Jerry’s Deli Puts Tickets on Menu
Last call for half-price tickets at Theatre LA’s same-day ticket store at the Beverly Center in West Hollywood.
After closing today at the shopping mall, the Times Tix service will move to the nearby Jerry’s Deli at 8701 Beverly Blvd., where it will reopen Thursday. Early next year, Times Tix (which is supported by the Los Angeles Times, among other donors) will expand to two additional Jerry’s Delis--in Studio City and Westwood--and after that, to branches of the restaurant chain in Pasadena, Woodland Hills, Marina del Rey and maybe even Costa Mesa, if all goes according to plan.
As the service expands, its hours will contract. The new hours will be noon-6 p.m., Thursdays-Sundays, as opposed to a seven-day schedule that observed the longer mall hours. Most of the theaters that provide tickets for same-day sale at the facility are sub-100-seaters, which usually operate on Thursday-Sunday schedules. So there were days, primarily Mondays through Wednesdays, when very few tickets were available, according to Theatre LA executive director Alisa Fishbach.
The move came about because Theatre LA recognized that “we had to establish multiple locations” in a city as spread out as L.A., Fishbach said. The organization also sought an easily identifiable name, such as Jerry’s, shared by all the locations, that would help ticket buyers remember where to go.
The Broadway theme of Jerry’s decor--theater posters cover the walls--”made it seem like a logical choice,” Fishbach said. Top-quality L.A. theater posters may be added to the mix if more become available, she added. The Studio City Jerry’s is in the same building as several small theaters.
Theatre LA approached Jerry’s Famous Deli Corp. CEO Ike Starkman. He was well known to Theatre LA board president Lawrence O’Connor, general manager of the Shubert Theatre. Starkman has the concessions contract at the Shubert as part of another business he owns, which also handles concessions at 20 New York theaters.
Starkman offered space at Jerry’s takeout counters to Theatre LA, free of charge. “If I can contribute to anything that will widen the audience for live theater in L.A., it will be wonderful,” Starkman said in an interview.
Even though Starkman operates a Jerry’s near the Beverly Center, he said he had never visited Theatre LA’s half-price booth. “I rarely go into the Beverly Center,” he said. “A lot of people won’t go in there just to buy a ticket.”
Since the booth opened last October, many observers have commented on the inhibiting prospect of parking at the Beverly Center in order to buy a half-price ticket. Jerry’s in West Hollywood has its own lot behind the restaurant. Though valets handle parking, Fishbach said the idea of a grace period, in which people could park for 10 or 15 minutes without paying for parking, is being discussed.
Beverly Center parking hasn’t deterred everyone. Nearly 10,000 tickets have been sold since October, returning $160,000 to the participating theaters. The Times Tix store has counted a total of 35,000 visitors. Besides tickets, it sells t-shirts, CDs and other souvenirs of L.A. productions or companies. This merchandise won’t be available at the new locations because of restricted space, but Fishbach said the extras hadn’t sold well.
Fishbach called the Beverly Center experience, overall, “a great success.” Jerry’s lacks “the mall traffic of people doing other kinds of shopping,” she said. But Fishbach and Starkman hope that diners may buy more tickets than shoppers. And eventually, once word is out, people who go to Jerry’s just to buy tickets may buy a bowl of chicken soup as well.
Meanwhile, the Valley Theatre League is continuing plans to open its own same-day, half-price booth at Lankershim and Magnolia Boulevards in North Hollywood. League president Ed Gaynes noted that Times Tix offers tickets only from Theatre LA members.
Fishbach said she hopes the Times Tix outlet at Studio City, not far from North Hollywood, will “fill that [Valley] niche. It doesn’t make a lot of sense to have two [so close to each other]. Ticket buyers might be confused.” She added that producers who want to sell tickets through Times Tix without receiving other membership benefits can join the organization at a discount--$100 a year for small theaters, $400 for large.
