Silver screen hiring with Malco Theatres

Daniel Blaser (00:06):

Hello and welcome to On the Clock, presented by Workstream. If you care about finding, hiring and retaining hourly employees, you're in the right place. I'm Daniel Blaser, and today's episode brings you a triple feature. I'm clocking in with Donald Terry, Jimmy Washington and Andy Brunettes. Combined, they have almost 100 years of experience in the retail hospitality industry. This trio oversees the hiring efforts of MCO theaters, a chain that employs as many as 1500 hourly employees across 40 plus locations and six states. We talk about the unique hiring challenges faced by movie theaters, why it's crucial to use every possible resource when sourcing new employees, and how to lean into what makes your industry unique, to attract hourly workers. To kick things off, why do you all love working in the retail hospitality industry and in movie theaters specifically?

Andy Brunetz (01:01):

I mean, my biggest thing that I like about it is it's never the same. Mm-Hmm <affirmative>. Yeah. Every, everything about it is different. Like, if I had to sit at a, a desk every day, or yeah, I would go nuts. I like new things. I like, you know, every week it's new because basically you, you traditionally have new movies, you have something else to promote. You know, you may get to see the same guests the same week, but you, you always have new challenges. The film companies of course, have made it a little more difficult at times, but believe it or not, they've kind of learned their lesson a little bit and they've come back. Top Gun proved that. So did Spiderman people want the ability to socialize and go back to the theater and, and and, and, and that goes for sports. That goes for other things that, you know, people don't wanna just be stuck in the house. One of the big things I do is, I know I'm strange 'cause I go on vacation just to go look at theaters sometimes to see what other people are doing.

Daniel Blaser (02:03):

Could you quickly summarize some of the hiring challenges that you faced over the last couple of years?

Jimmy Washington (02:10):

We, we hire in, in bulk at certain parts of the year, and then like this time of year, we don't need a whole lot of people, so it just goes in waves at certain parts. We need a lot of people at certain parts of days, and a lot of days we don't need as many people like we're experiencing right now. So it just varies from, you know parts of the year business. Our product is playing on the screens and ultimately our customers pretty much determine how many employees we need. So, so that's the, the

Donald Terry (02:40):

Yeah.

Jimmy Washington (02:40):

Going on right now.

Donald Terry (02:41):

Well, and some of the challenge too has been finding people Yeah. And the amounts of people and actually reliable people at this point. Right,

Andy Brunetz (02:48):

Right. And what's, what really kind of caused that is you saw some of the other retailers, big box restaurant people that would not typically hire in the upcoming group of 16, 17 year olds that lowered their, where they used to only say, okay, well we hire 18 and above, or even 20 above. They lowered those age groups. So it actually took a bulk of first timers. And, and in the theater business, that's very much what we've always, you know, looked towards, is if it their first jobs, you know they're very dependable. They, you know, it's sometimes even better than someone who's already had two or three. Of course, you know, also competition with pay benefits, you know, and everything else has been a little more challenging as well.

Daniel Blaser (03:40):

Yeah, that definitely makes sense. And when I think of my own behaviors and when I go to movie theaters, there's definitely a lot of seasonality to that. So I'm, I'm sure most people listening it's, it's the same way, right? Maybe some summer blockbusters, the, the Thanksgiving holiday. There are these big moments and then there are probably other times where they don't go to theaters as much. What advice would you give to someone who is also struggling to hire hourly employees? Like what have you learned from the experience of the last couple of years?

Andy Brunetz (04:14):

The main thing I would say, and, and work stream is, is good about this, is don't overlook any form of getting out the word about hiring. Like, y'all have QR code, you have texting, you have online you have in in-house as far as you can put up signs in the theater and, and put out applications and online posting to the job boards. If you're just sticking to one form, go ahead and sell your business because you're not gonna be able to stay in business. I mean, I'm not one to sugarcoat it. You don't wanna obviously hire somebody 'cause they're not, the, the age is not the same as it was 2, 5, 10 years ago.

Donald Terry (05:02):

Yeah.

Andy Brunetz (05:02):

And, and we had to change a lot with that. We were trying to do things before we even got work stream and, you know, many applications and just, just don't even give us a, just put your phone number and your email address and a, a name here. And none of that was really working that much. So, you know, if if you're, if you're not looking at everything, then you're really not looking

Daniel Blaser (05:26):

Through this process of continually refining and optimizing your hiring process, your sourcing. Have you discovered that there are any specific perks or benefits that make a really big difference in attracting or retaining hourly employees?

