Robyn Williams had returned from a performing arts industry conference full of ideas.
The late, great Rodney Smith had done the unthinkable by allowing water into his theater. “I remember him sending me all the hate mail he was getting from symphony musicians and stuff. We thought that was so bold and brave,” Williams recalled. She was in her mid-30s, a new manager at the Blumenthal Performing Arts Center in Charlotte, N.C.
Selling water to take to your seat was definitely a revenue producer and it was a service to the customer, since bottled water was like a cellphone today, always in hand. It was 1998, for Pete’s sake. Come out of the dark ages.
“I thought, we need to do that. It’s extra money and everywhere everyone goes, they carry their water,” she remembered. “This would be a really great thing. Brilliant. We’ll make money. Everyone will love this idea.”
She forged a plan and passed it by her board. Obtaining the green light, she went for it.
“What I didn’t consider was perhaps some of the staff, most notably the ushering staff who were all volunteers, had not been brought in. There was no discussion with them,” she says now.
They hated it.
The lead volunteer usher, who scheduled all the ushers, was the most vocal opposition and she rallied the rest against Williams.
“Our wonderful theater; she’s going to trash it.”
Patrons would arrive at showtime and learn about the new freedom.
“Oh, you can take water into the theater?” they would say.
“I know. Isn’t that just terrible. There’s no food and drink in theaters, ever. It’s sacrilege.”
“Oh, my God, I got shut down so hard by the ushers,” Williams said. “The volunteers, mostly little gray-haired ladies, were unanimous.”
“This is terrible. A beautiful theater and we’re being turned into like a club.”
It was no time at all before Williams realized, “Ooh, you need to rethink that.”
“I had to stop it immediately. They were killing me. I was getting hate notes from the public,” she said.
LESSONS LEARNED: “It taught me about change and how hard change is.”
“You have to think about who all has to buy into change. If you want to change something, who needs to be at the table and who are the ones who could derail you?”
She has expanded that lesson, which bottom line is about inclusiveness, well beyond building staff. “You have to test everything out with everybody. What do you think about this? How do you bring people along?”
Just a few years later, she was running Portland’5 Centers for the Performing Arts in Oregon, and she introduced drinks in the theater….and she didn’t stop with water.
“I rolled that out way differently than I did in Charlotte,” she said.
By 2001, just about everyone was doing it, she remembered.
She started with conversations with her staff.
“Hey, a lot of theaters are letting water into the theater.”
She told them what she was thinking and why she wanted to do it, primarily because they weren’t in good shape financially when she got there.
She brought in operations.
“What are your concerns?”
“What if someone spills water everywhere?”
“Okay, let’s walk through that scenario.”
Some worried about crunching ice. How do we mitigate that? Any drink that had to be cold, we would shake it, strain it and then put a lid on the cup so you could walk down the aisles.
If you just spent a bunch of money on a ticket and then you bought a $12 glass of wine, you’re pretty careful with it. “We had to give our audiences more credit,” she said.
“I may have had to pay to have one woman’s coat cleaned, but we had very few problems. And now, no one blinks.”
Food and beverage does more than $3 million a year for the Portland venues “and most of what we’re doing is before the show or during 20-minute intermissions. We’re pouring a lot of drinks.”
Even today, Williams runs into people who consider it sacrilege to defile the theater experience with food and drink in the seats.
Her response: “Well, you just haven’t been broke enough.” — Based on a true story as told to Linda Deckard
Photo: Ken Harris and Robyn Williams. (Courtesy of Venues Today)
Well that was one tough and courageous little old gray haired volunteer usher to go up against Robyn who’s pretty formidable herself. I was at the Buell Theatre when Rodney Smith introduced water and it was a hullabaloo. He went on quite the F&B expansion once it caught on…cookies, coffee, drinks, water, carving stations. Now the riot would be if you took away the adult beverage sippy cups.