Maria Lloyd (00:01.454)
Hello and welcome to the My Local Marketer podcast which shines a light on the success stories, key learnings and insights from people and businesses based in Reading, Berkshire. I'm your host, Maria Lloyd. I've lived in Reading for 20 years and I've only recently started to appreciate what our wonderful town has to offer. Join me as I explore Reading's opportunities and lessons in more detail. Now, without further ado, let's jump in.

Hello James and welcome to the My Local Marketer podcast. Thank you for coming on. How are you doing? Hey Maria, I'm really good. Thank you. How are you? Really good. Thanks. Well, we're here today in Reading Biscuit Factory and we're in the back room, aren't we? Yes, we are in our little private event space room, the Biscuit Tim, we like to call it. It's lovely. I don't know if anyone who's watched it can see, but I really like that Darth Vader. Yeah, that was one of our regular collaborate. He did the birds on our balcony as well.

So he's a local artist, he does a lot of like street art kind of stuff. Amazing, well that would lead nicely into what we talk about later with local collaborations. But to get straight into it, could you tell everyone a little bit about Reading Biscuit Factory and you and what you do here? Yeah, absolutely. So as you said, I'm James, I'm the assistant manager at the Biscuit Factory. We're a three screen cinema community space. We have a cafe, bar, workspace. We offer a sort of wide range of films, but also

events, quiz nights, life drawing, that kind of stuff. So it's a really varied program that we have. It's amazing. And obviously the biscuit factory is based in Reading Centre. I mean, I'm sure everyone knows where it is, but then for those people who don't like just go straight past it, it's just on the corner, isn't it, by Pentahotel? Really good location. Yeah, just on the end of Broad Street Mall next to the hexagon, just on the corner there next to Iceland. Do you actually live in Reading itself? What do you like about Reading? Yeah, absolutely. I

have lived in most of my life actually. I'm a Readingite born and bred. What I like most about Reading is the sort of real mix of cultures and arts that you get and I think recently it's really started kind of popping off. There's a lot of indie theatre groups, that kind of thing. You've obviously got Reading Rep which is now a re-fully established organisation and Progress Theatre that do stuff at the Abbey. There's a lot going on and I think

Maria Lloyd (02:19.874)
Redding Biscuit Factory fits into a nice little niche that's been missing. That's brilliant. You said Redding Biscuit Factory fits nice into that niche. Could you say a bit more about how it fits into that niche? Yeah, absolutely. So something that Redding has always been missing, I've noticed anyway, is a little independent cinema. We've always had the view. There's also the showcase in Winish, but they offer obviously a lot of like the bigger titles, the mainstream stuff. Whereas I think

What Reading has been missing is kind of that independent space for smaller films. Obviously we have a kind of nice mix of mainstream to get in that sort of broader audience, but then we also offer the smaller films as well. Actually it's quite nice having the smaller films because with the mainstream films you obviously get the big opening weekend, large broad appeal audiences, but with the smaller films you kind of get a more niche audience that will come from further afield.

because those films don't get a wide release. They will have a smaller audience but we will get more people from a wider area coming to our space because there are less cinemas showing it. And then on top of that we have our local events stuff like you were saying about our collaborations. We work regularly with IOTA Events which is a local independent drag performer, promoter, events organizer and Big J who

is an ongoing collaborator. work with them on our drag movie night, which has been really successful, mutually beneficial for us to bring an audience in, but also to give them the opportunity for performances and bringing in other local drag performers as well. So is it just them you collaborate with or do you have any other local collaborations that you do? So yeah, with other local independent groups, we offer our space for local

coffee mornings for well-being groups. We collaborate with Reading Indie Gamers who have an ongoing board game night with us at the moment. We've previously collaborated with Siren Brewery. They had a really exciting collaboration with the new Alien movie, Alien Bromulus. So they got to be the official brewer. They made an official beer for this new Alien movie and they

Maria Lloyd (04:46.594)
decided to share the love and we did a special premiere screening for them here as well. Their beer featured. That's brilliant. How do you get all these collaborations up and running? actually getting that connection in the first place, finding people who you want to do things with, how do you select them or do they come to you with ideas? How does it work? We're very lucky in that we get a lot of people that have approached us in wanting to make things happen.

We're quite flexible, we're quite adaptable with our events space and our events offering. We're kind of happy to do anything within reason, obviously. So yeah, we have a lot of people reach out to us to make things happen and we're always happy to provide the space and whatever people need in order for things to go ahead. So how do you actually promote what you do? Because there are so many parts. There's the independent films, like you said, there's the mainstream films.

