Chief Operating Officer
Vue Cinemas

Steve K

00:01 Steve K I’m the chief operating office at VUE cinemas. I’m responsible for the day to day running of the business so marketing, film booking, operations, people, anything that makes the wheels of the business turn, I have some involvement in. We’re very, very good at making sure that every day maximises our opportunity for all of our customers, so whether it’s the number of shows we’ve got on, cleanliness all sorts of things that you have to be really, really good at doing, being great every day cos people have so many choices about what they’re doing you know with their lives and where they go and spend their money.

00:37 My dad worked for years and years as a production manager in a factory, he worked for Dunlop for a long time and then we, in Coventry where I was born, and then I was quite young he moved the family away from his core family up to Leeds. I’ve worked since I was sort of 14, 15 doing you know paper rounds and part time jobs, and my parents always instilled in me that, that work ethic. I used to wash dishes in a restaurant a hotel kitchen and the chef there on a Thursday when the bin men had been, made us get in this big bin where all the food used to get chucked in and clean it out and I did this for weeks and weeks over a summer in the you know the late 70s before realising that the chef was obviously a manic and I had to go and do, do something else. But the point was thought that that bin when I cleaned it was the cleanest bin and it was, whatever I was given to do I, I wanted to make sure that I did it really, really well.

01:32 I underperformed at school academically, I’m bright I’m intelligent but I didn’t really use all of my skills. O levels were OK A levels were a bit of a disaster I ended up with two Es and then I went to Middlesbrough, Teesside polytechnic as it was then to study business studies and I did public administration and I did that for two years I didn’t really enjoy it, I enjoyed the time I was there because I obviously again looking back on it, I was getting it out of my system I just had a good time, and I decided to leave I’d have enough of being a student.

02:03 I started running pubs and restaurants and bars and all sorts of things and I got the job that I was doing, got to the point where I couldn’t be promoted anymore and I was ambitious I was in my, my mid early to mid twenties and I couldn’t get any further with the business so I went looking for something else to do. And then I went for an interview in Milton Keynes, who, who goes to Milton Keynes in the 80s, nobody, but I went for, to see what was going on.

02:25 I wasn’t very impressed with the company I was that I went for my interview with and I had like a few hours of, of time to wait to get the train back into London, so I started walking around this cinema and it was it was closed at the time but I, I got in to have a look around and a big American guy stopped me and said, can I help you and I told him what I was doing and he says, come on I’ll show you round, and he worked for AMC that was the name of the company that had come over from the States to open this new multiplex in Milton Keynes and he was the managing director. But as I was talking to him about you know just what I was, what I was doing there, he just said, well we’re looking for people like you, he says, we want young managers we’re opening these complexes all over the country and we’re looking for people like you are you interested? And I said, well yeah I’d like to talk to you all this looks really interesting because I was a customer facing business which is what I was I was used to, but it was completely different to anything I’d ever done before.

03:13 Started you know sweeping floors and handing out popcorn and doing all of the basic training and, I’ve done everything I’ve had my hands down toilets and I’ve cleaned floors and I’ve swept and polished and mopped and done all of those things, which I think give you a good grounding so they asked me if I would go to open their second places which is, which was in Newcastle at the Metro centre, so I went and did that for 3 months and then I went to, then they gave me my own place which was in Warrington so I went and did that 6 months later, and before you knew it you had a career ahead of you, you’ve grabbed your chance and took it and ran with it. Um they liked what they saw and I liked what I saw and it just kind of went on from there.

03:50 I thoroughly enjoy what I do, I can’t see myself doing anything else I get offered other opportunities as a lot of us do, but what keeps me here is that I love what we do, I’m part of building something.

04:03