Creating Community Through Film: Heather Morgan’s Alamo Journey

Anthony Codispoti: Welcome to another edition of the Inspired Stories podcast where leaders share their experiences so we can learn from their successes and be inspired by how they’ve overcome adversity. My name is Anthony Codispoti and today’s guest is Heather Morgan, Chief Content Officer at Alamo Draft House Cinema. Founded in 1997 in Austin, Texas, Alamo Draft House originated as a second run movie theater offering food and drinks and it quickly expanded with a reputation for unique programming including food-themed cinema events. Today Alamo Draft House operates locations across the nation delivering unforgettable movie going experiences and fostering a vibrant film community.

Known for its strict no talking policy and focus on guest experience, Alamo Draft House was once named the number one movie theater in the country by Entertainment Weekly. Now Heather has held several roles at Alamo including Chief of Staff and Strategy where she integrated content strategy with broader organizational goals. Before joining Alamo she served in leadership roles at Harkins theaters and AMC theaters contributing to operational strategies that enhanced film offerings and partnerships.

With her wealth of experience in cinema and her passion for elevating audience experiences, Heather continues to make a strong impact in the entertainment industry. Now before we get into all that good stuff today’s episode is brought to you by my company, AdBak Benefits Agency, where we offer very specific and unique employee benefits that are both great for your team and fiscally optimized for your bottom line. One recent client was able to add over $900 per employee per year in extra cash flow by implementing one of our innovative programs. Results vary for each company and some organizations may not be eligible.

To find out if your company qualifies contact us today at adbackbenefitsagency.com. All right now back to our guest today, the Chief Content Officer at Alamo Draft House Cinema Heather Morgan. I appreciate you making the time to share your story today.

Heather Morgan: Hi Anthony thanks for having me.

Anthony Codispoti: Okay so Heather you’ve had multiple experiences in the theater business before coming to Alamo. What kind of first drew you to the industry?

Heather Morgan: You know I’ll be honest I wasn’t drawn to the industry. It was it was quite by accident actually. I got my PhD in industrial organizational psychology and I was doing organizational consulting so I was working for a company called Service Management Group and they consult for companies in the restaurant retail and entertainment spaces. They collect guest survey feedback and then advise companies in how they can do better and where they seem to be excelling based on what their guests were telling them.

So I thought that sounds really interesting. I would love to help companies with their overall operational strategies, how they’re taking care of their employees, and help as many companies as possible. So I went to work for them and I had a very large portfolio of companies that I was consulting for AMC theaters ended up being one of those companies and after about a year of consulting for them they wanted to know if I would come work for them exclusively as their director of guest experience. So overseeing all of their operational execution efforts, their escalated guest complaints, anytime the company, anytime the letter a letter was being written to the CEO or you know a threat of a lawsuit based on an experience someone had had in the theater, me and my team would get involved and de-escalate that situation and then also just coach theater managers on how to resolve guest complaints and how to deliver better service from the onset so that you didn’t have those escalated issues. So I was do that’s actually how I stepped into the industry to begin with. That was how my career first started in the after-gold exhibition.

Anthony Codispoti: So that role that you had that was less about I don’t know sort of making sure that the employees were happy and it was more about making sure that the guests were happy and obviously the two kind of go hand in hand but your focus was more on the guest experience.

Yes. Okay can you give us a specific example of something that happened whether it’s a lawsuit maybe you can’t talk about it or just like a particular example of a time where you know a guest is really upset and then you kind of helped to de-escalate it with the skills that you have.

Heather Morgan: You know there were so many examples often often what ended up happening the things that became most escalated is when people felt like you were somehow attacking their character or discriminating against them based on how they were treated in the cinema and generally what that would come down to is a misunderstanding in terms of how something was handled or how something was interpreted it really came down to a communication issue usually and so sometimes I would fly to where the guest actually was and have a face-to-face meeting often we were able to resolve it over the phone but what I consistently found is people just want to be heard when they’ve been upset and they feel like they’ve been wronged in any way they want to have a platform to make sure that they they have a place to express what it is that they’re upset about and they want to feel like someone is genuinely listening and that someone genuinely cares and sometimes depending on who they’ve interacted with either at the theater or at the corporate office before it got to me they didn’t feel like they were really being heard or that the person hearing them didn’t really care about what their issue was and I understand why that is when you’re dealing with hundreds and thousands of guests on an ongoing basis sometimes it’s difficult to make every interaction feel genuine and to feel like you care but that’s really what people need and that’s what de-escalates things so part of the time I had to get involved and do that directly but the biggest part of my role I would say in that capacity was to teach other people how to do that how to listen with empathy teach them what other people were looking for that’s that’s sort of where the psychology degree comes in very handy.

Anthony Codispoti: Can you give us some pointers folks listening now like a couple three bullet points like how can we be more empathetic listeners and help to de-escalate situations that may happen at work or just kind of in our personal lives?

Heather Morgan: Well sure I would say the first thing is always to listen with the intent to understand and not with the intent to respond. Most people listen to others with the intent to respond and so you start mentally planning out what you’re going to say before the other person is done talking and they can usually tell that that’s what’s happened and then the end result of that is what you say often doesn’t address what it was that they were trying to get across so first and foremost is just listen with the intent to understand the other person’s perspective without having your own agenda without being certain that your point of view is the right one sometimes people approach resolution as a negotiation as though their job is to you know get the other person to see it from their point of view if you’re trying to de-escalate a situation that’s that’s not your job your job is to give give the other person space to feel heard and understood so that’s the first of which the second of which I would say is to ask questions and that feeds the first you know ask leading questions so that they know that you want to understand their situation and then apologize for whatever it is whether whether the company was at fault wasn’t at fault regardless of what the particulars of the situation were you can still be upset you can still be apologetic that someone had a situation that upset them that they felt like you know didn’t go the way that they thought that it should so you can be apologetic about how something has made them feel without necessarily you know admitting fault or guilt or you know but to interact with people on a on a human level first and foremost before a business level I would say

Anthony Codispoti: what do you mean by leading questions

Heather Morgan: leading questions like tell me more about that situation from your point of view or tell me why you think the manager did that or said that to you or tell me you know what we could do in this situation to to make you feel better about how that was handled

Anthony Codispoti: and so okay so just to kind of summarize what I heard listen with intent to understand not to respond ask leading questions you want to help bring out their story you’re showing a genuine interest in trying to understand why they’re upset and then apologize that last step the apology does in your role there does that traditionally come with some sort of I don’t know compensation hey here’s a free popcorn here’s 10 free movie tickets does does that generally help as part of this formula yeah

