CASE STUDY: PUBLISHED JUNE 2019

Driving Higher Profits Through a Single Piece of

Popcorn at AMC Theaters

The Challenge
AMC Theaters needed to find solutions to improve revenue and reduce  margins in a fast paced
retail environment. The group had attrition of its staff running at over 100% meaning its entire workforce
was being replaced in about 9-10 months, on average. They needed to find a way to stem attrition, while
also ensuring they replaced staff with ones that would stay longer and contribute more to the business. It
was not a case of just replacing staff on a 'like-for-like' basis - they needed to find new solutions.

They also wanted to improve their financial posture and had a theory that their poor attrition was linked to
the profitablility and that their chance to improve their posture was linked to sales of concessions
(popcorn) and not to selling more movie tickets.

What Happened?
The study focused on the most important roles in the
business – and analysed those roles so that they
The CHRO personally
could replicate them with the highest performing sponsored this work
people.
They worked out if they recruited people with the directly. He stood
right traits, statistically linked to higher engagement behind the hypotheses,
and higher profits, then they could improve the profits
of each of their movie theaters. tested these with the
They identified that concession sellers (popcorn
sellers) and the general manager of each theater senior business leaders
were the most valuable people in their organization. and involved the C-Suite
throughout the
What was the Result? transformation.
A new recruitment applicant tracking system was
implemented, new employer branding was created
and assessment processes were introduced to "If you hire the wrong
ensure that candidates were being selected against
people, all the fancy
analytically proven ’high performance traits’.
Turnover in the staff reduced by 43%, which in itself management
resulted in large cost savings.
Revenue increased since the new concession sales techniques in the world
staff had consistently higher performance. won't bail you out."
Profit per customer increased by 1.2% which when
multiplied across the business resulted in $10M+++ of
additional profit.

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