How a theatre gave a city the best popcorn and cold coffee theyâve ever had.
Chennai, a city that is obsessed with Rajnikanth, Vijay, and Dhoni, made room for a new superstar.
In 1999, Sathyam Cinemas started renovating to build three new screens, Sathyam, Santham, and Shubham. These went on to reimagine, reinvent, and deliver a holistic cinema-watching experience for the city of Chennai, complete with delicious food, incredible technology, and top-notch service.
What set Sathyam Cinemas apart was that they didnât just see themselves as a cinema business. They believed they were in the business of âexperienceâ, in which food and technology played equally important roles. This was truly the merging of hospitality with theatre.
Kiran Reddy, founder of SPI Cinemas (now part of the PVR Group), has always believed that film and food go hand in hand. It is a truth universally acknowledged that we all need a little something to munch on while watching a movie. Food may not play the lead role in our filmy moment, but it is undoubtedly an indispensable part of the whole experience. Right from the thrill of arriving early enough simply to get tub-loads of popcorn (in salted, butter, caramel, and mixed) to entering the movie hall precisely on time for the presentation of trailers â cinema-watching is largely defined by our need to munch.
Bhavesh Shah and Nirav Shah (celebrity cinematographer), had been running a coffee shop in Chennaiâs Luz Corner since 1999. Nirav approached Reddy, who agreed, to supply their iconic cold coffee to the movie halls. It was a time when the food in theatres was largely outlined by subcontracts with external vendors. And Reddy told Shah, âWe must find the best popcorn in the world to go with it.â
In all seriousness, this was the beginning of what would come to define an entire cityâs shared love for popcorn. Chennai, a city that is obsessed with Rajnikanth, Vijay, and Dhoni, made room for a new superstar. Until today, it remains a blockbuster at the box office; it is Sathyamâs popcorn.
The two of them didnât just cold-email people. Shah took a flight to Nebraska, to visit an American farmer-owned co-operative, Preferred Popcorn. This is where he learnt about the optimal ways of farming corn so as to get the right amount of freshness and crispness. There was no looking back since then. Around this time, Shah also met two young boys of Kernel Seasonâs (âAmericaâs #1 Popcorn Seasoning Brandâ), introduced to him by Cretorâs, the company that invented the popcorn machine. He met the KS people in Chicago and introduced three new flavours to Chennai â sour cream, peri peri, and barbecue. These flavours have changed since, and briefly, there was also a time when people demanded that they wanted their OG Sour Cream back.
SPI offered simple food, but it was so delicious and affordable, that its prices came at par with local bakeries.
Shah and Reddy believed that their guests deserved freshly made popcorn at intermissions, and went on to work on the experience of ensuring that the corn machines started popping just as the doors opened for hungry moviegoers looking for a snack before getting back to their movie.
But was Sathyamâs popcorn hugely successful mainly because it was imported? Or was it because people were introduced to a whole new world of popcorn, one around which rituals have since developed? Before any show, and at any given intermission at Sathyam screen, one can find at least four to five groups of people standing at the seasoning counter, generously sprinkling flavoured seasonings into their popcorn tub, covering the top of the tub with a paper napkin, and giving it a shake. This ritual is now sometimes more important than watching a movie with some popcorn.
The work of the experience team at SPI cinemas didnât stop there. This was a team that was crazy enough to set up an innovations lab only so that they could focus on experimenting with food packaging, seat design, interiors of the theatre, and so on. Shah remembers how he watched many movies in the dark with rice, manchurian, and chicken so that he could start designing the right kind of packaging for any of these food items to be eaten inside the theatre. They started with mixing it in the bowl but also experimented with layering it in a way that would remind someone of individually mixing the different dishes.
The restless minds of Shah and his team, with the added touch of madness from Reddy (who decided he wanted the best pastry chef in the world for SPI), had them bringing in Mickaël Besse, a former pastry chef at a Michelin star restaurant in London to work on their pastry programme.
And thus was born Ecstasy â a quaint French patisserie set in the parking lot of Sathyam Cinemas, where us Chennai-ites have gone many a time after meals, just to fight over the last portions of their ever-so-perfect tiramisu. There have been evenings when my sister and I have gone to Ecstasy to pick up the desserts for a dinner party at home and later used those glass jars for storing our overnight oats. Today there is a whole shelf filled with these jars at home, all with their origins in the pleasure of a luxury dessert at a theatre, one that didnât burn a hole in our wallets.
From their obsession with the right kind of mascarpone for tiramisu to getting a Southern delight â the cream donut â just right, the F&B team worked on building a programme that would allow them to use local ingredients and produce. This obsession helped them elevate the flavour and presentation of familiar dishes like veg puffs but without any fluff of deconstruction or gastronomy. SPI offered simple food, but it was so delicious and affordable, that its prices came at par with local bakeries.
As the theatre group expanded, setting up a cinema brand called Escape inside a mall in the heart of Chennai, they knew they had to get this right. Food chains all over the city and country were looking for snacks with a longer shelf life and frozen products. The SPI team decided to reverse the entire approach. They sought instead to understand how to scale freshly made food. A 20,000 square-feet central kitchen would supply snacks to all their theatre outlets. To help them set up the chaat counter at Escape, they hunted down the right person for the job from Delhi. (This remains my favourite chaat in the city â the samosa chana chaat is something I could eat in limitless portions.)
Crazy, yes? Complicated? Yes. But was it also what made people flock to their halls, movie after movie, show after show? Hell yes.
One fan even ran the math on Twitter, calculating how much each Chennai-ite would need to contribute to buy back Sathyam Cinemas from the deal.
As they delivered hit after hit with their food, they chanced upon the birth of their next food brand, ID. In an effort to make staff meals in-house, Sathyam Cinemas went on to open one of Chennaiâs famous (and my favourite) South Indian food chains.
It isnât just about the food at ID. It was also about the design of the restaurant. ID introduced the concept of countertop tables to Chennai. (Mind you, we are still quite particular about the colour of our filter coffee, and the spice of our sambar.) Stylish thali plates, and the chicness of a modern South Indian restaurant make this place a total banger.
It wasnât long before the likes of Swiggy came knocking on their doors to list Sathyam Cinemas as a restaurant. This came as a surprise to the team. They learnt about this from the way-back-then delivery service of Chennai called Genie. The team from the logistics platform came to them with an insight: on any given day, most of Genieâs deliveries are of Sathyamâs popcorn. (Fun fact: Chennaiâs Genie was bought over by Dunzo. The more recent Swiggy Genie is an entirely new IP with the same name.)
Looking back at it today, Bhavesh Shah feels that what appears to be a series of lucky streaks was in fact led by design and intent. The team believed that movie watchers needed to eat great food while watching a film, so they went all in, without looking up any playbook. Sure they couldâve saved a lot of money in hindsight, but today, Sathyam Cinemas is a legendary landmark in a city that loves its movies as much as it loves its filter coffee.
As PVR took over SPI, Chennaiâs cinemagoers were not so worried about the theatre shutting down, but they were concerned about changes in the food at SPI. One fan even ran the math on Twitter, calculating how much each Chennai-ite would need to contribute to buy back Sathyam Cinemas from the deal. If this isn’t true love â the consistent feeding of delicious, innovative food with a healthy dose of entertainmentâ I don’t know what is.
As I wrapped up my interview with Bhavesh Shah, sitting in his newly opened (and already super hit) cafĂ©, Bask, in Chennai, I asked him what he loves to eat while watching a movie. He smiled quietly and said, âYou wonât believe this Madhu, but it’s plain old, simple popcorn. Fresh.â