Heather Morgan: often it does you know it’s interesting though sometimes I would encounter people that were somewhat maybe I would say cynical about the the nature of guest complaints so people that might work for the company that say people you know they they just come to us to complain they just come to complain because they know they can get free popcorn or they can get free movie passes or whatever and interestingly the large majority of the time once you gave people that space on that platform and they felt like you cared about how they were feeling and that you genuinely wanted to help them with the issue that they were having they didn’t want compensation they would say oh no that’s not necessary I don’t need anything I just I really enjoyed the time talking to you today thank you for listening I feel so much better and even if you offered it they wouldn’t take it so I would say that you know the majority of the time people are not out to just get something free if they’ve come to you because they’re upset it’s because they’re genuinely upset and once you make them feel better they don’t they don’t need or want anything that said if they’ve paid good money to come have an experience at a theater and that experience hasn’t been what they felt like they should have gotten then yes giving them passes to come back again on us have another experience is normal course of business

Anthony Codispoti: what’s the what’s the single biggest complaint that comes from folks to the movie theater people that come or don’t come I guess come let’s do that one first

Heather Morgan: okay I well it varies based on it varies based on what theater chain I’ve worked for Alamo takes a different stance to the in theater guest experience so that changes things I would say that with by prior companies that I worked for the largest guest complaint is usually about other patrons

Anthony Codispoti: yeah that’s what that would have been my guess this person’s making noise yeah that’s it like they’re on their phone you know experience you want to enjoy a movie with someone else but you don’t want to hear them talking to their children you don’t want to hear them eating their popcorn you don’t want them getting up and walking past you all the time and so you know with a trend I’ll call it a traditional cinema experience usually you have other guests being the primary source of complaints okay so you already mentioned Alamo takes kind of a different point of view to the customer experience and I want to hear about that in just a moment but you know you went from amc to another theater it was harkin yeah harkin’s theaters harkin’s theaters and then from harkin’s to Alamo is that right is that sort of how the how did that opportunity Alamo first come about for you the

Heather Morgan: opportunity at Alamo first came about the CEO so Shelly Taylor was hired as the CEO and she was relatively new to the industry she came from outside an exhibition space and she and I had crossed paths along the way very briefly and she reached out to me to say actually no let me back up so I had expressed desire when I was at harkins I was overseeing content and programming so essentially the same thing that I’m doing now for Alamo and I’d been doing something very similar at amc so by the time I was you know four years into my tenure at harkin’s theaters not only had we made it through a pandemic but I had also spent a number of years at that point I’m going to say six or eight years eight years in content and programming so I was ready to stretch my legs and do something else and Alamo I got wind that they were looking for a chief operating officer and I thought that sounds really interesting to me because I came from an operations world at amc albeit I’ve never run a theater but I know you know the general tenants have had to operate a theater I feel like I could do really well at that and so I did what you should do when you’re seeking a new role with a new company especially if it’s at an executive level I called somebody from the industry and said hey they have this position open I’m interested in it but I don’t my resume on paper isn’t going to look compelling so is there a way that you can put in a call on my behalf and get me an in like give me a conversation and they said yes absolutely happy to help so I had someone call endorse me and I ended up interviewing for the chief operating officer role and so I had I had multiple rounds of interviews and in the end what it came back what I mean what it came down to was we think you’re great we would love to have you join our company in some capacity but we just don’t think you’re qualified to be the chief operating officer you’ve never you know overseen multi-unit operations and I said that’s fair that’s completely fair so I just went back you know I continued working at Harkins and doing what I was doing and then they called back maybe it was a few months later and said I don’t know why we didn’t think of this before but we have desperate need for a chief of staff and strategy chief of staff and strategy to join the company and we think you’d be great for it and these are all the reasons and that is what led to the Alamo opportunity

Anthony Codispoti: so interesting to me that you were already overseeing content and programming at Harkins because I I thought we were going to sort of get into that transition once you got to Alamo in my outsider brain it seems like a little bit of an unusual transition from the role that you were in before was it and if it wasn’t tell me why I’m wrong

Heather Morgan: so meaning how did I transition from operations into content and programming yes exactly sure so this all happened actually when I was at AMC so I was at AMC as their director of guest experience I was doing that for a few years and that was when Jerry Lopez was the CEO and he placed a lot of value on what he called organizational athletes so these were people that you could take from one area of expertise pluck them out put them into a totally different area where they didn’t know anything and they would learn and grow and deliver results and and so he placed high value on that versatility and breadth of knowledge and the diversification of skill set so I was approached by Elizabeth Frank who is the chief content officer for AMC and she said you know we want to we want to do this we want to diversify your skill set we would like to have you learn another aspect of the business how we acquire our film content how we get film on screen how we program things how we negotiate our film terms you know we want you to learn that side of the business and she said what do you think and I said well I think it seems like an odd transition I didn’t I I don’t think I’m qualified I didn’t go to film school I like movies as much as the next person but I’m not a cinephile per se I can’t tell you who different directors are I I just don’t think I’m qualified and she said I understand your concern that that questioning of one’s capabilities is completely normal common and understandable but we think you’ll do really well and we think it’ll be good for your career so I encourage you to come to my team give it a shot we’ll see how it goes so I went over to her team as a film buyer and that was how I started I had 35 or 40 theaters that I booked and you learn the process of how you determine what’s going to come off screen what’s going to go on screen how you negotiate those things with your studio salespeople I was doing that for a few years and then got promoted at AMC to vice president of studio partnership and film finance in that role I was still on the content team but I was interacting with the presidents of distribution for various film studios to do things like negotiate the terms that AMC was going to pay for the films that they were playing arrange partnerships with marketing help keep track of the holistic quality of the relationship with each studio I was doing that when harkens recruited me to come oversee their content programming vertical really what I went over to harkens to do was a an accumulation of the various roles that I had had at AMC

Anthony Codispoti: so when you’re at AMC and they approach you to do this career shift sort of a two-part question the second part I’ll say first what was did this even enter your mind was it important to you the first part of the question is as you sort of look at the org chart and where you were and where you were moving to and what sounds like a more junior role like did that I don’t know how did that feel did that concern you was it done with the understanding that you know you’re going to slot here in a learning position but you know in two years time we’re going to make sure that you move up

Heather Morgan: good questions all I would say it did concern me somewhat it was for I would say that from a compensation perspective it was more of a lateral move rather than what you might consider a step down but definitely a definitely a more junior position at the company in terms of level of visibility and level of impact so yes that did concern me and no there was no guarantee there wasn’t a you do this for a certain amount of time and then we’re going to move you here here or here it was very much a let’s see how you do this is an opportunity to grow your skill set diverse higher knowledge learn another and very important aspect of our business and then we’ll see how you do with that and who knows what that could lead to so I I chose to go that path without any guarantees and I would say I did have some concerns about really my main concern actually was where that career path would go was I was I all of a sudden establishing a permanent career path in the content side of the atrial exhibition and how would that allow me to still do things like leverage my industrial organizational psychology degree connect with people lead people mentor people lead teams those are the things that I I want to do that I thrive on that fulfill me and so I wanted to make sure that at some point that career track would lead back around to those aspects because that initial position didn’t really have those inherent in it

