That’s why we built INDY—a cloud-based operating system designed to streamline every aspect of your business. We’ve been where you are, wrestling with systems that don’t talk to each other and spending more time managing software than serving customers.

Here’s how we’re helping cinemas run better.

Smart Ticketing

Our flexible ticketing functionality includes customizable ticket types, real-time seat selection, and dynamic pricing tools that ensure flexibility for both standard and premium screenings.

Whether customers are booking online, at a kiosk, or in person, every ticket purchase is fast, intuitive, and fully integrated with the rest of your cinema’s ecosystem.

With powerful scheduling tools and deep insights into sales performance, managing showtimes has never been easier. No more spreadsheets. No more re-entering data click by click.

Seamless F&B

From concessions to full in-theater dining, a great food and beverage experience keeps guests coming back.

Our endless F&B solutions include handheld ordering devices that speed up service, while QR code ordering from seats offers ultimate convenience.

Integrated inventory management prevents stock shortages, ensuring you always have best-selling items on hand.

Whether you’re optimizing counter service or refining a premium dine-in experience, every detail is designed to improve efficiency and maximize revenue.

The goal isn’t just to manage your F&B operations—it’s to grow them.

Digital Everything

A seamless digital presence keeps moviegoers engaged from the moment they browse showtimes to the second they leave the theater.

Our customizable digital channels include fully branded websites, mobile apps, kiosks, and digital signage that work together to provide a frictionless booking and concession experience.

Guests can easily purchase tickets, pre-order food, and access their membership benefits, all through a platform designed for speed and convenience.

With deep integration across your entire operation, every digital touchpoint keeps your brand front and center.

It’s not just about having a website; it’s about creating connected experiences.

Loyalty Rewarded

Building lasting relationships with moviegoers starts with the right tools.

Our memberships and loyalty programs offer flexible rewards, customizable benefits, and automated email campaigns that make it easy to keep guests coming back.

Offer exclusive perks, targeted promotions, and personalized messaging that drive attendance and increase revenue.

With a fully integrated engagement platform, every interaction—before, during, and after the movie—feels connected and rewarding.

We’re talking about real loyalty programs that actually motivate behavior, not just point-collecting systems.

Smart Analytics

Understanding your cinema’s performance has never been easier. Our robust reporting and business intelligence tools provide deep insights into ticket sales, concessions, loyalty engagement, and operational efficiency.

Real-time reporting, custom dashboards, and automated reports help you track key metrics, identify trends, and make data-driven decisions that drive revenue.

With clear, actionable insights, you can optimize every aspect of your business and stay ahead of the competition.

The data is there—we just make it useful.

Cloud-Based Freedom

Built from the ground up as a true cloud-based solution, INDY gives you the freedom to manage your cinema anytime, anywhere.

Access real-time data, streamline operations, and make updates instantly—without the hassle of on-site servers or outdated software.

Scalable, secure, and always up to date, INDY is designed to keep your business running smoothly across any device, anywhere. Modern cinemas deserve modern tech. It’s that simple.

Real Support

We believe in real people providing real support. Our comprehensive support includes 24/7 access to our customer support team, customized client training, and dedicated account management.

We’re not just here when things go wrong—we’re here to help you succeed every step of the way. Real help. Real people. Real results.

Conclusion

We started with a problem every cinema owner knows: outdated technology holding back great businesses.

Our solution was simple in concept but complex in execution—build a completely new, fully integrated platform designed for the modern cinema operator.

We’re now helping cinemas sell over 23 million movie tickets a year, and our clients are seeing real growth in both attendance and revenue.

INDY isn’t just software—it’s a complete operating system built specifically for cinemas.

Here’s what you get with INDY:

• Flexible Ticketing – Real-time seat selection, dynamic pricing, and seamless scheduling
• Integrated F&B Management – Handheld ordering, QR code service, and inventory control
• Custom Digital Channels – Branded websites, mobile apps, kiosks, and digital signage
• Smart Loyalty Programs – Tiered memberships with automated campaigns and rewards
• Advanced Analytics – Real-time reporting, custom dashboards, and actionable insights
• Cloud-Based Platform – Access anywhere, anytime with automatic updates
• 24/7 Support – Real people, customized training, and dedicated account management

Ready to see what modern cinema software looks like? Schedule a live demo today and discover how INDY can transform your operations the same way it’s transformed ours.

For the first time, we could see exactly how our decisions impacted customer behavior. What we discovered was fascinating: what people say they want and what actually motivates them to come to the theater are often two very different things.

