Movie Tavern

Started as a server and LOVED everything about the company,  but with time and moving up to be a trainer and eventually a salaried manager,  I became very disillusioned and disappointed with the whole thing. In your orientation and through out your training,  even on the job they talk about growing a culture within the business that is happy, supportive,  and building a sense of community,  but in practice it is a culture of favoritism,  cliques,  and drama. Some locations were better than others, but the same thing played out everywhere. 
It didn't matter what position you were in, you barely had time for a life because it was expected of you to make the company your life. Long hours when it was busy and not enough hours before salary management when it was slow. The "perks" of this job don't balance what you get from it. Made a lot of money as a server but I had to put in a lot of long hours to get it, and sometimes it didn't seem worth the effort. The only thing good about it was the friends I made there who have all mostly moved on from there and look back shaking our heads at our time and wonder why others still stay and cant see what they have around them.
I never saw how bad it was for management as a regular employee, who never see the full strain they are under. You could argue it's what management sign up for, however there is a serious lack of support from the assistant general managers and even less from the general managers. The training management gets is minimal at best, and wholly lacking at worst. When I went through their so called program it was 6 weeks, and i heard later it was cut down to two. You are not given real tools in that time to handle the different issues you will face, though they will tell you it will come with time.There is no ongoing training either,  unless there is a new menu being rolled out, and that always happened right before a major release,  handicapping the whole staff. Add to that there are not enough trained managers and supporting staff to make everything work right, especially when it's busy, and you have a management team that can never really grow and feel like they are walking into a positive environment. 
HR is also a complete joke, as in located in another state with minimal contact with regular staff. All issues are handled by the store GM  and AGM who are already swamped with just running the store that a lot of things that could have been easily nipped before they started are otherwise left to fester and grow out of control.
Favoritism does happen a lot, especially with how unchecked staff and lower management can tend to be, and without a real sense of open honesty, and more importantly trust between management and staff, this never fully goes away.
This place taught me so much about myself and the kind of person, and more importantly the kind of manager I never want to be. Leaving was the best thing that ever happened to me and I feel bad for those whom stay. 
It has all the things to be a great place to work, but the execution and focus on money from those on top will forever hold it back. Employees will always will suffer from long hours and overly stressed and undertraimed management as long as things continue on the path its on.
In the end, it's a great starter job, but unless you can buy into and accept it for what it is, don't stay too long. It's just not worth it in the long run.

I liked working as a server. I enjoyed running around, taking orders, and getting to interact with a lot of different people. It can be a lot of fun. A full service restaurant, bar, and movie theater is pretty awesome! The roomy reclining chairs are nice and the screen has great picture quality. Getting hired here was really easy. All I had to do was show up.

However, I didn't leave because of the job. I left because of the poor leadership. It's true what they say "people don't leave jobs they leave managers". This place just opened and it already has a high turnover rate. Employees will quit after 1-2 weeks, sometimes less than that. They are overworked and inadequately trained. 

First thing I want to talk about is the training. We were given classroom lectures in one of the empty theaters on the menu, rules, policies, etc before we started work. Why couldn't management either print out or email us the powerpoint slides? We could have studied the menu at home! Instead, the trainer raced through the slides so fast we couldn't write everything down! All we had to study from were sloppy notes with half the information! If management wants servers to know the menu really well, then the servers need quality notes they can study from!

Why couldn't we spend more time practicing with the orderman (the gadget we take customer orders with)? Why didn't our training  include how to enter payment information into the computer? The trainer should have given us a sheet of paper that showed us how to do that so that we were prepared! That way when we're working on our own, we're quick and accurate in taking orders and delivering checks! Instead of all 10-15 of us crowding around one person who knows what they're doing the whole night begging for help! 

Customers don't want their movie interrupted during an important scene! The customers will let their server know if they need something! That's what the button on their tray is for! Nobody likes aggressive wait staff!

Employees that are well rested, fed, and hydrated are going to perform better. The last company I worked for set aside scheduled lunch breaks and cut overtime hours, doing this led to fewer errors and more productivity per hour! 

Make sure each employee has enough time to take a break for a granola bar and water bottle at least! It doesn't help you as a company in the long run to find ways to push them out of their breaks! Your servers end up snapping at each other, making mistakes, and dropping things! Or they end up quitting their jobs, which leads to you having to set aside even more time to train new people! AGAIN. 

The high turnover rate in this job market suggests that the problem is YOU. Stop pointing the finger at your employees and start taking responsibility for why people are leaving you!

A food runner (in my area), which you'll start out as, makes a guaranteed $7.75. 
Servers will make the same, but with pretty good tips. 
A bartender will make the same but with great tips. 