Anthony Codispoti: it is a little bit of a risk right because when people you know when they’re looking at your resume when they’re looking at your linkedin profile right they want to see different track but you know a marketing assistant you know marketing manager marketing director vp of mark like they want to see that you were on this trajectory and when you from an outsider’s perspective when you kind of ping pong around a bit it’s like oh heather’s all over the place like what is she doing I love what um who was the CEO lopez of amc that she I love that style of thinking like let’s give you a more well-rounded view of this entire industry because you’re going to be able to eventually connect dots you know across these different departments that you’ve worked for in ways that other people can’t but on your side it takes a little bit of I don’t know who it’s by the like say like I’m going to roll the dice and but you know let’s see what happens here

Heather Morgan: yeah I try not to I I take my career path and my career growth seriously but I try not to take myself too seriously I there’s no one very few things are permanent there’s no decision that can’t be undone if things don’t work out you can always pivot so I try not to put quite too much pressure on it but also if I would have felt like that path was going to lead to a zigzagging or a ping ponging in terms of career progression I would have been more concerned what actually has ended up happening and I didn’t know this at the onset but in hindsight my career has really been more of an l shape so I went from operations over to programming and then just up from there so it’s been more of an l so if anybody looks at my resume they’ll still see that you know vertical ascension just with different companies but in similar roles

Anthony Codispoti: it’d be nice if there were a way to actually structure our cvs that way right yes see that l shape happen let me lay this out graphically I wasn’t ping ponging there was was very strategic right okay great so now we’ve kind of painted a little bit of a picture on sort of your trajectory and kind of how you got to alamo now for folks like myself who have never been to an alamo draught house cinema paint a picture what is what’s going on there what what happens when I walk inside the door what am I seeing

Heather Morgan: okay so first of all I would say that you really do need to go visit an alamo draught house cinema and I will give you passes to go do that if that’s what it takes to get you there now we don’t have one in Ohio yet but whenever you’re traveling let me know and I want you to go so alamo is so unique and that’s actually what I always had my eye on alamo as a company when I started in theatrical exhibition because it has from from the outside looking in it has this strong brand presence you get the impression of alamo if you look at their marketing if you look at their social channels if you look different you know programs that they run in their theater it presents this image of just being very like cool and edgy and irreverent and like that’s just not me and it’s never been me and I’ve always wanted to be affiliated with like the cool edgy nonconformist group and that was just how I saw alamo and I think it’s how a lot of people see alamo and so I loved it from the beginning and I always you know kind of had my eye on it when you walk into alamo so I don’t want to spoil all the surprises because I’m just trusting that you’re going to get there at some point but alamo is a dine-in cinema chain so you go in you go to your auditor you buy your tickets generally in advance you’ve got them on your phone you go in you find your auditorium you go to your seat it’s reserve seating you sit down and the first person you’re probably going to interact with is the server and he or she is going to come up to you and say hey welcome to alamo can I see your tickets you bring them up on your phone they verify that you’re in the right auditorium right row right seat great then they’ll say have you ever been here before and you will say no I haven’t and they’ll say oh great well here it works your menu is right here and it’s like a full menu so it’s not the typical you can have nachos or you can have a hot dog it’s like you could have you know you can have

Anthony Codispoti: I can have a burger I could have a salad you can have a burger you can have a cauliflower you can have a salad you can have a bowl you can have whatever you want chocolate your cookies like pick your poison so they’ll show you the menu and then they’ll say I can like I can get you something started now I can take your order or if you want time to look you can just you know like ring me back when you’re ready and we have call buttons at the tables so you can look take your time look through the menu and then write down what you want but it’s not just that so while you’re doing that we have a custom pre-show that’s playing before the movie so you do go to movies though right if it’s not at Alamo do you go to theater somewhere I do yes

Heather Morgan: yes so you’re accustomed to like normally it’s it’s pre-show advertisements playing you know it’s like you’re watching an ad for T-Mobile or an insurance company or whatever right Alamo doesn’t play those instead Alamo does a custom pre-show that’s usually themed to the movie that you’re seeing so there’s this like funny entertaining content playing so for example if you would have gone to Alamo to watch the newest John Wick you would have seen a whole catch-up tutorial that we did letting you know like this is what’s happened from John Wick one through John Wick now like this is the evolution of the character this

Anthony Codispoti: is content that you guys have created like Alamo specifically in house oh wow okay

Heather Morgan: yeah yeah and it’s so fun um we do it for every film I took my I have a 12-year-old daughter and I took her to go see are you there god it’s me Margaret and the whole pre-show was like advertisements for sanitary supplies from the 60s and 70s and she almost died it was like mom I was I was entertained so early the whole time so anyway whatever you’re gonna go see my point being the content ties

Anthony Codispoti: in get there early like you don’t you don’t want to show up right at uh screen time you you want to get there early for the earliest yeah

Heather Morgan: yeah no this is why the Alamo experience is different so you not only do you you want to show up early because the pre-show is part of the entertainment and it gives you time to look through the menu and write down your order and do your thing so it’s just a relaxing enjoyable experience kind of from start to finish but we also as you read about Alamo we have a strict no talking no texting policy that’s one of the things that guests love about the Alamo brand the most is they have this very strong reputation for being strict on talkers and textures because we protect the movie going experience so if you go to a regular cinema and you show up 15 minutes late and you’re scooting past people to find your seat at Alamo you can’t do that if you show up 15 minutes late we’ll just let you know that unfortunately we can’t let you in because it’s disruptive to the other guests that are watching the movie but we can give you a refund we can exchange your ticket for another show time but we can’t let you in late because it’s distracting similar to talkers and textures like we don’t tolerate talking and texting if you’re doing that we have to we’ll escort you out of the theater and then you don’t get a refund and the brand is kind of unapologetic about that um and we’ve had like we had a PSA go viral you can find it on youtube but basically and this was from a long time ago but basically there was a unintoxicated patron who she was using her phone and turning the light on and trying to find her seat anyway so she was ejected from the theater she got mad she called back and left this really angry voicemail and the company took that voicemail and turned it into a no talking no texting PSA and it’s got I don’t even know how many it’s got millions of views it’s it’s just one of the funny things that people love about Alamo so anyway that’s kind of the experience that you can expect so i’m giving you all of the insider knowledge to make sure that you yourself don’t either get a denied entry or get escorted out

Anthony Codispoti: I appreciate that um yeah a couple of things there so let’s say i’m going for a seven o’clock movie what time do I want to get there 6 30 6 30 is enough time so that gives me enough time I’ll be there in time for the the custom content that you guys have created or curated be enough time for me to place an order for whatever food that I want so I’m not going to the concession stand like when I get there I’m just I’m showing my ticket I’m going right to my seat because whatever it is I want the the server’s going to bring to me

