Cinemark Scales Delivery to Nearly 300 Theaters with Otter

About Cinemark

Cinemark is one of the largest theatrical exhibition companies in the world, and in 2023 it became the first major U.S. exhibitor to offer concessions delivery through DoorDash, Grubhub, and Uber Eats across its entire domestic circuit. Getting there meant solving a problem most operators don't have to: Cinemark runs its own proprietary POS system, so there was no off-the-shelf integration that could plug digital orders directly into theater operations.

Building for scale on a proprietary POS

Cinemark needed a middleware solution that could support concession delivery at enterprise scale while working natively with its custom POS environment.

Because no standard POS connector could meet those requirements, Cinemark needed a custom build.

Key requirements

What Cinemark needed from a digital order platform across nearly 300 theaters.

1. Reliable direct POS order injection
2. Support for multiple digital ordering channels
3. Consistent performance across nearly 300 theaters
4. Centralized menu and operational management
5. Flexibility to support future platform and API upgrades

A custom solution for a custom POS

Otter and Cinemark began building that infrastructure in March 2023. The result is a custom middleware integration that sits between Cinemark's digital ordering channels and its concession operations, giving the chain Order Management, Menu Management, and Analytics in one system. 

Orders from Uber Eats, Grubhub, and DoorDash are sent directly into Cinemark's POS and auto-printed for fulfillment, menus update across every channel and location from a single interface, and Analytics gives Cinemark visibility into ordering trends across all its digital channels.

Benefits of custom middleware solution

1. Direct POS injection
2. Multi-channel ordering
3. Centralized menu management
4. Automatic order acceptance and printing
5. Enterprise-scale monitoring and analytics

Delighting both guests and theater teams

Cinemark's middleware program has demonstrated the ability to support significant digital volume across a large-scale deployment.

Approximately 95% of Cinemark's U.S. theater footprint is active on Otter, while same-store digital order volume increased more than 56% year over year.

Cinemark has also publicly credited its partnership with Otter with increased storefront uptime, fewer cancelled orders, increased order volume, and improved productivity.

Deepening the partnership to improve operations as a whole

With middleware deployed and proven at scale, Cinemark and Otter are now scoping an expansion into Analytics, Handhelds, Kiosks, and KDS. This extends the same foundation into self-service ordering, line-busting during peak showtimes, and further operational execution.