The new addition to the AMC Mainstreet movie theater in Kansas City, Mo. — dinner-ready recliners, complete with tray table and condiments.


No accident here. An Applebee's corporate chef was hired to help with the food service.

We press the little red button, as if we were calling the flight attendant on an airplane, and a young waiter glides over to take our order.

"I'll have the Classic Italiano Flatbread pizza," Ferruzza says, adding a side salad to the order.

A side salad? Who wants to sit next to someone in a movie crunching a salad?

Turns out, most people here don't mind it. "Everyone else is eating," says our waiter, Shawn Edmunds.

He says he gets few complaints, though occasionally, someone gets annoyed when he crouches over in the dark to take the order.Movie theater companies have figured out that many of us don't buy any snacks when we go to the movies — and that they're losing a huge amount of money as a result. So, theaters from Florida to California are starting to offer options — more healthful, hotter and more substantial options — for dinner.

"I recently had someone tell me whatever you do, never change the popcorn," says George Patterson, the vice president for food and beverage at Kansas City, Mo.-based AMC Entertainment.

"She said, 'I grew up as a kid going to movies with my dad and it was always about, don't change the popcorn.'