Heather Morgan: yes and there is no concession stand okay so we have in theater dining and we have bars um we have bars in the lobby and they often operate as kind of independent hangout bars some some people we have certain locations where the bar is very popular and people utilize it as kind of their neighborhood bar even if they’re not going to see a movie and we host different types of events in the bar so we’ll host uh trivia nights with geeks who drink and we’ll host drag queen bingo and we’ll host all different kinds of things at the bar so we sort of operate those in addition to the movie theater they’re a great place to stop and grab a beer if you get there early and you just want to hang out before your movie or after your movie but they are also kind of standalone destinations just in their own right because they have their own set of programming involved so you the bar

Anthony Codispoti: or you go to there’s programming at the actual bar itself

Heather Morgan: yeah not like film programming but programming meaning trivia nights bingo nights okay you know comedians uh all different kinds of things

Anthony Codispoti: that was gonna I think that kind of answers my next question which is we’ve got alamo draft house and cinema and draft house and cinema kind of feel a little bit different but the way that you just described it there uh they kind of like work together as well as having the the the bar the draft house part of it kind of be its own standalone thing as well

Heather Morgan: yeah we really love beer and we really love cinema and so when you just put those together you get alamo draft house cinema

Anthony Codispoti: gotcha it’s like chocolate and peanut butter coming together yes two things that make each other better

Heather Morgan: beer and good movies go together like chocolate and peanut butter

Anthony Codispoti: you can use that as your new tagline if you want no charge

Heather Morgan: i’m just gonna text that to marketing real quick

Anthony Codispoti: who’s the genius that came up with that that’s right so i’m looking at your website here and uh am i seeing like stainless steel food trays is that part of the experience here

Heather Morgan: uh we have wouldn’t know we have well stainless steel like back in the kitchen yeah okay but no most of your food again it it’s supposed to be a distraction free environment so our servers are they wear black and dark clothing black pants black t-shirts because you don’t want you know you don’t want your server your silent service server not disrupting the movie but wearing a neon green t-shirt right so the servers wear dark your food is served on dark plates the tables are a dark wood color it’s all very you know because the focus is on the screen the focus is on the art

Anthony Codispoti: but is there enough light where i can see what i’m eating for the most part yeah probably from the screen yeah

Heather Morgan: i mean i’m gonna say if it’s a really dark scene in a movie you might want to just wait to grab that burger and take the big bites so that it doesn’t end up in your lap but as long as you’re you know careful under normal circumstances yes you can absolutely see enough to see what you’re eating

Anthony Codispoti: okay so like heather give us a little bit about the heritage of the brand started out as a second-run theater and has evolved quite a bit kind of take us through that

Heather Morgan: yeah so tim and kerry league they they founded the company originally about 30 years ago and tim is a devout film lover and so is kerry um they loved movies they’ve always loved movies but they didn’t love going to theaters and they didn’t love going to theaters for all of the reasons i think that people sometimes today complain about going to the theaters which is we don’t want to sit through ads for t-mobile and insurance companies we don’t want to sit through eight trailers before our movie starts we don’t want to have to endure people talking or texting during the movie where it’s distracting so what they decided to do was just open up a theater and it was in a parking garage and they built it like with their own two hands and they decided they were going to serve food and make it cool and put in all kinds of edgy programming very much a community theater and so they designed this movie theater concept for their single screen upholding all the tenants that they felt like were really important for the movie going experience and since then the company has grown and it’s changed ownership and it’s changed leaders but through all that it’s held firm to those brand standards of what it is that’s most important to the company and to the guests and why people love alamo and making sure that those don’t get lost amidst all these other changes that be going on so that’s very reminiscent of the alamo that you’ll experience today.

Anthony Codispoti: So what kind of mix of content do we see? Second run sort of the first run blockbusters that my kids would know about that those are the only movies I go to anymore by the way Heather I’ve got eight and ten year olds so whatever they want to see.

Heather Morgan: Right you have just recently you’ve

Anthony Codispoti: just wicked in Moana too but yeah I don’t even know what anything outside of the kid genre is right now. So what do we see in terms of programming at alamo in terms of like the indie flicks that you wouldn’t see it’s sort of the major run theaters the second run stuff kind of coming back around and sort of that I don’t know first tier programming that I would be familiar with.

Heather Morgan: Yes all of the above. So this is where alamo shines I would say well it shines in a lot of places but this is I oversee content programming so this is probably the thing that I’ll get most excited about and it’s just that again the entire company was founded based on this love of cinema and a strong desire to celebrate that love of cinema with people in the community whether it’s people that are working for alamo or people that are coming to alamo as guests or whether it’s the filmmakers that have created the art like we love film and we want to celebrate film of all sizes and shapes so we play all of the first run studio we play almost all of the first run studio content like all of the mainstream films that you would expect to find at most other cinema chains but we play about twice as many films per year as the average circuit does we play a lot more pieces of content and that’s because we do a lot of repertory programming we do a lot

Anthony Codispoti: of what does that mean repertory means like the older films so if you want your kids to see goonies in the theater you know you can find it at alamo draft house and we’ll not just play it but we’ll turn it into a movie party and plus up the experience which is something that I didn’t tell you about but if you want to know I’ll I’ll answer any questions but so repertory films are like all of the old stuff we play so many smaller indie films so first run films but that are more obscure that larger cinemas might not have any visibility to or might not pick up alamo can take those and actually help launch them and make them big so certain types of films perform much better at alamo than they they’re films that alamo will punch above its weight class in terms of our guests coming out to sea and we can help launch those films so an example might be neon’s long legs that released last year you know long legs starring nicolas cage it did well for the industry overall but in the grand scheme of things it was a very small film but for alamo it was a pretty big film and we significantly over indexed on it similarly focus released nas faratu it’s still playing in theaters it does pretty well for the industry it does really well at alamo so the alamo brand plays really well to certain types of content and those tend to be the types of pieces of content that could use our marketing and our amplification and our word of mouth so we lean into those because what we don’t want is an industry that is only fueled by sequels only fueled by tentpoles only fueled by franchises you know we want we want a healthy industry that’s fueled by a love of all different kinds of things so we play all different kinds of things so does a typical location have a lot more screens than a more traditional theater or are you maybe cycling through the movies a little bit faster than someplace else? might.

Heather Morgan: We don’t have more screens, we actually have fewer screens. So your average cinema has around 12 to 14 screens. Most of our buildings have around eight screens. So we have fewer screens.

We do cycle through films faster because they can’t live on screen at our locations quite as long to your point because we need to bring in new content. But we also just save dedicated space for the non-mainstream stuff. Like rep and indie programming is so important to us that we just save screen space in all of our buildings to make sure that we’re getting it on screen and it doesn’t get boxed out because it’s a brand pillar. It’s a brand pillar for us to play different types of content. So what we don’t want to do is prioritize all of the mainstream stuff and to say we’ve got eight screens of the mainstream. So for this week or this month we don’t have room to play any, you know, indie content or repertory bringbacks. We would just never allow that because again, it’s a brand pillar for us and it’s identifier. So we save screen space dedicated for other types of content that are not mainstream, if that makes sense.

Anthony Codispoti: So I’m looking at your website here. Looks like you’re in, I don’t know, this is 26 with 27 theater locations or this is 26 different cities that you’re currently in.