Andy Brunetz (05:45):

Well then I don't wanna, one thing with movie theaters is we do offer movie tickets and, and, and stuff like that for them and family and stuff. So that's always been why, I mean, yeah, Daniel, I'm surprised if you didn't work at a movie theater when you first started, you probably didn't, but you probably knew people that did when you were 16 and 17 and you, they were like, oh, they work at the movie theater. Mm-Hmm <affirmative>. You know, they got special treatment.

Daniel Blaser (06:11):

Right.

Andy Brunetz (06:12):

So, you know, that's always been for us a little bit of a perk.

Donald Terry (06:17):

And that's helped with the kind of crowd employees that we tried to attract. Exactly. Which is the younger crowd and first, first time movies, first time jobs and everything else. So

Jimmy Washington (06:25):

Right. And in and in that timeframe, in that timeframe, that small window that we have with them, we try to evolve them into supervisors management.

Andy Brunetz (06:34):

Yeah.

Jimmy Washington (06:35):

Things of that nature. That's, that's what we grab 'em early. We know, we tend to know what they like, what they want, what they don't want. And we try to cater towards them to get them in the door, work with them, train them, and one day, 'cause we all started yeah, 16 whatever years old in this business and we're still here.

Andy Brunetz (06:52):

And another thing that that helps us is if, if you're in a ma you know, a fast food or a retail or a cashier line, pretty much you are busy from the point you start to stop. Mm-Hmm <affirmative>. And with a movie theater or any kind of, you know, we have times that we, like, I think Jimmy mentioned it before, you know, where we have start times and we have, so there are breaks now we're not trying to tell them they get to leave and come back, but, you know, they're not just constantly Right. You know, it's busy for an hour, then it slows up a little bit and they go around and kind of stock and stuff so they, they don't get wor out. Right.

Daniel Blaser (07:33):

To take what you're saying and sort of generalize it to other industries, it seems like a good idea to really play up the specific unique benefits that your business offers employees. And that might be theater tickets in your instance. It might be something else for another industry, but it's identifying those things and really leaning into those because those are a unique value proposition for those that you hire.

Andy Brunetz (08:00):

Well, and another thing is too, you know, automation doesn't need to be, not looked at when you compare yourself to five years ago. We're not trying to replace people. I think there are a lot of companies out there that are working to try and more replace people. Now, I wouldn't say that's us trying to do it necessarily for that reason, but the customer, the guest has driven more of the automation than what we probably have driven from Daniel. When you went to the movie the last time, you probably purchased your ticket online, whereas maybe five or 10 years ago you didn't do that. You went there. So, you know, there's, there's more of that that's being generated that does somewhat streamline the hiring process and eliminate maybe where you maybe had four or five people there, you might have three or four you, but trust me, those people that you would've had there now are in another position somewhere else, typically doing another type of job.

Daniel Blaser (09:06):

Yeah, that's a really interesting point. I have one more question, and I think I would be remiss if I didn't ask it. What is your favorite movie? Or put another way, what is the movie that you go back and rewatch most often?

Andy Brunetz (09:20):

Right now? One of my current favorite movies still is, is, and it's newer, it's Topic of Maverick just because Yeah. It brought back a resurgence Yeah. From the eighties. Yeah. a film that was out the year before I even started the movie came out in 86. I started in 87 and I remember being on a church school type trip and watching it on a TV this big and watching with about 20 other people around from the VCR on A VCR. So I never got to see Tom Gun in a theater. So that was really awesome to see that. And plus, it's really what I think made the film companies slap themselves silly over some of their decisions. I remember Rodney Dangerfield back to school back a long time ago. I used to love that film. I still watch it all the time.

Jimmy Washington (10:09):

Yeah.

Andy Brunetz (10:10):

I just watched another movie that's very similar to Top Gun coming back on the flight, iron Eagle with Louis Gossett Jr. Mm-Hmm <affirmative>. Love that movie. It's very underrated. And but as far, but these are,

Donald Terry (10:21):

You

Andy Brunetz (10:22):

Know, I like a lot of 80, 90 comedies anyway.

Donald Terry (10:25):

Yeah.

Jimmy Washington (10:25):

Both Fiction

Donald Terry (10:27):

<Laugh>. I used to play baseball too. There's a, a movie in the nineties called For Love of the Game, the Kevin Costner that I love to watch. I love to watch that movie.

Daniel Blaser (10:42):

Thank you so much for listening to On the Clock. For show notes and more info, visit workstream.us/podcast. I'll leave some links in the show notes to learn more about Malco theaters and all that they're up to. Until next time, we're clocking out.