Is it just a case of you've been going a while and you've got a good following now? So people are naturally following you and that's how you're growing just because you're really unique. Would you actively go out and promote them in different ways? Paid marketing or anything else? Generally, it's a lot of the old social media. We rely quite heavily on that. Obviously, it's a free resource. Generally, it's a lot of that. It's also with the...

collaborations with other organizations there's kind of a mutual benefit that comes with promotion you can kind of promote each other's stuff cross promotions work really well doing competitions so we're working with anvil arts at the moment to put together a competition to sort of mutually promote our Christmas activity and their pantomime so yeah that generally is a good way to go if you've got an event that kind of involves two groups of people it then puts the onus on both of you

I love collaborations and I definitely think it's the best way to do marketing really because I know those things tend to be a little more long-term, a little more effort to get the relationships but once they're there you are just getting access to a totally new audience and yeah, definitely the best way to do it. I was actually going to ask you as well about independent films. How do you select those films then? Do you go by what has previously done really well independent film wise? Is there like a range of independent films you can choose from or how does that work?

Maria Lloyd (07:06.752)
A mixture of things, so our programmers they will see what's kind of in at the film festivals, so London Film Festival is going on at the moment. That will have a lot of involvement in kind of what gets that festival buzz and then we'll try and slot those into our programs when they get a general release. The indie stuff is a bit more interesting and a bit more fun. In terms of programming we kind of get a bit more of a pick. For example, Mubi.

Their films are always quite popular. They have quite a broad international program of films. Other things like A24, they're a good indie horror distributor. Yeah, so it really varies depending on what's out there. What do you like about independent films? I think generally there's just a wider range of stories being told in independent film. There's a lot of...

mainstream cinema that has a kind of formula to it that is very familiar that has that broad appeal. Well I suppose the big films they have big budgets and they can't take risks. The independent films there's no budget you can do what you like but a big film if you know you've got how many thousand especially these you know CGI ones nowadays if you've got all those people and it's cost millions to do you need to. You want to get a return. need to. Absolutely. suppose for them it's necessity.

Yeah, it's a business rather than... I think that's the other thing is with independent cinema it is more of an artistic endeavour. Which can then take off with the mainstream if they've got something that catches. Exactly that. So that's why you get directors that all start off in indies with their passion projects and then they'll get whipped up by the big studios and make potentially interesting cinema for the mainstream studios as well.

I like the way of looking at it like that. So the independence, that's where like you've got the creativity going. And then if it works, then it gets picked up and selected. Talking about that business angle, how do you balance, obviously, Bredding Biscuit Factory is a business. You need to bring in money. You need to keep the lights on. So how do you balance the business side with the free helping out the local community cultural side? Yeah. So again, it's kind of finding that mutually beneficial balance between

Maria Lloyd (09:30.446)
providing a space and providing events, films, whatever it is that people want to come and see and then if people want to come and see it then that will kind of provide the business. If you create a kind of niche where there isn't one which is what we like to think we've done then people will come, like I say, that kind of mutual benefit. I just love the idea that you're using all these like free little community things to test because it's free.

You're testing what works, testing what gets the most traction going. And then you're thinking, this is working. We need to double down on this or bring in more independence like this. Really clever actually, because most businesses nowadays, they struggle to get the data, but that is your way to get the data that you can then double down on. Can you give an example or two of a couple of projects where you've helped local communities? We have our ongoing collaborations with sort of local wellbeing groups and charities.

that provide free coffee mornings for people to pop in, have a little chat. There's a lot of isolation going on, especially after COVID. Drawing people out of their bubbles back into kind of social spaces is really important. And those coffee mornings will provide a trip out for people that may not potentially otherwise have the inclination that provides a space for people to get out of their everyday

environments. We also provide space for bumps and babies, parents, groups, that kind of thing, breastfeeding cafes. How long has Biscuit Factory been open for now? So it was three years in July. Three years? I thought it was longer, but then Covid has warped time slightly. Right. Wow. Okay. So since it's been opened, what challenges have you faced? Because now you've got word of mouth going around, I imagine it's easier.

You've had a few years to get word of mouth, but at the start when no one knows about Biscuit Factory. Yeah, absolutely. So initially, I think it was kind of getting ourselves out there. Not having the biggest marketing budget is a real struggle, I think, for a lot of businesses. And I think part of what we ended up kind of realizing was finding our own unique selling point. That we are a cinema, but we're also

Maria Lloyd (11:55.338)
a bar so you can take drinks into the cinema which people love, but also providing that kind of space for people to do other things as well, a kind of community space, developing relationships with local organisations. To be honest, I think nationally and maybe internationally the film slate isn't quite as strong as it has been obviously with Covid.