A Runners job is to run food and drinks from the kitchen to the guests seats. There is not much room for rest. It can be hard work, but you have the opportunity to work a lot of hours so it's a great starter job. At one point, I was able to work 60 hours a week, which means 20 hours of overtime pay, though too much overtime is frowned upon by corporate. 

After a certain amount of time as a runner, you can begin work as a server. A servers job is to greet and take the orders of guests in your assigned row(s) when a movie is beginning. During the movie, they have to keep an eye on guests in need, indicated on screens throughout the building which light up seats of guests who have pressed their button. It is also your responsibility to make sure your guests were successfully delivered their food. This really just means that when it's a very busy day and the runners are unable to get food out of the kitchen fast enough, you'll need to help deliver food to your guests. It also means that you'll have to communicate with the kitchen staff if an order is made incorrect or is lost/damaged on its way to the theater somehow. 
At the end of the movie, you'll then bring your guests their checks and collect their payment. If you're attentive and kind, tips will be plentiful. 

Movie Tavern is a full service bar as well as a theater and restaurant, so you may have the opportunity to work as a bartender. You will undergo some casual bartender training if required, but once you've got that down, the job is usually the most laid-back of positions. You'll either be working the front bar, making drinks or placing food orders for those who sit in the bar area, or you'll be working in the back-bar making the alcoholic beverages ordered by guests seated in theaters. The latter of these positions being the most hectic, but only on very busy days.

Being hired on as box office is the easiest job you can get. Any other position you get hired on as you will be responsible for everything! The managers do not help at all, they only "encourage" you to work better and faster.  I was hired on as a 17 year old so obviously still in High School. I was part time but pulled 40 hours a week easily. I made $7.25 and hour plus tip out from the servers. No matter how much I got praised by my managers over how great of a worker I was, a raise was never in question. My manager said if I was given a raise then all the other staff would have to get a raise, which is not the point of a raise. I worked there for almost two years and it was very common for staff to quit after a couple of weeks. Theaters could sit anywhere from 100 people to almost 200. Delivering food and drinks to that many people is only easy when you have enough hard working staff but that is not the case. Another issue would be that movies would sit about the same time so there would often be a rush that lasted for about 3 hours. Servers never take care of their customers and rely on the runners which are 98% high schoolers (none of them willing to work). One of the biggest complaints from customers was how dirty the theaters were, the cleaning crew is given a time limit to clean theaters and are more often than not they are behind. Managers just tell them to "hurry up" and "do your best". Once a little kid puked in the middle of a movie and I had to leave a giant stain in the carpet because it was time for the theater to seat. That is disgusting! Especially since people were going to eat right next to it! Once Marcus theaters took over the food quality got really bad, for the price charged it is not worth it. The ticket price is no good either. The only staff that I liked was the kitchen managers and cooks. They respected hard workers and actually did wok on their part.  

This was by far the worst job I have ever had as an experienced server. First of all the management had horrible organization skills, you are treated like a number instead of a person, the teamwork at ttthe collegeville movie tavern was lagging usually they have paid runners but most of the time u have a manager yelling at u as a server to run everybody elses food and drinks, when none of my fellow co worker servers are to be found. I literally had to hide in the bathroom stall for five minites so I could rest my feet from running up and down the halls and stairs so much. The night I had quit I remember I was the only one cleaning up a messy theatre it was a saturday night, maybe because they were so short staff from all the other folks quitting that place bc it sucked so bad for them too. I was very specific about my schedule, that I could not work past a certain hour bc my husband works third shift as a street sweeper driver,the managers dont care or listen to their employees they just ignore you and your personal life in that aspect,thdyy only care what benefits to them, and make u clean up the dirty dish room for an hour for two dollars when they have two dish guys to do it. They just love the powertrip of slave driving I guess, unnecessary sidework like filling up 500 condiment cups of ketcgup. They refuse to hire any bussers or more dish help so serv ers are stuck there on a weekend night till 4am! Needless to say, i lasted just two weeks of this hellhole job,that night I just had enough, turned in my money and reciepts and ran to my car never looking back. Great concept, dinner and movie greT night with friends, husband or wife but I strongly do not recomend anybody even college kids hate the place, to work here. Btw,this oarticular movie tavern is always hiring. Go figure!

I was there in the beginning, part of the opening team for this location and let me tell you it's not worth your time.

Extremely Stressful, worked me to death(I almost failed my semester and told the managers that and didn't care whatsoever). No communication, very chaotic work environment. There was only one manager that was good and he did everything and the manager were nothing compared to him. But in the end he left. A horrible management team they like to cut corners and were very cheap, and dealing with a ton of very unhappy guests(who never received their drinks, food, or service)and resulted in no tips. This occur very often like every weekend or special events. I did everything for that place (stayed late to help out, came in early, helped my coworkers in whatever I can) and the managers constantly lying and saying they were going to give me a raise or promotion but got in return was "thank you for your hard work here some candy." They did promoted me to a projectionist later and that was actually great got paid really well but they would never schedule me like once in a blue moon, would send me home early on the days I did work projectionist(I would work like barely an hour when I was scheduled for 8 hours) and would constantly yelled at me why any projection work wasn't done when they didn't schedule for projectionist( you see the problem). And they also "promoted" me to a server but it was awful. I was making way more money as runner than I was a server. Those would be my last months working for them.

