Cupholders

[Noah T Crissman]

It has been decided that we need to add cup holders to our historic auditorium seats. We are having trouble finding any companies that sell cup holders for theatres. Would anybody out there have any suggestions? Any help big or small would be a big help.

 

[Van]

I've seen them 'built in" to newer seats. You might find a retro fit arm rest if you can look up the manufacturer of your seating.

 

[Noah T Crissman]

Van, I have sent an email to American Seating the manufacture of our seats. Waiting for a response. We assume we will have to retro fit something, but we are having trouble finding companies that even sell cup holders for theatre seats.

 

[Amiers]

Then I guess something like this wouldn't work. A picture of your seats would be most helpful.

https://www.overstock.com/Home-Gard...ood-Easy-add-Cup-Holder/11889486/product.html

 

[Noah T Crissman]

Picture of our seats. not sure why it wants to rotate it.

 

[derekleffew]

Then I guess something like this wouldn't work. A picture of your seats would be most helpful.

https://www.overstock.com/Home-Gard...ood-Easy-add-Cup-Holder/11889486/product.html

At $27 per seat, yikes! Gets expensive quick. Plus interferes with the fold-up chair bottom.

When I had to do this for a 350 seat theatre, we bought similar to this

Note: photo shows two cupholders stacked upon one another.

Cut off the clippy "hook" part, drilled a 1/8" hole in the bottom, and used a 3/4" pan head screw to screw into the top of the armrest. We were smart enough to buy lots of spares, as they were easily broken by inattentive audience members catching their coats or whatever on them.

Perhaps better would be to leave the vertical portion of the hook and attach to the front of the armrest. But this would put it even more in harm's way. And depending on the seatback-to-seatback distance (what's the term for that? Seat pitch?) could impede egress, violating safety regulations.

A better (albeit more expensive of course) solution would be to replace every armrest with an integral hole.

Photo from http://www.preferred-seating.com/armrests-cupholders.html
Also https://www.theaterseatingstore.com/cup-holder-armrest

Does http://www.americanseating.com/architectural/installations not do theatre seats anymore? I can't find anything on their website about them. Do I have the wrong American Seating?

 

[Amiers]

Well that is a pretty small armrest.

Are you looking to upgrade each one or every other one?

Depending on the bolt patterns you should be able to mount any arm rest on it.

These are what I found. So I wouldn't be surprised if the seating company you went with would of the cup holder accessory.


Edit:
Seems me and @Van had the same thought lol

 

[MarshallPope]

I wonder if it might be feasible to find someone to machine something like this, that could just be tek screwed to the uprights. Since we'd need 1500 of them, I'd think someone could do a pretty good bulk price.

 

[sk8rsdad]

Before adding something to the face of the upright check with your AHJ. There are rules about minimum aisle width for egress. Adding a few inches of obstruction to the arm might make the aisle too narrow.

 

[gordonmcleod]

caddy products make many seat cup holders and accessories
http://www.caddyproducts.com/theatre.php

 

[JohnD]

I suppose those sippy bags with lanyards and those beer hats with straws aren't feasible.

 

[Noah T Crissman]

Thanks for all the suggestions. We have looked at most of the companies that were suggested and they loop back to Caddy Products. We have a quote from them, but for a couple of different reasons we were seeing if we could find anymore. One being our city purchasing department tends to want 3 quotes for large purchases like this and two we wanted to see what if any other options were out there. Our main concern is taking our historic value and lessening it by just throwing on some random cup holder just because we think we need cup holders. Also, due to the historic nature of our theatre our seatback to seatback distance is rather small especially in the balcony where the seats are original to the 1924 construction so we have to be careful what we install so that we aren't losing any more of the distance.

 

[heapes]

Another option to consider might be mounting the cup holders on the back side of the arm rest upright, down closer to the floor of the row behind it. Many Las Vegas theaters are doing this now. It does a few things for you, first providing a drink holder for the row behind the seat you are attaching the cup holder to. Second , by placing it closer to the floor you essentially use the negative space created by the angle of the seat back, effectively reducing or even eliminating the loss of space in the row created by mounting them on the front of the armrest. Third, they are out of sight for the most part, maintaining the historical look of your house. Lastly, it should be less expensive than replacing the entire arm rest.