Nitehawk Cinema is a three-screen independent movie theater in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, NY that is currently renovating a historic theater from the 1920s for their upcoming second location. Nitehawk is unique in that they are not only a movie theater, but they operate as a full-service restaurant as well, including pairing specialty dining and cocktails with different screenings.
Nitehawk Cinema was working with a very outdated ticketing and point of sale system, and needed something that fit their operation of being a full-service dine-in theater. Their goal was to create a more seamless experience for movie-goers and find a solution to keep the aesthetic of the theater consistent. That’s when Nitehawk partnered with Filmbot who worked to build a brand new, customized ticketing system from the group up that fit all the needs of Nitehawk Cinema.
Filmbot is a software development company that specializes in building systems to help modernize the movie-going experience. Through their new ticketing system and website, Nitehawk Cinema could allow customers to order their movie tickets either online or at the theater, and pick up those tickets from one of their two self-service kiosks or from the bar point of sale. Filmbot and Nitehawk Cinema decided that Star Micronics’ TUP500 kiosk printer and TSP700II WebPRNT receipt printer were the best hardware solutions for the new system. Nitehawk needed a solution that would allow them to print tickets and receipts from a Web-based application in real-time. “Without Star Micronics’ WebPRNT technology, they wouldn’t have been able to install the new system,” says Jessica Yazbek, Senior Engineer at Filmbot.
The new kiosk and point of sale system provides an overall more efficient way for customers to get their movie tickets. Nitehawk Cinema customers have had great feedback on the ticketing systems and the process of ordering and picking up movie tickets.
Additionally, the install was very easy and basically provided a plug and play solution. Nitehawk Cinema used one day to prep the new solution, and has it up and running the next morning. By the time the theater opened that day at 4:00 pm, the bartenders were fully trained on the new system and were ready to go.
“We launched about a week ago, and since then, the whole systems has been flawless,” says Matthew Viragh, Owner of Nitehawk Cinema. “It’s actually a Web-based POS system, so the reason we selected Star printers was because of their Web-based capabilities. We’ve been really happy with the performance so far.”