These insights became the foundation for how we’re building a smarter future for cinemas everywhere.

The Power of Urgency

One of the first things we tested was marketing. A common email for theaters is the “Last Chance” message, reminding people to see a movie before it leaves. We asked our customers when they wanted to receive that email. Overwhelmingly, they said, “Monday, so I have time to plan my week.”

So, we split-tested it. We sent the email on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. The result? Almost no change in attendance. But when we sent the “Last Chance” email on Thursday—the same day the movie was leaving—ticket sales spiked. It turns out, even with the best intentions to plan ahead, people are driven by urgency. That single insight changed our entire marketing philosophy.

Redefining a Broken Metric

For decades, the movie industry has been obsessed with one metric: concession per cap (how much the average person spends on concessions). The business model is essentially a concession stand with a movie as the draw. But focusing only on this is a trap.

With our subscription model, we found that our members spent less on concessions per visit. Why? Because they were coming three times as often! They weren’t buying a giant popcorn and soda every single time. Their concession per cap went down, but our overall attendance and revenue tripled and doubled, respectively. The old metric was telling us we were failing, but the business had never been healthier. We needed a better way to measure success.

The Future of Cinema

These experiences showed us that to thrive, theaters need more than just better software; they need smarter insights. We began building a system focused on what truly matters. Instead of just tracking concession sales, we created a way to see the predicted Profit & Loss for every single showing before it happens. We developed new metrics, like comparing a theater’s performance to the national box office, which removes the noise of seasonality and shows a true measure of growth.

We also built a tiered loyalty system, much like the airlines use. It’s designed around human nature. It gives customers a real reason to engage, whether it’s earning points that are about to expire or working their way up to “Platinum” status. These are the tools that don’t just manage a business—they help it grow.

Conclusion

My journey started with a simple goal: to save one small theater.

It has since evolved into a mission to empower every independent cinema with the technology and insights to build a thriving business.

By listening to the data and understanding what truly drives moviegoers, we can create an experience that is better for everyone.

I was wrong. The real, day-to-day battle wasn’t with studio executives; it was with the technology that was supposed to be running the place.

I quickly learned that the entire movie industry, from a software perspective, has been neglected.

A System Built for the Past

The software a cinema uses is the heart of its operation—it controls tickets, concessions, scheduling, and customer relationships. The problem is, most of this technology was built 30 years ago. For an operator, switching providers is like a heart transplant. You’re often stuck with what you have.

We found ourselves wrestling with six or seven different systems that didn’t talk to each other. Building the weekly movie schedule was done in a spreadsheet, then painstakingly re-entered, click by click, into a clunky scheduling tool. It was a tedious, inefficient process that wasted hours of our time. We were spending our days managing software instead of creating a great experience for our guests.

A New Set of Rules

I knew there had to be a better way. During the pandemic, I locked myself in a cabin in the woods for a year and started building the solution from the ground up. I didn’t want to just patch an old system; I wanted to create a brand new, fully integrated, cloud-based platform designed for the modern cinema operator.

Our mission was built on three pillars:

1. Grow Top-Line Revenue: Give theaters the tools to actually increase their sales, not just manage them.
2. Increase Operational Efficiency: Automate the tedious work so operators can focus on what matters.
3. Improve Quality of Life: Create software that is a joy to use for everyone, from the owner to the 16-year-old at the concession stand.

From Our Problem to Our Platform

While building this new system for my own theater, I realized something important. If we were facing these frustrations, so was every other independent cinema operator in the world. This wasn’t just about saving one theater anymore; it was about empowering an entire community of passionate owners.

This idea led us to merge with INDY Cinema Group, a company run by my now business partners, Ian and Carmen Brown, who were already providing services to 40 independent cinemas. They were facing the exact same technology roadblocks we were. By combining their industry expertise with my software background, we were perfectly positioned to build the solution the industry desperately needed.

Understanding the technology was only half the battle—we also needed to learn what truly drives customer behavior. I share those insights in What Moviegoers Actually Want.

Conclusion

We started with a single, crazy idea to save a hometown theater and ended up on a mission to redefine the technology that powers the entire cinema industry. Building a platform from scratch allowed us to challenge every old assumption and create tools that weren’t just better, but smarter.

By using modern technology and machine learning, we’re now helping cinemas not just survive, but thrive in a rapidly changing world.

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The idea was simple: instead of selling tickets, we’d sell subscriptions. If enough people signed up, we’d reopen.

