PSA: Peak Cinemas will be closing its’ doors on September 29th. We will still have shows every weekend until that Tuesday. The costs associated with maintaining an active theater far outweigh the revenue we have been able to raise. We hope to be able to reopen either at Christmas or early next year. This decision is a result of 3 factors; Cost, Content, and Attendance.
Cost: As a licensed exhibitor, we pay for content even if zero people come to watch it. On average it costs us $250 per screen per week with another $600 per month for brokerage fees. Our Utilities average out to roughly $2000.month and our rent (prorated due to covid, thank you landlord!) comes in at $1750. With no payroll or inventory this means our monthly costs are a minimum of ~$8350.
CO minimum wage is 11.10/hr, with UI, Workmans Comp, and Payroll tax, an employer really pays upwards of $13.30/hr depending on size of workforce. So, If we paid the people that work here, that would be 2 people x 44 hours x $13.30/hr giving us a grand total of $1170.40/week bringing our monthly operations to $13,031.60.
Fortunately our two owners work all these hours and more behind the scenes with $0 pay. So we will stick with the $8350.
Since we were able to reopen in June our weekly revenue has averaged $473. This means our monthly loss not including inventory is $6,458. This is unsustainable for any business.
Content: Most mainstream October releases were officially pulled back to Christmas on Sept 14th, leaving us with very little content exclusive to theaters that would be marketable in our local area. Maybe we could limp through another month, but now the November releases started getting pulled to February 2021 leaving us with no new theater only content until Christmas.
Attendance: Under current guidelines we are able to seat up to 135 persons across our 500 seats with our 2 50 seat screens being capped at 25(or 50%) and our 2 200 seat screens capped at 50. We have hard capped screen 2 to 35 persons due to ongoing seating renovations. So across each set(group of showtimes) we can seat up to 135 people, our average seating per set is 6 people. Yes some nights are better than others, but when we have entire days with 0 ticket sales it really hits us hard.
We will be fundraising through the end of the year with hopes to reopen in the spring, but at this point the outlook is bleak.
Our ownership team here at Peak Cinemas wants to thank you from the bottom of our hearts for allowing us to serve our communities with safe and affordable entertainment for the last year and a half. We sincerely hope this is not the end of the road for our local theater or theaters across the nation. Odds are 40% of small businesses like our own will close for good by the end of the year, we hope to not be included in that statistic.
Keep the magic alive and be good to each other,
Robert Beck
Kenneth Beck
Owners-Peak Cinemas
The community has asked, “Is the old drive-in a viable option to rehab?”
The answer is, “Total costs to acquire, clean, and refit with equipment is ~$300-500k, so at this point no. We have been working with potential sponsors for such a deal, but at this point it is still out of reach.”