Heather Morgan: We have 42 locations.

Anthony Codispoti: Okay. So some cities you’ve got multiple locations. Yeah. Yeah. Are there, I’m trying to find a pattern. Obviously I see, you know, a number of big cities here, Houston, New York City, Chicago, Boston, but you know, also some places that are maybe a little bit smaller like Raleigh and Yonkers and Omaha and El Paso. Like what, what kind of environment do you guys look for when you think about expansion? What, what is kind of a good breeding ground for a new Alamo cinema?

Heather Morgan: Yeah, it’s a good question. So part of the reason why you see us in so many different places is because Alamo is the only theater company that has a franchise component. So of our 42 theaters, 26 of them are company owned and the rest are franchise owned. And so we have franchisees that want to open up Alamos in, I would say, smaller or non-major markets. And that is how we tend to get a presence in those types of markets.

If you ask about the company real estate strategy from a corporate perspective, we want to be in as many major markets as we can and especially in markets that are necessary for awards consideration. So we just opened Chicago not that long ago. We just opened Boston not that long ago. We’re bringing in two more locations in California later this year that are around the Bay Area, though not directly in San Francisco.

And so yeah, we’re pursuing major markets, I would say, from a corporate perspective and then kind of relying on some of our franchisees to help us have representation in smaller markets.

Anthony Codispoti: So I’m in Columbus, Ohio. The stats that I’ve read put us at sort of 14th largest metro area. Does that sort of meet your kind of top tier or is that something that you would kind of wait for like a franchisee to come in and say, hey, I want to open up there?

Heather Morgan: Yeah, it’s a good question. I will tell you that it’s like that particular location isn’t on our radar eminently, but it doesn’t mean that it couldn’t be in the future. We are making very opportunistic real estate decisions. So the effect that COVID had on the industry has brought a number of real estate opportunities to the table far more than we could ever execute on right away. So we’re having to be very deliberate and very strategic about which locations we pursue and in what order.

Anthony Codispoti: So makes a lot of sense.

Heather Morgan: Yeah, sure. That said, if you want to franchise an Alamo draft house, you just let me know and we’ll talk about it.

Anthony Codispoti: I don’t know. You might need to hire me first so that I can make one of those L moves and you can kind of teach me the industry because I’ve got no background in this space. We’ll diversify your skill set. That’s the term I was looking for. Thank you. So, okay, so you guys started out this cool indie brand. You’re still this cool indie brand, but this cool indie brand that was back in summer of 2024 acquired by Sony. Tell me about how that all came about. What was sort of the benefit for each party?

Heather Morgan: Yeah, so there was a step in between going from a cool indie brand to being Sony owned. So we were a cool indie brand and then we were owned by Altamont Capital Partners. So we were owned by a PE firm for several years and then per just normal lifecycle in the PE world, they periodically want to change out their portfolio companies, which is perfectly normal and expected. And so we started looking for a new home and Sony was interested in welcoming Alamo Draft House into its company and we felt like that was the best possible scenario for us to land. There was, you know, natural concern about, well, what’s going to happen to the company if we’re bought by another cinema chain? You know, does Alamo keep its uniqueness?

Does it keep its brand voice? And Sony is the one major distributor that doesn’t have a streaming platform. They are devoutly dedicated to the theatrical experience and always have been even during COVID. So during COVID, when you had a lot of studios leaning into streaming because they wanted to experiment with different avenues to get their content in front of consumers and I think they were maybe losing faith in the value of theatrical just because of the COVID influence that it had on the industry there for several years, Sony didn’t do that. They kind of stayed tried and true to valuing the experience. And so when Sony started talking to us about joining their company, it felt like a very natural and fortunate fit for both sides.

Anthony Codispoti: How do you feel about the whole streaming universe? Does it feel threatening? Is there a way to kind of view it as complementary? Do you, I don’t know, obviously, like you said, there was this big shift that happened during COVID because there was no opportunity to go see movies in the traditional sense. And now, you know, everybody shifted to streaming now it feels like some people are coming back. How do you wrap your head around all that, Heather?

Heather Morgan: I don’t, it’s a great question. And depending on who you ask, you’ll get vastly different answers. I personally don’t view streaming as a threat and I never have because I feel like there are so many different segments of consumers. There are people like you who have an eight-year old and a 10-year old. And so there’s only certain types of movies that you’re going to be able to go see in theater, but you still want to watch those movies and streaming is your avenue to do it. There are other types of consumers where their kids are older or they don’t have kids at all or they’re, you know, in their 20s and they want to go out to cinema often to watch movies and streaming doesn’t appeal to them. And then there is another group of audience goers where certain films they want to see in cinema and certain films they’re okay watching at home. And so I don’t think that one threatens the other. I think that there’s plenty of room and plenty of eyeballs for both to exist in a very healthy fashion.

Anthony Codispoti: So now as the chief content officer there, you are responsible for sort of curating the mix of the films as well as overseeing the creation of that custom content that comes at the beginning of each movie. Is that correct? And is there also more that sort of falls under your umbrella?

Heather Morgan: It’s partially correct. So the team that I lead, they curate all of the content that we play on screen, both from a first run and an indie and a rep side. So everything that plays on screen at LMO Draft House is coming through my team. And then we also do all of the, you know, non-sexy nuts and bolts on the back end, which are negotiating the terms that we’re going to pay the studios, making sure that we’re, you know, doing the best business for one another that we can, helping to forge partnerships. The marketing team actually oversees the pre-show content curation. So that lives in the marketing world. But everything else comes through my team in terms of on screen.

Anthony Codispoti: Do you feel like you’re still able to kind of leverage that expertise from, you know, the PhD and industrial organizational psychology? Or does it feel like you’ve kind of left that life behind and, you know, gone on to having to develop a whole new set of skills?

Heather Morgan: No, interestingly, I leverage it more now than I did before. And it’s because I will tell you, my team is brilliant. They are cinephiles through and through their depth and breadth of film knowledge far exceeds my own.

I mean, not even, I couldn’t compete with them if I wanted to. They know film. So if I weren’t there, they would still be able to come up with the best in-class programming for Alamo Draft House. They don’t need me for that at all. Where I contribute to the team, what they need me for is leadership development and helping to ensure that their strategies that they’re deploying coincide with other department strategies within the company.

And to ensure that if they have a conflict with a distributor that we have a way to resolve that, things have a way of, you know, escalating and getting resolved that is healthy and collaborative. And so they need me really from, I would say, an i-O Psychology perspective. Because they certainly don’t need me from a content programming perspective. They have that so in hand.

Anthony Codispoti: It sounds like they are better at that than you would be.

Heather Morgan: A thousand percent. A thousand percent.

Anthony Codispoti: And when they’re negotiating these rights and they’re sort of choosing the films, is my correct in assuming that just because they got the rights to distribute a film, they’re not necessarily trying to get those rights for every single theater. Like it may, hey, this feels like a fit for New York City, but maybe not so much Omaha. So the content’s going to be a little bit different depending on the theater.

