Alamo Drafthouse Cinema

Cold beer, hot movies, and delicious snacks and meals; The Alamo Drafthouse is dinner, drinks, movies and events, all under one roof. Our attention to detail in film presentation and programming has made us a second home to movie fans all over the planet and earned accolades from the likes of Entertainment Weekly (#1 theater in America), Wired.com (Coolest Movie Theater in the World) and Fandango.com (One of the Best Theaters in the Country).

THE CHALLENGE

Simplifying the digital training approach

• Transition from paper materials mindset to a digital training focus.
• Improve communication overall.
• Make things simpler for our teams.
• Build a world class training environment.

THE SOLUTION

Why did Alamo Drafthouse Cinemas choose Schoox?

We looked at several other Learning Management Systems, but chose Schoox for several reasons:

• It fully integrated with HotSchedules offering a single login for our frontline.
• It used push notifications to aid in communications.
• It’s social media like appearance made it appealing to our generations of staff members.
• It offered an easy build and use of video learning capability.

THE RESULTS

How did Schoox solve Alamo Drafthouse’s challenges?

• Alamo Drafthouse is the fastest paced restaurant in the industry. It is a great place to work but the speed is intense. We invite our guest and friends into our living room for a movie and then offer a full service menu with cocktails on top of that.
• From a training perspective, Schoox enabled us to get an immense amount of information to our staff so they could thrive in our high paced environment.
• Schoox helped us become extremely efficient with new venue openings. Our challenge there was how to train over 180 to 200 new staff members in just 3 days. Schoox allowed us to get every bit of information to our brand new employees, have them understand their position and take exams to certify their knowledge before stepping foot in the building for their first time.
• Schoox helped us evolve our trainer program. Historically, our trainers would literally read the training materials to the trainee during the shift. Schoox has allowed us to upgrade our “Train the Trainer” program which now teaches our trainers how to coach and refine the trainee with what they have learned online. The trainers help the trainees apply the knowledge they already have and now in-venue training is all about getting practical hands on experience, which is more enjoyable for both our trainers and trainees.
• We are able to track an employee’s progress throughout every step of their training.
• Schoox has improved our ongoing education and training of existing employees as well. It enabled us to easily update our employees with any menu or procedure changes that occurred. We were able to categorize courses as either public or private, so every location could customize their training to reflect their specific menu, which were customized by market or by venue. Our global brand courses and new brand rollouts were built as public courses for everyone, while any venue specific information was built as private courses so there would be no confusion across multiple venues. This created a system where each user only sees the specific information for their venue.
• We use Schoox’s push notifications to alert staff when a new course is available or when they have been assigned training.
• Schoox gives us the flexibility we need to support the unique drink and food specials we create to support any particular blockbuster film. In this digital training world, every menu item a guest sees is supported by a video and an online course.
• We have seen improved guest satisfaction scores with every new venue openings since Schoox was introduced into the training regiment.

THE SURPRISE

Were there any benefits of Schoox that were unexpected?

• Schoox helped support one of our most important initiatives: to be open and transparent. We wanted to create a self driven learning environment. By having all of our brand courses available in our academy, it enabled employees to train themselves for job opportunities. If someone wanted to be a bartender, then they simply go online and take all the related courses on the position (i.e. liquor courses, beer courses, etc.). After finishing their coursework on their own, the can show that progress to their managers which shows initiative and drive in the staff member.
• Schoox also offered a library as a place to store materials such as our brand standards, training materials and operational procedures. It is literally our data storage which our teams have access to when any materials are needed.
• There are many more features of Schoox we plan to use in the future such as the leaderboard tool, badges awarded to employees and live classroom offering.
• Schoox has helped us get our employees excited, which in turn, sets up our guests to have an awesome experience and excited to come back. We are adding more engaging content every day, like movie reviews and synopsis from our programming team, to brand and motivating video messages from our Founder and CEO Tim League.

As told by: Kody Sandel, National Training Manager