Woman Shares Her Movie Theater Popcorn Butter Hack And I Have Questions
Before I started working in radio, I was in the movie business. Well, sort of. I worked at the local movie theater in my hometown for a couple of years while I was in high school, but I was pretty good at it. In fact, just before I quit to take my first radio job, the manager offered to promote me to projectionist. It was tempting.
My real area of expertise was the concession stand. I was fast and accurate, the two things you need to be when dealing with a long line of hungry moviegoers. I also set the gold standard for making popcorn. My popcorn was literally golden. The secret? A little more oil than the instructions called for. Was it healthy? Nope. But it looked and tasted great.
If a customer requested butter on their popcorn, they were in good hands with me behind the counter. This was in the days before self-serve butter dispensers. My method guaranteed even distribution of the butter-flavored goodness. It’s all about layering in three phases. Start with 33% popcorn, then add butter, and shake. Add another 33% of popcorn, more butter, and shake. Do it again, but this time don’t shake because the bucket is full. Worked every time.
Now there’s a woman on TikTok who’s sharing her “hack” for ensuring that the popcorn on the bottom of the bucket gets just as much butter as the top. Colleen Lepp says her aunt taught her to insert a straw into the middle of her full bucket of popcorn and aim the butter stream into that straw. The butter then makes its way down to the bottom of the bucket. You can see it HERE.
It’s not bad, but I have questions. How far down does Colleen push the straw? I think the key here is to make sure you don’t push it all the way to the bottom. Otherwise, the direct injection of butter to the bottom of the popcorn bucket or bag could cause saturation of the paper and staining of your pants.
And what about the distribution of the butter? I’m not convinced that Colleen is getting the desired level that I was able to achieve with my three-phase layering method. She’s starting with a full bucket and that makes it harder to shake. The problem is that the TikTok popcorn hack relies on customers adding the butter topping themselves. This is work that should truly only be done by a movie theater professional. Self-service isn’t always better.
Tytieanna Jones adds butter to a bag of popcorn for a customer at Cinemark’s Century 16 at the South Point Hotel & Casino on August 14, 2020 in Las Vegas, Nevada. (Photo by Ethan Miller/Getty Images)
