Before every theater was owned by one of two major corporations, there used to be some actual variation in theater layouts.

A movie theater is a location that would be familiar as a hangout destination for kids and teens, and therefore works as a third space for the writers to get the cast to interact outside of a school setting without the need to explain why Drake & Josh’s rival/crush/whatever are at their house or whatever. The restaurant/bar area is there to facilitate those interactions which wouldn’t really happen while watching a movie.

In Salt Lake City, Utah. There is a movie theater similar to that called Brewvies. It’s a bar/restaurant/theater. In the theater itself they have couches and tables where you can eat and drink while watching the movie.

In my city’s main station there is a cinema with one auditorium that only shows old movies.

No restaurant though.

Seen one like this in my mates childhood hometown. Its a really old format for the building before they went to grander setups. Id image most are torn down by now.

To me it kind of harkens back to my childhood in the 90s and early 2000s, which I have a hunch may be a bit before your time and is also roughly contemporaneous with when Drake and Josh premiered.

These were the days before everyone had a cell phone and almost no one had a smartphone except for a handful of weirdos with blackberries, and most movie theaters worked on first-come-first-serve, seat-yourself seating.

So if you and a few friends wanted to see a movie and wanted to sit together, you’d want to get there early to get in line together to get good seats.

And to some extent, you had to just pick some time to meet up beforehand, it was harder to coordinate rides on the fly because you couldn’t just text someone for a ride and get an instant reply or get an Uber/Lyft to pick you up. If you were relying on public transit or the only ride you could get had other stuff to do, you might have to get there a bit early and kill some time while you wait for your friends to show up, or hang around a bit after the movie because your mom wasn’t coming to pick you up until X time.

So I remember there usually being a few tables and some arcade games and such in the lobby and you’d often see people hanging out there. I know at least one theater near me actually had a few people who would go there specifically to hang out because there were a couple arcade games that they liked (I remember DDR and Time Crisis being pretty big draws, and we didn’t have a lot of dedicated arcades around at the time)

As far as food, that was a bit of a rarity besides the normal snack counter fare, and even then we all complained about how overpriced it was, but if you were there with some time to kill and hungry, you might find yourself sitting at a table chowing down on a concession stand hot dog or some nachos.

Now around me, these days we do have some theaters with actual food menus, and you might have some seating at a bar where you could, at least in theory, go to have a meal without seeing a movie, not that many people actually do that. That’s relatively new though, that kind of thing would have blown our minds back in the day, even having a bar was basically unheard of, not that I was old enough to get a drink then anyway.

And there was just a bit more of a teenage hangout culture back then. We just kind of found places to occupy that wouldn’t kick us out. We’d just kind of go to the mall and walk around and hang out for a while, sometimes not even really going into any stores and subsisting on food court bourbon chicken. If a movie theater lobby was willing to tolerate our presence, I’m sure at least some of us would have found ourselves hanging out there.

As for as how many screens, big multiplex cinemas have been pretty much the norm around me for most of my life, but even today smaller places with one or just a small handful of auditoriums are still out there, I see them in big cities where space is limited, in rural areas where there’s just not enough of a market to sustain a bigger theater, and in the suburbs where they tend to be more independent arthouse type places.

Personally my first memories of going to the movies are from a theater inside of a smaller local mall, I was young when it closed, so my memory of the layout is fuzzy, but I still remember quite clearly where in the mall it was and I can’t imagine that it had more than 2 screens just based on how big the mall is and I’d struggle to tell you how they fit them in.

And of course, it’s a TV show and not one that’s totally grounded in reality. The point of it isn’t to portray an actual, viable movie theater business. It’s to advance the plot. Teenagers like to go to movie theaters, teenagers also work at movie theaters, they only have the budget to to build so many different sets for their show, and these shows are being written by adults who are looking back at their childhoods of yesteryear through rose-tinted glasses, so if mash that all together with a little Hollywood magic and suspension of disbelief and you end up with The Premier- somewhere that feels just plausible and familiar enough to their audience to advance the plot.

It’s just one of those weird things productions do because it’s convenient for story telling, especially when it’s for kids and it’s a sitcom. You’re not supposed to take it seriously or think too much about it.

On top of that, there’s a mini restaurant inside, with actual tables and chairs where people can sit, order food, and eat—even without buying a movie ticket or watching a film.

Pretty much any movie theater would have this if they thought anyone would use it. Theaters make basically all of their money off of concessions.