Heather Morgan: Yes, exactly. Depending on where the theater is, you have different types of demographics of guests and psychographics of guests that come to that theater. So you’ll have certain locations across our circuit that play really well to family content and others don’t play as well. You’ll have certain locations that play really well to R-rated horror films.

Others play less well. And our film buyers are such experts in the locations that they book that they know what content works well and doesn’t work well. So they work with the studios to jointly agree upon what we’re going to put where.

Anthony Codispoti: When you’re going into a brand, so obviously when you’ve got an established location, you’ve got some history. You can look back and say, yeah, okay, the horror movies did well here, the family content, not so much. You’ve got that historical perspective to look at. But when you’re going into a brand new location, are you just kind of throwing stuff against the wall to see what sticks or is there, I don’t know, a more analytical data-driven approach that can give you some sort of sense of the demographics and the 15-mile surrounding area?

Heather Morgan: It’s a little bit of both. So we do go in with a pretty informed perspective. Like for example, we recently opened a new location in Naples, Florida. Naples, Florida, you would argue maybe doesn’t fit the stereotypical Alamo demographic and that we were maybe going to need to tailor our programming to meet that audience. So we know that going in based on looking at demographics and psychographics of the market. Plus, if it was operating as a cinema before, this is the case with any location. If we take over a location and it was operating as a cinema previously, we can still go back and look at what its film grosses were on certain films.

So we can see how it’s played in terms of family film, horror film, romantic comedies, pick your genre. So that helps inform our perspective as well. So we go in with a point of view and then we go in smart enough to know that we don’t know everything.

So we lean our programming in the direction we think it’s going to work and we also throw a little bit of unknown stuff at the wall just to see what surprises us. And we’ll do that for an extended period of time because when you go into a new market where you haven’t had a presence before, be it Chicago, Boston, Naples, it takes your guests a while to find you. So sometimes if people aren’t familiar with Alamo Draft House, like if you come to Austin, everybody knows Alamo Draft House. They know exactly what it is, what the brand is like, what the experience is like, and they know if they’re an Alamo person or not an Alamo person. When you go into a new market, people don’t necessarily know the brand.

So what you have to do is attract large numbers of people into the cinema to have those first few experiences where they’re determining if they like it or not. Do I like this kind of programming? Do I like this pre-show experience? Do I like having a server in the auditorium? Do I like eating while I’m watching a movie? Do I not like that? And the people that try you and decide that you’re not really for them and that that’s just not the kind of cinema experience they’re looking for, then you won’t get them back and that’s okay. And then eventually you’ll find who your people are going to be and you’ll get that stability and you can start routinely programming to that stable group of people who come to your theater regularly and know you and love you.

Anthony Codispoti: What does that marketing look like as you enter a new city for the first time?

Heather Morgan: Ooh, another, yeah. Our marketing team is best in class. Alamo has a best in class marketing team and the way that they are able to attract people into the cinema and build community relationships is, it blows me away every time. So when we went into Boston, like our team didn’t just go into Boston. They developed a partnership with the Red Sox where we’re going to host free screenings in the stadium and people are going to get to know the Alamo brand that way because we’re right across the street. And we’ll do things like we have a rolling road show. So rolling road show is this initiative where basically we bring like the best of cinema outside of a theater and we go to on location places to have experiences. So for example, our probably our most famous one is doing a screening of Jaws on the water. So at a lake, for example, you would have people.

Anthony Codispoti: I can think of nothing more terrifying. Heather. Okay, so this is great. We purposely don’t watch Jaws for the month before we go on our beach vacation. Okay.

Heather Morgan: I really need you to get on board with Alamo because I feel like you’re going to experience so much. So in the Jaws rolling road show, not only do we have people watching Jaws while sitting in inner tubes on the water while the movie is playing, but we might also hire some scuba divers to go around and pull on people’s feet while they’re watching because that’s just what makes Alamo cool. It’s, it’s fun. Right. It’s because we love the movie. You want to celebrate the movie by doing fun things with them?

Anthony Codispoti: I give you a hard time, but that’s, that’s, that’s really fun. That’s cool.

Heather Morgan: We recently did a rolling road show with Nope on the ranch by the Hollywood sign, you know, when it was getting ready to release. So we partner with studios as way, you know, as a way of eventizing their films in this new and unique way. So we can do things like this when we’re going into a new market where we’ll, we’ll bring out the community and introduce them to Alamo and explain how we love film. We’ll give them film experiences. We’ll, we’ll make partnerships with, you know, brands that are beloved and local to them, even if they’re massive, like the Red Sox. And it just, that we drive traffic that way by just having this really big presence in the market. You know, we go in quietly.

Anthony Codispoti: I love that the two examples that you pulled out there aren’t, they’re not even at the physical locations of your movie theaters, right? I would think like sort of a traditional, like marketing ideas, I don’t know, we’re running a bunch of Facebook and TikTok and Instagram ads, letting people know that this is here. Maybe we’re sending out mailers to your mailboxes. Maybe you guys do all that stuff too, like trying to get people into the physical location of the new theater. But I love sort of the outside the box thinking of, hey, man, we’re close to the Red Sox stadium. Let’s do a partnership with them because, I mean, they’re one of the biggest brands in, you know, the entire sports world.

Let’s do something fun around JAWS. And it’s not at our physical location, but it’s a chance for us to establish our brand as being sort of cool, edgy, a little bit of a different experience, and get to have people get to know at least the brand, if not the physical location that way.

Heather Morgan: Yeah, I think that that’s, we do this because it’s reminiscent of, not reminiscent, it’s characteristic of what people are meeting and wanting today. So yes, we do all of those standard marketing levers. Like we pull the table stakes of marketing levers, but we go above and beyond because you have to, you have to find people where they are.

People are busy. You can’t ask them to just go do something extra that’s above and beyond. And when we’re going into a new market, we need them more than they need us. They don’t, I mean, I would argue that they do need us, but they don’t know that yet. So we have to go find them where they are. If they’re at the zoo, we have done a screening of the Lion King in the Lion Enclosure so that you, you know, are watching the Lion King while surrounded by the Lions, right? You’re at the zoo, you like entertainment, we’re going to meet you where you are and tell you about us, have you get to know us.

And then by the way, you can find us over here at this address. So it’s, it’s very much a, you know, people are busy and they don’t have a lot of discretionary income and they don’t have a lot of free time. And so if you want them to spend it with you, then you need to make a really compelling case and you need to get in front of them. Don’t expect them to come to you just because you asked them.

Anthony Codispoti: I like that. Speaking of compelling case, somebody made a compelling case for you being one of the top 50 women in global cinema. How did that come about?

Heather Morgan: Celluloid Junkie is a publication in our industry that I dearly love. But by the way, it’s, it’s not as large as like a deadline or a Hollywood reporter or variety. It’s smaller.

