I don't know about you, but I'm the kind of person who always veers straight to concessions after arriving at my local AMC. I'd readily tell you that movie theater popcorn is one of my favorite foods. I have an almost Pavlovian response to hearing the Universal or Columbia Pictures fanfares—I can taste that movie theater butter just thinking about it.

But why and how did popcorn become synonymous with the movie-going experience? Today, National Popcorn Day, seems like the right time to explore why.

It turns out, the pairing wasn't as ubiquitous as we always thought.

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Theaters Wanted Nothing to Do with Popcorn

Originally, popcorn was popular on its own. Of course, it was delicious, but it was also easy to make and mobile, because by the late 1800s, C. Cretors & Company had built a mobile popcorn-popping cart based on a previous design of a peanut roaster.

Theaters of the period didn't want people smacking on a crunchy food in their fancy picture houses. They wanted to be distinguished environments, almost like the opera. Plus, during the silent film era, the sounds would have been distracting.

"Movie theaters wanted nothing to do with popcorn," Andrew Smith, author of Popped Culture: A Social History of Popcorn, told Smithsonian Magazine. "Because they were trying to duplicate what was done in real theaters. They had beautiful carpets and rugs and didn't want popcorn being ground into it."

movie theater popcorn bags Credit: Corina Rainer/Unsplash

The Rise of Movie Popcorn

Many point to the Great Depression as the turning point for popcorn at the movies. A bag of popcorn ran you 5 to 10 cents, money people were willing to spend. So the snack was cheap, and more and more people were going to the movies as an escape, so theater owners finally embraced it. As a bonus, the kernels were shelf-stable for years.

Initially, owners found themselves competing with those street vendors. Some theaters even asked that patrons check their popcorn at the door with their coats, according to Popped Republic. (If you know anything about movie theater rules, people found ways to break them.)

Street vendors were initially allowed into lobbies to sell to patrons. Theaters started leasing lobby space to popcorn vendors for a daily fee. One early entrepreneur, Julia Braden of Kansas City, got rich setting up stands in theater lobbies, reportedly pulling in over $14,000 a year by 1931 (via The New York Times).

Soon enough, theaters started running their own concession stands. According to Smith, theaters that embraced popcorn sales typically survived the Depression, while those that resisted often went under.

World War II ensured the continued rise of popcorn. Rationing meant candy was scarce, but popcorn stayed cheap and plentiful. By 1945, over half the popcorn consumed in America was eaten at movie theaters.

Movie Popcorn Today

You probably already know that theaters still make a bulk of their revenue via concessions. That's why it's so expensive. According to the University of Chicago, theaters "only keep 10-40% of ticket revenue; the rest goes to movie studios. Concessions are where they earn most of their profit—often 85% or more on items like popcorn and soda."
Theaters need those margins to survive, especially as they compete with streaming services and home viewing options.
The next time you grab popcorn at the movies, you're participating in a tradition born from economic necessity that became one of cinema's biggest rituals. Sometimes the best parts of the movie-going experience aren't only what's on screen.

If you're not swinging by a theater today, check out how to make movie theater popcorn at home.

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