Larry Etter has led a distinguished career with the National Association of Concessionaires (NAC) and Memphis-based Malco Theatres. His exhibition journey at Malco began in 1997 and in addition to his role as Malco’s senior vice president, Etter has served as NAC chairman of the board and as a longtime NAC director of education. His commitment to educating and inspiring the next generation has led to the development of food service curriculum for several universities and online platforms. Etter created an accredited recreational food service management class at Auburn University and is an adjunct professor in the University of Memphis’ Kemmons Wilson School of Hospitality and Resort Management, where he has conducted extensive food service research projects. Etter helped build online programs for the NAC and worked with Experia and NSF to develop the recreational food service food safety exam, as well as NSF’s nationally certified food safety manual. He has been a frequent speaker at a wide variety of industry focused conferences, such as CinemaCon, and has presented certification classes and seminars in over 50 cities and 14 countries. He currently teaches a one-day accreditation class for recreational food service managers, a three-day concession managers certification class for NAC, and the ACS certification for suppliers and sales professionals.
Etter’s previous accolades include the NAC Bert Nathan Memorial Award at ShoWest 2003, the Outstanding Leadership Award from TSTIA Owners in 2001, and an honorary doctorate of food service from the North American Foodservice Equipment Association. He was inducted into the 2003 TSITOA Hall of Fame and received the NAC Mickey Warner Award in 2012. In 2018, Etter became the first food and beverage operator to be inducted into the ShowEast Hall of Fame, and this year, Etter will receive the NAC Icon Award at ShowEast 2024. “Larry Etter’s commitment for over 16 years as the director of education for the NAC along with his 30 years of involvement in leadership roles within NAC has set Larry apart in our industry,” says Rob Novak, the president of NAC. “The executive board of the NAC is so proud to acknowledge all that Larry has done for our industry and bestow open him the 2024 NAC Icon Award.”
Congratulations on receiving the NAC Icon Award. You have a long and rich history with the NAC. How did it all begin?
I’ve been a member of NAC for nearly 40 years. I attended my first NAC meeting in 1985, out in Los Angeles, in conjunction with what was then ShowWest. I was a newbie and I’ll never forget how the elder statesman embraced me as a nobody, a newbie, and a freshman. They introduced me to the right kind of people and helped me learn. At the time, I was in the diversified part of the industry. I was doing stadiums, arenas, amusement parks, and we were also managing zoos. That’s really where my career started and how I got connected with NAC. I found it to be a really good portal for me to network and gain experiences from the people that had already ‘been there and done that’. That formed a foundation for me as I’ve progressed with NAC. In 1992, I was appointed to the board of directors as a regional vice president and I always wanted, from that point on, to give back to the next generation as much as I possibly could, because individuals had taken the time to help me when they didn’t have to.
I went from being regional vice president to chairman of the marketing committee, and I was also chairman of the finance committee. I handled two conventions—one in St. Louis and one in Washington, DC. NAC was almost bankrupt back in the early 2000s. We were able to change and modify some of the practices, and we resurrected ourselves. I was president of NAC and then chairman of the board. I realized that we had a director of education who was a great statesman, but he was 88 years old. I approached the board of directors and I said, “I’m going to recommend you find somebody as a substitute. As long as he’s qualified and able, that would be fine.” They said, “Okay, we nominate you.” So I agreed to be a substitute, because I had a full-time job at Malco Theatres at the time. That’s how I moved from the president’s position to the chairman of the board. Once they had a substitute, he retired. I thought, “Well, it won’t be long. They’ll find somebody to become the director of education for NAC. I’ll just kind of sit in this position until they find someone.” Here we are, some 17–18 years later.
What were some of the initiatives that you helped spearhead or implement as director of education?
At the time, NAC only had two certification programs. They had the CCM program, which is the concession manager certification. They had just created a kind of graduate master’s program called the executive concession managers program. The CCM program is really a four day certification class that discusses five particular modules: management and leadership, profitability and budget management, event planning, cost control, and menu engineering and development. There were only a limited number of individuals that could take that class. You were supposed to have a senior-level management position in order to be able to be certified. It was my initiative to say, “Wait a minute, there are a lot of people in junior management or even supervisory positions that need to understand the business acumen of what happens in recreational food service management.”
