Here, They Make Plenty of Concessions to Taste

They call it simply “the trade show,” but if there is a secret heart to the ShoWest experience, it lies in this sprawling, 541-booth extravaganza squeezed into a specially constructed 90,000-square-foot tent perched in Bally’s backyard.

It’s a cradle-to-grave tour, in a manner of speaking, of the theatergoing experience, from Wagner, the company that invented the slotted marquee letter in the 1920s, to consultants like the Plotkin Group, who help you hire the help (“Reduce employee theft and turnover! Identify honest, dependable, hard-working, capable employees!”) to a seat refurbisher named Premier with the motto “We Do for Theater Seating What Tarantino Did for Travolta.”

It’s at the trade show that you can meet the legendary Frank Liberto of Ricos Products of San Antonio, the genial man credited with originating what’s known as “concession nachos,” a TexMex snack he’s introduced to 23 countries. Here, not unlike the open bazaar in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, hypnotic waves of committed salespeople call out as you wander the aisles and even the woman who hands out sacks emblazoned with the Coke logo insists, “They’re not empty, they’re filled with air, absolutely essential for life.”

Because theaters make a sizable part of their profits from the concession stand (most of the box-office revenue goes back to the studios, especially in a film’s busy opening weeks), it’s this area that draws the most vendors and interest.

Some half a dozen popcorn-related enterprises, for instance, including the makers of Popwise Popping Oil (“Your Popcorn’s Ready for an Oil Change”) compete in this high-profile area, and if you want to understand how the Metric Weight Volume Tester (MWVT for short) measures all-important kernel expansion, this is the place to learn.

Also prepared to talk up their products were the salesmen for Jelly Bellys (“Making 40 million of these beans a day keeps us busy”), Cookie Dough Bites (“People can’t say ‘No’ to cookie dough”) and Knott’s Berry Farm Smoothies with names like Fiji Freeze and Strawberry Goes Bananas (“Zero to awesome in 20 seconds”).

No one here is without a story, like Josh Schreider and Bryan Freeman of Bavarian Brothers Pretzel Bakery (“Twisted at Birth”) in Van Nuys. No, they’re not brothers, they’re not even Bavarian, but they are passionate about pretzels. “We started this company on credit cards,” Schreider says, his eyes hot with pretzel fervor. “We bought a pretzel-making machine from a junkyard owner who said it couldn’t be made to work. I took it apart, there were thousands of pieces on the back-room floor of a pizza parlor, and the owner bet me I couldn’t put it together again.”

And today? “Over the past seven months, we’ve been doubling the number of theaters we’re in every 23 days.” Is this a great country, or what?

It’s also, regrettably, a messy country, and ShoWest does not stint on cleaning opportunities. Arnold Meltzer of Ampac Theater Cleaning Servies talked of finding everything from underwear to sleeping people to an Uzi machine gun on the floors of theaters, while brothers Jaimy and Dameon Johnson of Inglewood demonstrated the Kwick Bag trash container, which fits under theater seats. And Kory Wright of Natural Solutions Cleaning Productions (“The Nation’s Leading Producer of Human-Friendly, Building-Friendly, Environment-Friendly Conscious Cleaning Products”) boasted, “If you drink this product, which employees will, it won’t kill them.”

A veteran of more than a dozen ShoWests is Robert Hotch, president of Modular Hardware, which specializes in toilet partitions, hardware and accessories, and he, too, has a spiel: “Everyone who goes to movie theaters ends up in the bathroom. More people rate the movie theater by the condition of the bathroom than anything else.”

All of this energetic selling can be exhausting, and the trade show also offered mini-massages ranging from the $5 Feel Good to the $30 Ultimate from a group called On-Site Stress Relief Inc. But for one visitor, at least, there was something inescapably exhilarating about this kind of joyful cacophony.