Also the competition with streaming is a real struggle. that affect you? mean obviously for the mainstream side, so places like the Big View Showcase, I know they will be struggling, but because you have the independence, you're not seeing that sort of stuff online, or are you? I think it's just the breadth of stuff that's available on streaming. You can find anything at this point. There's so much content out there. People are making a decision to stay home and

watch what they already have subscribed to rather than coming out to the cinema. I think that kind of was a knock on effect from COVID being in lockdown. Also, it's finding a reason to come back. So what's worked really well for us is having different movie nights. So the drag movie nights, we have our ongoing Keep It Cult program, which shows alternate retro cult silly movies. So we've got, what we got coming up? We've got Night of the Living Dead. We've had

Cronenberg, horror movies, 80s, 70s, 90s kind of content. That kind of retro content I think gets people excited to come back and experience that energy that you used to have in a cinema that I think is maybe lost. You want that experience when you go like everyone around you excited and yeah that buzz. Hopefully people will start to get out again because I don't think as much as it's nice and people have got insular.

It's not good for the mental health. People need to be in these spaces and doing these activities that you're providing. It's so important. Humans, think, actually, we just don't like change. Yeah, creatures of habit we are. Exactly. Are there any lessons that you've learned over the last three years that you could give to other independent businesses? Most importantly is, like I said before, finding what's unique about your business compared to your neighbors slash competitors. Although it's good to find ways to

Maria Lloyd (14:20.024)
collaborate with your neighbors and competitors as well. What makes you stand out? What makes people want to come to your venue or your community hub or your business? I'm intrigued actually, because you said obviously your USPs, things like you can take a drink into there. How did you come across things like this? at the start, were you actively trying to find those things? How did you discover your USPs? So really look group who are our parent company.

Their idea is sort of developing localism through re-jouging unused retail spaces into small cinemas and community spaces. So it was kind of built in from the business concept to find those niches in those unused spaces and then ties in community space, arts venue into one.

So the idea was there before the biscuit factory actually came along. That was the idea for how biscuit factory came into being. Yeah, absolutely. So the first venue they have is Catford Muse, which is in Catford near Lewisham, which is lovely venue. And then yeah, KMAS, they've also got recently opened one in Ealing, Ealing Project. There's one in Sid Cubs, Sid Cubs Storyteller and Throliard is the most recent one in Sutton.

I'll include all of those on the show notes page so if anyone's interested or actually near those places they can go and check them out. Again, a similar kind of idea. Small cinema, independent venue, community space. So three years old, Just, what plans do you have for the future for Reading Biscuit Factory? I mean, hopefully continuing to be a space for the local community. Hopefully continuing to provide

alternatives to mainstream cinema. I think if we can continue that, like you say, that different space and different offering to your usual cinema. if anyone wants to follow along the events that you've got going on, the markets, the independent films, how can they find out about everything? Yeah, absolutely. So you can look up our website, which is www.redingbiscuitfactory.co.uk. can follow us on Instagram and Facebook.

Maria Lloyd (16:45.176)
So yeah, can follow us on social media, Redding Biscuit Factory. If you want to collaborate on an event going forward, please do get in touch. I'm James. You can email me at james at reddingbiscuitfactory.co.uk. We are happy to provide a space, whatever you might need for any collaborative ideas that you might have. Wonderful. And anything you want to leave our listeners with? Yeah, come Biscuit Factory. We have a lovely bar, a lovely

unusual view along the Oxford Road. Yeah, come along and like I say, if you want to put on an event, we are always, always looking for more stuff for our program, so absolutely get in touch. I was actually walking down the road on the way here with my hubby the other day and he said, have those eyes always been there? And I said, yeah, I said, I think they have. Have they always been there? Not always, so that again, linking back to the beginning with Star Wars.

I'll see what we did there. So yeah, that is the same artist, Curtis, name is. He did lovely little parakeets and those eyes to kind of freshen up, because we felt it was a bit plain out there. You know, we want something to draw people's eyes. So when did you do that? Maybe our second birthday, I think. I'll tell my hubby that then, because he was like, was saying, I think so. And I was like, I don't know. It's one of those things that when you notice them, you can't not notice it afterwards as well.

I think that was everything. So James, thank you so much for coming on. Lovely. Thank you for having me, Maria. Have a good afternoon.