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Hathaway's Drive-In Theatre:
A Look At How the Theatre Business Works

Hathaway's, like all of the Drive-In theatres in our area, is one of the lucky few of its kind left in this country. We show you a double feature during the season from late April through early September. The film companies lease us their films on a percentage basis. They tell us how long we must exhibit their film and under what terms. They produce and market the films, and therefore make most of the money from their exhibition. What that means is this: A brand new film on release, plus its co-feature costs you $8.00 per adult ticket. The film company typically gets 60% of each ticket sold , and the state of New York taxes us a percentage on that film rental. What we take to the bank is approximately $2.50 for every ticket we sell. What this means is that we don’t make much money selling theatre tickets.

The way we make money, and stay in business, is by selling food at our concession stand. We try to offer you things that you might not otherwise have at home. Besides the popcorn with real butter, we offer you nachos, our famous home-made French fries, fresh beef burgers from Nessle Brother’s meats, Hebrew National Kosher hot dogs, a variety of sodas, ice-cream, candy, and more. We are here to serve you, so if you’d like to see it here, please ask us.

You are permitted to bring food from home, and we do understand that people are on tight budgets. Just please keep in mind that we may not always be here to offer you two films for the price of one, and a place to bring your kids and your dog.
So please try our fare.

Thanks...
Karl and Liz Pingree