It was a crazy, all-or-nothing plan, but the alternative was letting a piece of our town die. We had 30 days to hit 3,000 subscribers. We had no idea what we were in for.

The Marketing Blitz

We needed to get the word out, and fast. This couldn’t be a normal marketing campaign; it had to be a community-wide event. The local newspaper, who wanted the theater back as much as we did, ran a cover story announcing a mysterious plan to save the theater was coming. We created a Facebook group that blew up with support.

Then we went all-in. I used the money from selling my car to fund a direct mail campaign to every single house in the area. We set up tables with iPads at the entrances of the two local grocery stores, staffed by volunteers. We even had people dress up as movie characters and stand on street corners with “Save the Theater” signs. On the 30th day, with a reporter from the LA Times watching, we hit our 3,000-subscriber goal. We had done it. Or so we thought.

A Call From Hollywood

The LA Times ran a story on our success, and that’s when the real trouble started. The article caught the attention of an executive at Sony Pictures who tracked me down. What we didn’t know was that their master license agreement, which all theaters sign, had a clause that explicitly disallowed subscriptions. She called to inform me that we had not saved our theater, because they—and by extension, the rest of the industry—would not provide us with movies.

We were crushed. I had put my life savings into this and maxed out a credit card. It felt like we had run a marathon only to hit a brick wall at the finish line. We had told everyone we saved the theater, but we were blocked. One studio, Warner Brothers, “freaked out” that we were doing subscriptions and pulled all their movies from our other locations. It was a complete disaster.

Finding a Way Forward

After getting a hard “no” from every studio we called, we felt stuck. But we found a lifeline. The film booker for the theater’s previous owners, who had initially told me she wouldn’t touch our idea “with a 10-foot pole,” gave us one piece of advice: call her uncle, Joe Carrady, a beloved and retired industry veteran.

Joe understood what we were trying to do. He used his connections to get us meetings with the heads of the studios. This time, they listened. With Joe vouching for us, we managed to convince three major studios—Universal, Paramount, and Disney—to come on board for a trial. The theater was officially saved.

Conclusion

That rollercoaster—from hometown heroes to being blocked by Hollywood, all within a matter of weeks—was one of the most intense learning experiences of my life. It taught me that a great idea is only the first step; navigating the realities of a legacy industry is where the real work begins.

With the theater saved (for real this time), we quickly discovered that our biggest problems were just getting started. The outdated technology holding the entire industry back would become our next, and greatest, challenge.

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To some, that might sound like working backwards, but for me, the transition from a decade-long career in aerospace to disrupting the movie theater industry has been the most fulfilling mission of my life.

My journey from a top-tier engineer at Lockheed Martin to an accidental movie theater owner is a story about finding your drive and taking control of your own destiny.

Building Spacecrafts

I started my career working in aerospace, which included stints at two different national laboratories and Lockheed Martin.

Initially, the work was exhilarating. I found myself in a “little startup inside of Lockheed,” a small, nimble team of three working on a groundbreaking project.

It was insane and super fun. Our team developed a new way to estimate fuel on board spacecraft, extending the life of satellites by an average of two and a half years.

We got so many awards, it was insane. That was awesome. I loved that.

The Breaking Point

But not all of my corporate life felt like a fast-moving startup.

I was eventually moved to a massive government project with 240 engineers. I brought the same innovative mindset, proposing new ways to save costs and reduce risk, only to be met with a bureaucratic brick wall. They were just like, “Go back to your cubicle and do what we told you to do.”

That was the moment everything changed. I remember that day clearly. I was like, “Whoa, this is not for me. I need to go somewhere else.” I wanted to be in a place where I could have a real impact.

The Accidental Theater

That “somewhere else” came from an unexpected place. The five-screen movie theater in my small hometown near Yosemite National Park, a place I loved as a kid, had abruptly closed. My childhood friends called me with an idea. They said, “We should save the theater.”

My first reaction was pure logic: “Oh my goodness, that is such a terrible idea. It’s a failing business. Why would we try to save this failing business?” But then my friends pitched the hook: a subscription model. It was a brilliant idea that could de-risk the venture by getting people to sign up before we pulled the trigger. I was in. So I quit my job, moved back to my hometown, and faced a new question: “How in the world do you run a movie theater?”

Conclusion

For me, the leap from the structured world of aerospace to the rollercoaster of entrepreneurship wasn’t a step back but a leap forward. If you have drive, it’s amazing to be in the driver’s seat and to be able to actually be in control of your own destiny.

But successfully saving the theater was just the first chapter. The real challenge—taking on the entire movie industry—was yet to come.

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