And I think that’s why I love it because they have such a small team and they do such great work. But Celluloid Junkie has a program where they want to elevate and recognize women in cinema. They also do it on the distribution side of the business. And every year they pick people right in, they can nominate and make their case. And then they have a committee of people who meet and determine who’s going to make the list of the top 50. And yeah, in 2023 and 2024, both I was, I was honored enough to make the list, fortunate to make the list.

Anthony Codispoti: Who would be another recognizable name that’s on that list?

Heather Morgan: No, so many, I mean, so many recognizable names. Elizabeth Frank from AMC would be on the list. Wanda Gerhardt Feering from Cinemark would be on the list. Aaron Von Hudson-Dorf from NATO would be on the list. Jackie Breneman, formerly of NATO and now with the 50 and group has been on the list. I could go on. There are, our industry has so many very, very capable, very strong, very intelligent women who are on the list. And it also has a lot of those types of women who didn’t make the list because there’s far more than 50.

Anthony Codispoti: That’s nice of you to say. And I was going to say, sounds like you’re in really good company, but I think that they’re also in really good company with you.

Heather Morgan: That’s very kind of you to say. I often feel like I snuck in. I don’t know how I got to, I got to know how I got an invitation to this particular party and I’m just hoping that I don’t get found out.

Anthony Codispoti: A little bit of imposter syndrome there. We all carry it. Yeah. And it’s so true. I actually referenced this in another interview recently, but one of my guests, they talked about how they sort of have come to deal with their imposter syndrome. And they used to think of it as sort of this encumbrance, this thing that sort of like brought them down. And the more that they lived life, now he views it as his superpower.

It’s sort of that thing that gives them a kick in the rear end to do better, to get up and keep proving himself every day. So interesting little sidebar there.

Heather Morgan: I very much like the, I very much like the perspective of using it as a means of fueling yourself on what you do as opposed to a means of letting it hold you back. I think that that’s fantastic. I’m glad you shared that with me. I like that.

Anthony Codispoti: Shifting gears on you, Heather, I’d be curious to hear about a particular challenge that you’ve overcome in life, something professional, personal, maybe a combination of the two, what it was like going through that and some lessons that you learned.

Heather Morgan: This is a difficult one for me to answer because I just have the perspective of knowing that my challenges in life have paled in comparison to what actually represents the challenges that most people are dealing with. I’ve been really unduly fortunate in my life. I haven’t ever, I would say, endured any true, true hardship the way that other people do. So when I talk about difficulty, it’s just know that I’m doing it with a very humble perspective of my difficulty is still not all that difficult.

But I would say there’s a couple probably on a personal front. I would say motherhood, like getting into motherhood was a pretty challenging experience for me. And on the work front, I would say COVID and what it did to the industry and to my profession in particular was certainly the most frightening professional experience that I’ve had and something that lasted far longer than any of us thought that it would. So I would say that that affected both personal and professionally.

Anthony Codispoti: Let’s talk about motherhood for just a moment because this is something that I think doesn’t get enough attention. And tell me if the picture that I paint resonates with you at all. Very intelligent, highly driven, very educated woman is on a great path for her career and then decides that she’s going to become a mom.

And there’s sort of this I don’t know this identity crisis that kind of kicks in. Am I the professional? Am I the mother? Lots of mom guilt for wanting to continue the professional career. Any of this feel like it sticks?

Heather Morgan: That’s pretty insightful, sir. I get the impression that maybe you’ve heard this before from some of your interviewees because yes, that’s pretty much spot on. And it’s fueled by all kinds of things. It’s fueled by the expectations that we place on the expectations and the challenges that we put in front of women when it comes to advancing their careers and also performing well as a mom. So some of it is obstacles and expectations and some of it is just this implicit. Sometimes it’s implicit. Sometimes it’s explicit that it’s this messaging that you receive that says you can either be a really successful and dedicated career professional or you can be a really attentive mom but you’re not going to have enough time to be both.

So you’re going to have to choose, which isn’t true but I didn’t know that it wasn’t true at the beginning. So yes, all of those things that you articulated were exactly what I felt and just sort of also crippling anxiety because I didn’t grow. I wouldn’t say that I’m naturally extremely maternal and I didn’t grow up with younger siblings. I didn’t really do a lot of babysitting so I didn’t have experience caring for something very small.

And so like the whole bonding process took a lot longer. I was deathly afraid of the children for quite a while. Now that they’re older, it feels totally different.

It feels great. What I found from other moms is that they tend to feel comfortable at different phases. Some moms that I know love that infant phase and the toddler phase and then when their kids get a little older and a little bigger and more independent, they start having more trouble figuring out how to mother and with other people it’s the opposite. I really struggled in the beginning when they can’t communicate and they can’t tell me what’s going on and I have to try to figure it out and they’re not independent at all. They’re dependent upon you know adults for everything. They’re very sustainability. So the beginning was really rough.

Anthony Codispoti: I think it’s great that we talked about this for a few minutes because it’s another aspect that I think doesn’t get enough attention is the parenting experience is different for everybody. I was as a father a little bit more and you’re a lot more in your camp of being just terrified of the responsibility of how do I care for this thing that can’t even tell me what it needs and I have to care for it completely and totally because it can’t even hold its head up you know let alone feed itself. And I as a dad felt a lot of shame and guilt in those early days because for me there wasn’t that like instant sense of immediate love and connection that I’ve heard so many other parents talk about.

It was just this supreme feeling of enormous responsibility. And so I think it’s so important for people to hear that there are different ways to experience being a parent and you know none of them are wrong.

Heather Morgan: And I’ve been so I love to hear you say this because I love I love hearing about it from you know the dad’s perspective as well. I think also I used to I’ve been talking about this kind of from the beginning because I’m pretty transparent in most respects and so I had so many funny conversations with people when I was a young mom and people would say oh how will do your kids and I would say oh three and six months and they would say oh those are great ages and I would say really because I’m not finding that like I’m not finding that to be the case are you sure and they always looked shocked and then they always started laughing but you know it’s true it’s it’s like on you know if your kids are older and you’re thinking back on it you tend to remember it more fondly than maybe it actually was. And once I said that every now and then I’ll remember one conversation that I had with another young mom and so she said hello to your kids and I said three and six and she said oh mine are about the same age how you know how’s it going don’t you love it and I said not really no I’m not loving it actually at all and she looked at me for just a second and then she started crying and she said I don’t love it I don’t love it I’m hating it and I said do you want to talk about hating it because that’s okay like it’s okay to feel that way and and a lot of people do and she’s like yeah I really do want to talk about it and so we sat down and had like a two hour you know coffee session and I think she just felt so relieved to find somebody who wasn’t you know just saying what they’re supposed to say.

Anthony Codispoti: Amen yeah well put well good I’m glad we were able to give a little bit of voice to that here today. I want to give you a chance to maybe give a shout out to any particular mentors maybe books other types of learning experiences that have been helpful for you in your trajectory.