That place is really going down with low to no staff and new staff quitting left and right. I hope they fix the many problems there. Only good things at that place was awesome people I met there and some of the paychecks when I was a food runner/projectionist.

There are two functions for a box office attendant at this location: selling tickets and hosting. Whichever position you are expected to do that day will be determined by the manager. 

Selling tickets is straightforward, using an easy touch-based program on a computer to complete transactions while maintaining a friendly face. The only drawback is that the front box can become unbearably cold. Management was kind enough to provide a space heater for particularly cold days, though working out the right temperature with coworkers can get a little heated. Box office attendants will also answer the phone, which can be somewhat shrill. The main drawback is the lull periods (early in the morning) and not being allowed to sit even when nobody is around.

Hosting can be slightly more difficult in that you are expected to maintain theater cleanliness, timely seating, tearing tickets, setting up lines for premieres, handing out menus and lights, directing people to theaters, dealing with customer complaints, answering the phones, and answering general questions. The ability to manage time, solve problems, and multitask is a must for this particular job.

Overall, what makes this job worth it is the community. Coworkers and customers alike generally love movies, and this job will attract the most interesting people from all walks of life.

Our location was short-staffed the entire time I worked there (2 months). There were 2 or 3 vacant management positions, which I believe only one was filled before I left. We were often short on servers, and there was a general lack of motivation among workers. I witnessed an actual fight in the kitchen within a few days of working there, and another serious confrontation between two co-workers when cleaning a theater.

Scheduling was irregular, and I found it hard to have much of a life outside of work. This was due mainly to being constantly short-staffed. Then again, most serving jobs can't guarantee a set schedule.

Almost everyone there smoked weed, and it would often happen in the back of the store or in the employee bathroom. Then again, I feel like almost anyone in this state smokes weed anymore. Never been my thing. An overall drug culture was quite predominant in the workplace.

On a brighter note, as a server this job does pay well. I was averaging about $16 an hour between credit card/cash tips, minus tip share, and this was my first serving job. There was pretty consistent high volume of business, especially on weekends. For an independent worker, someone able to stay out of workplace drama, this job can be a good fit if pay is a primary concern.

Overall to me, wasn't worth the pay to deal with many of the other problems that seemed an almost constant issue.

Movie Tavern has really fallen off and is not the same place to work before Covid happened.  As a runner you really have to do almost everything to fixing chairs, to removing buttons off the seats do to not hiring waiters/waitresses on top of cleaning and running food/drinks. that wasn't even the bad part about working there, the management... top is garbage. where I worked the floor manager's did work along side us runners and we were able to connect and bond with them. the problems stands from top management being childish, unprofessional, getting in the way of the runner's and floor manager's when we got busy to following cleaning crew around and saying ignorant low IQ things. Also lazy co workers that don't do anything to where management relies more on you, but that's like every work space . I honestly don't know how other Taverns are in other places, but in my area I would  not recommend anyone really to work here. You do learn very good customer service skills here, team work, form bonds/ make new friends and how to handle large tray's of foods and drinks, but other than that it's not a good work environment due to head management being very childish and unprofessional most days.

Absolutely aweful place to work. It is an unorganized ball of mess. I worked their for a little over a month so i was still fairly new.  I accidentally took the wrong row in a movie as they tend to split the theatres between 2 servers. It was a family of 15, the other server stood in the theatre the whole time watching me serve their drinks, running back and forth with their beer and finally serving all of their food. After she watched me do all of that she decided to say "oh that was my row you served". Basically she knew what she was doing, as she has been there for a while and was one of the managers favorites. So after i put in all the work, while she watched mind u, she decided to go complain and it was decided that she would receive the tip, normally wouldnt have been a big deal but i put in alot of work for this large family, Go figure as she was favored by the managers. Any one else (server) would have simply said "hey thats my section" when they saw another serving starting to take drink orders. Needless to say i quite because it is absolutely rediculous. On top of that you do not get normal breaks as designated by law. They wonder why their turnover is so high! Hah! This place is a joke and i would never recommend anyone to work here unless you like complete chaos.

Working at Movie Tavern: Company Overview and Reviews

Movie Tavern

Movie Tavern Ratings

Salary Satisfaction

Job Seeker Tools

Employer Tools

Browse

Stay Connected