Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Free popcorn and snug seating
New iPic theater in Delray Beach gets new menu, comfortable pods.
iPic picked downtown Delray Beach as the latest location for its brand of swanky movie theaters, the first to be built in the city in more than 40 years.
After a soft opening Monday — something called Charity Preview Day, which benefited five local charities from half of the food and beverage proceeds — the movie house has an invitation-only red carpet gala Wednesday night and then fully opens to the public Thursday. The eight-screen, 429-seat cinema sits just south of bustling Atlantic Avenue at 25 SE Fourth Ave. For more information, call 561-359-5844 or go to iPic.com.
“Downtown Delray is such a vibrant environment,” says Hamid Hashemi, founder, CEO and president of iPic Entertainment. “It’s a great nighttime destination and it really made sense for us to build a theater here. It’s the one element that’s been missing in downtown. You have a lot of restaurants and a lot of bars, but besides that, there’s not a whole lot more to do as far as entertainment in concerned.”
The property was formerly the Delray Beach Public Library, which moved to Atlantic Avenue in 2006 after 56 years. “It was a property owned by the city,” explains Hashemi, who lives in Fort Lauderdale. “We bidded on the property in 2013, so here we are, we’re opening six years later.”
Next he says he plans on opening iPics in Fort Lauderdale, Sunrise and the Design District in Miami. Currently there are iPic Theaters in nine states (with more to come) and first-time locations planned for Georgia, Texas and Connecticut. The corporate office is in Boca Raton’s Mizner Park.
What makes iPic so special?
The ground floor of the new Delray Beach building is the theater. Then there are two floors of office space, and retail space on the fourth floor. The venue has a 329 space parking garage and valet parking.
But it is the pod seating and the fine dining inside the movie auditoriums
that iPic is known for.
Nope, there’s no concession stand.
The Food Network celebrity judge and two-time James Beard award winner Sherry Yard, is the COO of iPic and developed the menu.
“We designed our menu for dining in the dark, which means nothing too noisy, nothing too smelly, so nothing crunchy,” Yard explains. “It has to have the flavors. Your flavors are heightened when you dine in the dark. Even the paper, we have to be careful. We’re very concerned about how the paper rustles. We want to elevate the experience.”
Some of the fare being offered includes:
Tuna on crispy rice with jala-
penos
Lobster roll with pink chili sauce
Green goddess burger with avocados, sprouts, arugula, green goddess dressing and smoked Gouda cheese topping
Made-from-scratch cheddar biscuits with maple butter
Tempura beans. “Who needs a french fry when you have tempura beans with a black bean sauce,” asks Yard.
She then adds, “Here's the thing: Our menu is so exclusive and so different that you can’t even go to another restaurant for things like this. You’ll never get them all on one menu.”
There is also unlimited popcorn served gratis.
Put your bod in a pod
Hashemi says the reclining leather pod seats with embedded service buttons (the wait staffers are called “ninjas”), pillows, blankets and a swivel table are designed to encapsulate the movie goer in comfort.
“Basically what we’re trying to do is, you know, is give you the same intimacy you have in your living room if you were sitting with your loved one watching a movie,” Hashemi explains. “We want to replicate that space and that environment, but in a shared space.
“Once you recline the seats nobody can see you. You can’t see anybody else. It’s almost like watching a movie in the privacy of your own home.”
There’s more going on than movies
The iPic theaters are also event spaces where, like other theaters in the chain, there will be live performances, book signings, album launches, Netflix shows shown, weddings and even live Q&A sessions after screenings held in California. “We built these theaters to be really more of a cultural destination,” Hashemi says.
The iPic Delray is also a backdrop for art. Aside from the living green wall inside and outside, there are expansive murals and installations throughout the building. Hashemi points out one interior wall where Portuguese visual artist Vhils (a.k.a. Alexander Farto) built a brick wall and then put concrete and stucco on top of it, painted it “and then he came over here with a jackhammer and chiseled it out,” recalls Hashemi.
“What are movies? Movies are a form of art. Traditionally when you look at old theaters … the focus was only what was on the screen … but then the rest of the space was really not inspiring. So what we’re trying to do is we’re building a space where we’re adding a lot of really cool art that’s going to be inspiring as you walk through it lets you imagination go.”
Other artists include 2alas (Andrew Antonaccio), Evoca1, HYBYCOZO (Yelena Filipchuk and Serge Beaulieu), Trevor and Cosmo (Trevor Wheatley and Cosmo Dean), Aaron Li-Hill, Icy and Sot, Peter Tunney and Ernest Zacharevic.
How much are tickets?
Tickets are usually going to cost you around $29.
You can get a discount on tickets and food with a $45 annual iPic Access Gold membership. The Gold members get special ticket pricing and 10 percent off of food and nonalcoholic beverages (you also get a free ticket on your birthday). You earn one point for every $1 spent. You need 500 points before you can start redeeming.
Silver memberships earn one point for every $1 spent. Go to iPic.com/ membership for more information.
Flashback
Hashemi started dining in the theater in 1999 with Boca Raton’s Muvico Palace, which is now the Cinemark Palace 20 and XD. The Palace had balconies with food and beverage servings. That led to iPic in 2010 where he expanded the idea of fine dining and watching a movie, prompted by a survey that showed 78 percent of people eat before or after viewing a film.
“So why not bring it under one roof?” Hashemi asks. “Like any idea there is a time when people are ready for it. I mean if this was done 30 years ago it probably would have been too early.”
And South Florida is perfect for the launch, he says.
“I think the South Florida market is really a great market because the rate of adaptation is a lot faster. People in the Midwest or the Northwest, you know for the most part, when a new business comes to town, they are a little bit reluctant to go and try it out. Whereas in South Florida people are always looking for the next best thing.”