I never liked the term concessions. I thought we were more developed and sophisticated than just snacks. As a matter of fact, when I was with NAC, they changed the name of their convention to the NAC Convention and Expo. My stance was: Individuals that are managing stadiums and arenas on the food and beverage side are managing $10 million annual budgets and people in the theater industry are graduating; they’re not selling just popcorn and sodas anymore. We had become much more sophisticated. The initiative was to take that educational portal to an entry level. I also wrote at least six regional seminar series on leadership or marketing and promotions. On a two-year cycle, we would present seminars all across the United States and then that went international. These different seminars included topics like Leadership Counts and Concession Management 101. One of our problems on the education side was timing; nobody wants to go to school for a full semester. A full semester at the University of Memphis right now, or any university, is at least 14 weeks. Nobody has 14 weeks; as a matter of fact, people don’t have 14 hours. The challenge was to professionally engage and train in segments of an hour or two, giving people enough information or motivation to go back and integrate some of these practices that would improve profitability and presentation on the recreational food and beverage side.
I also wanted NAC to gain more credibility in their presentations, so I approached the University of Memphis, where I live, to see if they would teach an accredited class for recreational food service, where you get three hours in a hospitality channel of business. FIU Florida International University had a class that did that. A professor by the name of Mickey Warner was the godfather that started this. He wrote the CCM program. I took that initiative from him, approached the University of Memphis, and they said, “Yes, but we’ll only do it if you’ll teach.” So I became an adjunct professor. From that standpoint, I felt like NAC had the support of academia. I really felt like it was instrumental, because I didn’t know it at the time, but if you’re a teaching professor in any university, you’re required to do research. What it enabled me to do was start doing research with the support of the University of Memphis’ dollars. We got four or five significant research projects where they paid $15,000 to $20,000 to get the research done. It allowed me to teach more, because I could take that information and present it at places like CinemaCon or around the world.
Education and teaching the next generation has been a big focus in your career. A number of years ago, you literally wrote the book on the subject, The Concessions Class: With a Few Condiments.
I was doing seminars and educational pieces, and one of the things that I realized was that there were a number of vendors, suppliers, and salespeople that didn’t understand our industry. Companies such as C. Cretors and Company, Gold Medal Products, and Vistar employed me to do a seminar teaching them the mindset of a buyer in our industry. One of the guys in one of the classes said, “This is so cool. You should write a book.” I just laughed at him. He said, “No, no, I’m serious.” So I sat down, and I started writing a book from the standpoint of, “How do you encourage people to get into this industry? What’s it really like?”
I got to about chapter five, and then I realized how small our channel of work is. How many people are actually going to buy this book? This is not going to be on the New York Times Bestseller list. This is channel driven, and our channel is really small when you compare it to other industries. So I stopped. I’d worked on it for almost nine months, something like that. A bit of time went by and I picked up the manuscript again and about six months later, I finished it. The concept of it was, if you want to get into the business of —at the time, concessions—what will it take? What do you have to think about? What are the criteria that you’ll have to expect? You’re going to have to work long hours. You’re going to have to work when everybody else is off—weekends specifically are when people entertain themselves. It also talks a little bit about service. I had fun writing that book.
You mentioned that you started in the diversified sector of the business initially. hat drew you specifically into exhibition?
I had been working for a food management group that was owned by the Coca-Cola bottling company here in Memphis, and they decided that they were selling to Coca-Cola Atlanta, and they weren’t going to be a family owned business anymore, and the Coca-Cola company in Atlanta decided that they didn’t want to be in the food service business. We had various channels: business dining, college dining, vending machines, and sports and recreation. They were spinning those businesses off, and when they did, it was time for me to leave. I dropped a résumé off at Malco Theatres, and low and behold, they picked it up and said, “Oh my gosh, you’re on the board at NAC and you have all these contacts.” In 1997 they invited me to work with the family. That’s how I landed here. I felt really good about it, because in the previous 10 years or more, I had really learned the industry. When I stepped into these shoes, I already had the connections. When it was time to start setting up ways and means of running the business, I stepped right in. If the shoe fits, wear it.