Heather Morgan: How much longer do you have because I’m a bit of a book person so I have a lot I have a lot of books I have a lot of books and people that I would mention. I love all so I love reading I have two different types of books I have books that I consider like cookies which are you know my like sweet treat adult fiction you know fantasy romance comedy like you know just the enjoy they’re like dessert right they’re the enjoyable to read books and then I have the books that I read that I feel like I’m supposed to read because I’m supposed to get knowledge from those those are like my broccoli books and I try to make sure that I’m balancing out my cookies with my broccoli so that I’m getting a good enough balance.

Anthony Codispoti: Give us a cookie and give us a broccoli.

Heather Morgan: Oh cookie books I have been hitting Sarah J. Moss hard so hard for months now I am flying through all of her book series and I just really love them and she writes in the fantasy realm which is new to me I didn’t it’s not a genre that I’m that familiar with but I’m loving Sarah J. Moss books really all of the series so if you haven’t delved into those do yourself a favor they’re just escapist and she does great character development broccoli books I am reading a new one right now that I’m almost finished with and I have taken so much from that book it’s by Allison Fragell and it’s called likable badass it basically it basically she’s a phd psychologist and so it’s fueled with a lot of really applicable stories but also science-backed research and it talks about how in order for with people in general but women in particular it’s written for women no doubt but but it’s applicable to everyone to be ultimately successful or as successful as you want to be in your career you really have to find this blend of being seen by people as both competent and likable and she calls it out like is that a fair expectation should you have to be likable in addition to competent no you shouldn’t have to be but these are the rules of the game and you have to figure out how to navigate the game according to the rules that exist today because if you wait for the rules to change you’ll be done with the workforce by the time you you know you’ll never see the benefit of that because the rules will take a very long time to change so you can still work on changing the rules of the game but you have to navigate them as they are so you have to be seen as both competent and likable these are the obstacles to women being seen as both competent and likable and these are very applied tactics that you can deploy to help on either side if you’re seen as highly likable but not all that competent this is what you need to do if you’re seen as highly competent but not all that likable which I would argue is more commonly what I encounter from women that this is what you need to do so I love that it’s very applied

Anthony Codispoti: and it’s very specific to women like the is it the the likability component is more something that seems to apply more to women like it’s easier for guys to get away with being competent but not likable

Heather Morgan: we have noticed yeah the the ladies in our I’ll speak on behalf of our collective yes we’ve noticed that the rules do seem to be written a little differently for us and I hear a lot of frustration from women about that and so this book I think is just very you know poignant in what it does there’s also again the tried and true books like atomic habits I know anything anything anything built big is is built by small incremental steps and just vigilant you know habits that make small incremental improvements so I love I love how that book breaks it down in terms of you know getting results and being very applied those are a couple that are top of mind radical candor is another favorite but you know I could list I could list more for you but they would be everyone else’s favorites too

Anthony Codispoti: fair enough I’ve just got kind of one more two-part question for you before we go Heather but before we do that I want to do two things first of all everyone listening today I know that you love today’s content because Heather has been an amazing guest so please hit the like share or subscribe button on your favorite podcast app so you can continue to hear more wonderful content like this Heather I also want to let people know the best way to get in touch with you what would that be

Heather Morgan: so I am not a big personality in the social space and I’m far more an introvert than most people would expect so if people do want to find me they can find me on LinkedIn

Anthony Codispoti: fair enough we’ll include that link in the show notes so last question I have for you I kind of want you to wear both the industry hat as well as the Alamo hat and I’m curious to hear what you see being kind of the big changes coming in the next couple of years for the industry for the industry as well as for Alamo if you want to talk about maybe new directions that you’re taking new projects new locations and then also yeah from an industry perspective

Heather Morgan: yeah from from an Alamo specific perspective I think that we’re going to continue to diversify our content and we’re going to continue to grow in a way that is is scalable and executable so you know small amounts of locations at a time similar to these two locations in California and just continuing to try to keep the best of our guest experience all of the things that guests love about Alamo making sure that we’re bringing those front and center to the brand in every guest interaction that we have so just strengthening our foundation and making sure that we don’t lose sight of the things that are really important amidst larger industry trends for the industry itself in the next handful of years I would say if I had to predict I would say that people are going to lean increasingly heavily into premium large formats and differentiated experiences so we had COVID and it essentially shut down the industry for a period of time and we were used to being a you know 11 almost 12 billion dollar box office industry for a number of years and then we went down to you know two million or two billion dollars for COVID and then six and seven and eight and we’ve not yet gotten to nine and so we’re not yet even close to being back to where we were pre-COVID and I think what that’s making every exhibitor do is really look at the value proposition that they’re offering and and marry that up with what consumers are seeking and expecting today again decreasing share of time and decreasing amount of discretionary spending means that you have to increase the value proposition that you’re providing to consumers so that either means keeping your ticket price the same and enhancing the experience or finding ways to to change your ticket price and I think we’ll see both of those trends playing out so things like enhancing the experience are that’s things like screen x d-box 4dx

Anthony Codispoti: I don’t know what any of those words mean

Heather Morgan: it’s everything like you sit in the seats and you’re watching the movie and the seats move or you know a gust of wind blows on screen and twister and you get wind blown in your hair or

Anthony Codispoti: water sprays at you right yeah experiential things that feel increasingly different than a traditional experience and screen x is an offering where instead of having one movie screen in front of you you actually have one screen in front and two screens on the sides and periodically through the film content will be playing on all of those screens so it’s more immersive than you know a standard screen image different exhibitors are really leaning in I’m seeing to those different types of formats because they want to create more value for the consumer they they want to give people a reason to come out to the theater and to pay for parking and get the babysitter and pay the ticket price right you need to make it worth their time and worth their money so those premium formats also enhancing with movie parties you know Alamo is really big on content that we play on screen but we have a movie party host and we have props and we make it very interactive so it feels like you’re doing something more than just going to a standard cinema experience

Heather Morgan: so those are all enhancements and then I would also say I’m seeing a lot of playing with ticket pricing right now which I think is actually a very good thing because again you have different segments of consumers and some are willing to pay the prevailing ticket price because they want to see the newest film on opening weekend Friday Saturday but then you have other segments that do want to see the film they do want to see it in cinema but they can’t necessarily afford to pay a 10 or a 12 or a $15 ticket depending on the size of their family and depending on a number of other factors and so you’re seeing exhibitors do things like leaning into their Tuesday discount day pricing or subscription programs where you can pay a monthly fee and then go see a certain number of movies I think that you’re going to see exhibitors continue to try to pull those either experiential or pricing lovers to figure out how to bring new segments of consumers into cinema and or to get existing cinema goers to come more frequently.

Anthony Codispoti: Nice Heather I want to be the first one to thank you for sharing both your time and your story with us today I really appreciate it.

Heather Morgan: It was my pleasure thank you for the invitation I’ve enjoyed it.

Anthony Codispoti: Folks that’s a wrap on another episode of the Inspired Stories podcast thanks for learning with us today.