If you’re sitting in a movie theater in Texas and hear a big, juicy crunch coming from your neighbor, don’t be alarmed. It’s just a pickle.
Indeed, Texans — and many other Southerners — pair pickles with their popcorn at the cinema.
The topic came up on the latest episode of the “Not Gonna Lie with Kylie Kelce” podcast with guest Demi Lovato, and Kelce’s mind was blown, to say the least.
During their conversation, Lovato revealed her favorite pickle is Vlasic’s Dill variety.
“Not the spear, the whole pickle,” Lovato said, gesturing with her hands. “They’re like this big. They’re not like the movie theater pickles.”
“Wait, what?” Kelce asked, clearly in a state of shock.
Lovato explained that when she came to L.A. the first time, she went to the movies at the Grove and discovered how local her go-to cinema snack is.
“I was like, ‘Can I have a pickle?’ And they were like, ‘What?’ and I was like, ‘Yeah, I’ll have a pickle with my popcorn.’ And they were like, ‘Where are you from? Like, we don’t do that here,’” Lovato recalled. “That’s when I realized … it must be a Southern thing or like a Texas thing. They give you a whole deli pickle and, like, this big jug.”
Kelce asked if it’s a “barrel pickle from the deli,” which Lovato confirmed.
“You’re kidding me,” Kelce replied.
“You eat it while you watch your movie and it’s the best snack,” Lovato said. “It lasts you the whole movie.”
“This is not a revelation I was prepared to have today,” Kelce said. “That sounds delicious.”
What’s the Deal With Movie Theater Pickles?
Regional delicacies, while humdrum to locals, can often seem outlandish to outsiders.
In 2024, pickle enthusiast and popular TikToker Erica Kuiper, who had just moved to Austin, Texas, visited a theater to see if people were pulling her leg about the offering, ultimately finding that her theater had the briny baton, which she thoroughly enjoyed during her film.
According to a 2020 article in The Dallas Morning News, pickles in Texan movie theaters date back to at least 1954, when the paper wrote about “Melba Theater’s refusal to take on the ‘new trend’” because of the odor interfering with the scents they would pump through the air vents. For this reason, the theater didn’t sell popcorn, either.
And in case you’re wondering, no, that theater no longer exists — it went out of business in the 1970s and was demolished in 2014.
Texas isn’t the only state where you can snag the salty snack before your showtime: Commenters on Kelce’s clip say other Southern states like Louisiana and Arkansas stock pickles alongside Junior Mints, Twizzler and other concessions.
And, according to folks in New Hampshire, South Dakota and Alaska, some non-Southern theaters have them, too.
“Today years old when I realized others didn’t have pickles at the movies,” commented one person.
Why Do Some Movie Theaters Sell Pickles?
We can add movie theater pickles to Germany’s innovation list alongside BMW, gummy bears and aspirin.
Per Garden and Gun, a 1957 article in The Dallas Morning News traced pickles in theaters back to Germany, noting that Germans eat “not only during intermissions,” but chowed down on “large hunks of bread, knackwurst, pickles, mustard, and other tidbits” during the show, too.
The writer, Sam Acheson, said the food is “great help in enduring, say, the last act of a Wagnerian opera” the 19th century composer who still holds the Guinness record for the longest opera in history, at five hours.
One wonders how folks from the 1800s would react to the pairing of a pickle with a large popcorn and a Cherry Icee while watching the four-hour “Justice League.”