Auburn University stadium, for example, seats 85,000 people and had six or seven home games a season. They had around 60 concession stands, and they also had catering in the sky boxes and the press box. We were running multiple levels of food service at the time. At Malco, we had 35 locations with one concession stand running for multiple screenings a day. So on a Saturday, you had the equivalent of a football stadium—it was just in six different states and 35 different locations. So I felt comfortable right away. I’ve always been an individual that tries to be very organized and a good planner. I think it worked out pretty well.
You’ve been with Malco over 27 years now, what has that experience meant to you?
I literally could not have found a better home. The family-owned organization was founded in 1915, so they’re 109 years old and fourth-generation exhibitors. One of the great things about this job is they’ve given me so much freedom. They’ve always displayed an extreme amount of confidence in my capabilities and abilities. They have never stopped me from continuing my education and sharing. They’ve always thought that whatever we can do to improve the experience in any movie theater will grow the business. Anytime people like going to the movies —whether it’s Memphis, Tennessee, or Los Angeles or Chicago or Dallas—we’re going to sell more movie tickets and the higher the grosses are. The more money the studios make, the more product they’re going to make. What happens when we have product? Well, look at this summer. The business grows. As long as we have product, Malco is going to be in business.
I’ve always appreciated the fact that while it is somewhat competitive, the reality is we’re in an industry where we have to be really good every day. If the New York Yankees were the only baseball team that was good, people wouldn’t go to baseball games. You need a lot of really good baseball teams to prove that the Yankees are the best, or the St. Louis Cardinals around here. I think that was the philosophy of the family that really encouraged me and prompted me to share experiences and network and challenge each other. It encouraged me to help any young guys like myself coming into the industry, by sharing best practices. We all want the same thing. We want the perfect cinema experience. Malco has really given me the tools and the capabilities to perform and then share my experience. I also can’t tell you how many times I’ve gone to other chains, done seminars for their employees, and how much they’ve taught me in return. While I’m talking to them, we’re sharing ideas, and they’ve got a lot of things they’re doing that are very successful.
It’s the “rising tide that raises all ships” mentality, isn’t it? Collaboration helps the entire industry succeed.
I like the idea of being collaborative. Malco’s very collaborative. The family has been really, really good to me. I can think about a number of different scenarios with different companies where you don’t talk to other people and you don’t leave the four walls of the organization. I think it’s been a good fit for both of us, because I certainly am very self-motivated. I’m driven. I want to be innovative. I want to be creative and state-of-the-art, because that’s what our patrons are looking for. Somebody told me a long time ago, the way to make money is just find a need and fill it. Seems pretty simple, right? Think about the cinema industry and what we’ve done.
When I started with Malco, it was on the verge of the stadium seat projects. We were transforming and retooling all the theaters from slow floors to stadium-style seating. That was expensive, and it was a challenge, but we found a need and filled it. After that it was digital projectors. Again, we had to retool and reinvent ourselves, and it was very expensive, but we did. The next thing we had was recliner seats. We just barely got the digital projectors paid for and we were doing recliners. The whole time that’s going on, we’re revitalizing the food and beverage program, because it wasn’t just about popcorn and soda anymore. We were doing pizzas and then we started doing burgers. Then we introduced alcohol. We started out soft with beer and wine, and we found out there’s a bigger market available. It’s a constant evolution, giving patrons what they’re looking for; something outside the home that they can’t get anywhere else. Otherwise, they’re not going to come. You have to give them an experience. As long as the studios continue to give outstanding product, we can provide what I call ‘”the polish.”
When I first came to Malco, one of my responsibilities was to function as a training director. Every time we opened a new theater, we had a series of training exercises. One of the things that I would always leave our employees with is, “I don’t care how good the script is, how good the score is, how good the direction, or how good the actor is. We in the cinema put the final polish on every film. If they walk into a theater and it’s hot and we’re rude and the soda is flat and the popcorn is greasy and cold and they sit in an auditorium where the sound is sketchy, then that movie has a totally different reception. As opposed to when they walk into a building that’s clean, where they’re greeted with a smile, the soda is great, the popcorn is fresh, and they sit in an auditorium where the presentation is perfect. Then they walk out having shared that emotional experience.” We, on the exhibition side, have that responsibility. We put the final polish on every film released.
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