Can You Bring Your Own Popcorn To The Movies?

Today we shall talk about whether it is illegal for cinemas to forbid you from bring your own popcorn and snacks, and what to do if they force you to buy their food instead.

I am sure everybody has gone to the movies before, and we all know that there it isn’t a good movie without popcorn and soda. I personally like my popcorn sweet, and a large cup of coke to rinse it down. However, any food or drinks at cinemas is usually triple the price of what you can get at a convenience shop anywhere else, so why even buy at cinemas, right? So what I did in high school was to sneak everything in using my backpack.

A month or two ago, Avatar 2 was screening on the silver screen, so I decided to watch that. In fact, I bought a 150 Yuan ticket for the 4D version with the moving sofas, Dolby atmos surround system and huge screen. It would certainly be a waste to watch this at a regular cinema. So when I was queuing up for entry, I saw that the staff stopped the guy in front of me just because he had a burger king. The reason was that the cinema policy forbade all types of food that were not bought at the cinema.

The guy argued with the staff fiercely, telling them that he was not notified of such a policy before he bought the ticket, and he couldn’t see any regulations relating to this issue either. The staff responded by asking him to check the back of the ticket, and of course, there was a line of fine print regarding outside food and drinks. The guy was so angry that he asked for a full refund of his ticket. Well, I didn’t stay until the end so I don’t know what happened afterwards because I just wanted to watch my movie. Anyways, that incident sparked my interest so I decided to do some legal research on this matter, and hence this article.

The answer is that it is actually illegal for cinemas to forbid you from bringing your own food. The reason is simple. You are a consumer because you have bought the ticket, and under consumer law, you have the freedom of choice. Forbidding you from bringing your own food into the cinema would be violation of this right, so it would be a violation of consumer law. Cinemas cannot force you to buy food from them either as that would be forced sales and against the law obviously.

Therefore, what I recommend to do in this type of scenario is to take your phone out and start recording, and telling the staff that you will file a complaint to the consumer protection bureau, and post it on the internet. The consumer protection hotline is 12315, and once they take your complaint they will formally investigate the cinema. I have seen cases where cinemas were fined from 5000 to 10000 RMB, so it would also help to tell them of the fine. They wouldn’t really want that type of trouble and would just let you in with your snacks in this case.