Movie theaters and popcorn — a match made in heaven, right?
Well, yes. But as it turns out, popcorn is doing just fine without movie theaters these days.
Sales for popcorn have been surging in recent months, even as U.S. movie theaters have shut down because of coronavirus concerns, Variety reported.
From May 2019 to May 2020, microwave popcorn companies collectively raked in $922 million, a 13% increase in sales compared to the previous yearlong period. This bucks the popcorn industry’s recent trend of flat yearly sales to small declines, according to Jennifer Christ, manager of food and beverage research for Packaged Facts of marketresearch.com.
While movie theaters across the United States have remained closed, viewers are still watching a lot of movies and TV shows, albeit at home. Amazon Prime Video has dramatically increased its subscribers in 2020, and Disney Plus has already hit its five-year subscriber goal after only nine months in operation.
Ashley Lind, director of demand science of Conagra brands (Orville Redenbacher’s, Act II), told Variety that increased microwave popcorn sales “was already a behavior that we were seeing before COVID-19 hit, and then to say it kicked into high gear I think would be an understatement.”
Garry Smith, president of Jolly Time popcorn company, added, “I’ve been at this for 43 years. I’ve never seen anything like it. I never in my wildest dreams could anticipate what mid-March brought.”