
I really can't. When you say we need theaters, you said it a few times, in the post-pandemic landscape, it feels like one potential outcome is there's theaters like Elmo, which are curated, which are more cultural events. And there's big chains to show, more people on the streets. Does that seem like the most likely outcome?
Or do you think the big chains will have to change even more? Yeah. Everybody wants that crystal ball, right? I think that everyone will have to evolve and change to some degree.
And I think as much as this sucks, the pandemic, and there's very few with any silver linings because of the damage it's done to people. And I don't want to undervalue that in any way. But at the same time, as much as this sucks, it is a microscope on our business. And for each of us to look back and say, everything from how do I select real estate and how do I build out?
And what are those costs involved? And are there ways to be more effective and efficient? Can I think about the size and type of footprint for theater differently? Think about how big an auditorium should be?
In some places, we're probably over-screened, and other parts of the nation, we're probably under-screened. So thinking about all of those to the unit economics. And again, without hurting your quality, there's a lot of lessons to be learned in that. And we certainly are learning them.
And we'll move forward with those lessons. And probably everybody has to. But I can speak to the big chains and what they're going to do. We're not to.
We're going to take one more break, but we're going to talk a little bit more about the future of the physical theater experience. And whether we'll see Elmo address this to us, we're driving. We're back. I would see more questions for Shelley about how to keep the movie theater experience relevant during and after the global pandemic.
I feel like one of the things about the internet and streaming services is that we have one sort of national cultural moment all the time. Everyone's just, here's the thing that's on Netflix. We're all going to talk about it. It seems like theater is a big opportunity to create regional experiences and regional moments in a way that there's really an under-examine.
We just don't do that a lot anymore. Is that something you're thinking about in the interview? Do you have regional curators or is that happening at the top of the draft house? Yeah, it's a mix, right?
Like, I mean, you have people in the region who know that audience best and are creating experiences. And our road shows are a great example. We've done things like, you know, Jaws on the water where you're doing outsidescreening of Jaws and everybody's sitting on a lake on the water. I personally am terrified thinking about not a lot of watching Jaws.
I don't know how people do it. But, you know, we've done all sorts of things like that. You know, and so that is something that we've always leaned into. Again, it really goes back to the origins and the vision of Tim of, you know, creating experiences and really being the best animatic experience possible.
So we've always leaned into it. We always will, you know, and it will continue to evolve as our guess desires and needs evolve. So there's been a flood of drive-in movie theaters popping up. I went to a drive-in movie the other day.
Actually, they held Jaws and came in their truck with inflexibles in the back, which was pretty good. Is that something you're thinking about? Is that what we're just saying about drive-ins and all the other? Yeah, that's a good question.
You know, there's a lot about creating a really good screen and sound experience at a drive-in. It's just still not fantastic. And we thought, we really did. We thought about, do we go do this for the temporary or do we stick to kind of our traditional model of our theater and focus there?
And we've chosen to stick with a traditional model versus kind of run after what we believe our short-term fixes. Yeah, my local drive-in was definitely run off of the MacBook. Like, we saw the desktop and we saw, saw the NAS go over and double click on the movie. And I was like, I don't know about your license and situation.
That doesn't seem right. But everyone was happy. So it was a thing. So we only have a few minutes left.
I want to ask, basically ask questions about crisis. But you started, you were recruited before the pandemic hit. You came in and you had a plan. What was the vision before the pandemic, before you entered crisis mode?
What was it that you wanted to accomplish in your role as CEO of Almodra? Our goal was to continue to expand and grow and to do it in a way that we never lose our soul. Because a lot of times, size and scale means that you have to give up that specialness or make it a commodity. And so the goal was to really scale snowflakes and to continue to provide the most incredible cinematic experience possible and continue to evolve it and really give voice to as many films and filmmakers as we possibly can.
And I don't think I was away. I think it's just going to change or maybe take a little bit longer before we get fully back to that. But that's still the goal. When we say scaling topics, you mean each individual theater is a unique experience and Yeah, I mean, right now, when you go to an Alamo, in fact, it cracks me up.
People have no idea that we have more than a couple. They're like, what do you think there's 41 elements? That's my community theater. That's where I go and I see my friends and everybody knows me.
And you know, so that that experience, you know, and finding the economy is scale, that's hard, like, you know, to scale and to keep that soul where everyone thinks there's only one Alamo. And that's what we want to do. And I believe that you can do that. What do you think the most critical elements of getting scale right, but still making you feel small?
Because I was just very personally, I always think of the version of the big thing that feels small, right? I think our audience, they know who we are, but we have bigger ambitions. So what do you think are the key elements to making it feel small, even together? Yeah, you know, it's always a cost issue.
You know, how do you do that? And so I think the way you do it is you know what your secret sauce is, you say focused on that, and then you scale the hell out of your back of the house, you know, your accounting functions, your supply chain, you know, all of that stuff you bring technology in and make it as effective and efficient as possible. So you have the money, the time, the mind share, the resources to create those individual experiences so that when you do go to Alamo and LA versus Alamo and, you know, Dallas or, you know, Winchester, Virginia, you know, you have like that local feeling. And that's what we, you know, that was our goal and we'll continue to be.
Well, last question. It's a hard one. That's but what is the, I don't know if anybody has the answer. I'm curious about everybody.
And what's the next sign you're looking for for your business that we will be sort of on the right track? Is it the vaccine news today? Is it a more coordinated federal and state policy? What's the indicator that you're waiting for that says, okay, we can get back to the plan?
I think, you know, I agree. This is a hard one. But I think there's a couple, you know, first of all, I do think that announcement of the vaccine gives me incredible hope. What's not been talked about a lot are the therapeuticals.
And I think that is huge, you know, so combination of vaccine therapeuticals. And then a coordinated government approach, that kind of from a macro perspective is what we need. And then from an industry perspective, we need to have the slate come back in totality, meaning, you know, we need a coordinated slate again. And it's not one movie pulls out, but rather the whole thing moves.
If it needs to be about April, it all moves out to April, but they don't, one studio doesn't leave another studio hanging or whatever, like that, that can't continue. So when those two things happen, you know, I will, we will have a ton more confidence of moving forward. And I'm pretty hopeful that that is, you know, April-ish time frame. I do too.
Well, thank you so much for joining us. That's great conversation. Thank you. And it's pleasure to be here.
Thanks again to Shelly Taylor for taking the time to talk today. And thank you for tuning in. I hope you enjoy it. As always, I love to hear you think of the show on at reckless on Twitter, you can email us at decoder at theverse.com.
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