BENZIE COUNTY — The Cherry Bowl Drive in has been a staple in Northern Michigan since the 1950s, and the community was worried when it went for sale in 2024.
Mindi Jarmen and her husband soon bought it, and will soon be wrapping up their very first season as drive through owners, but how did they do?
Mindi tells us that it went great, but adds “I am consistently telling people that this is the best choice we’ve ever made. It has been absolutely a joy every single day. You know, we definitely missed ordering things or ordered too much of things. We there was one day when we weren’t sure that the movie was going to arrive in time, or we had to learn how to ingest the movies and put them into our camera in general. So it was just a huge learning curve. There was so much that happened. There was so many new things. But now that we are nearing the end of our season, we’ve really come into a groove.”
When it came to the feel of this drive-in, Mindi wanted to keep the original vibes.
She says “We’ve always wanted to keep everything, I don’t want to say exactly the same as it was before, but the vibe of the Cherry Bowl is exactly what you’ve described. It’s 1950s, it’s nostalgic, and I can’t imagine changing it because it is a step in the past and it’s a blast from the past.”
As far as plans for the future, Mindi says “We want to continue to do more events. So I’m not sure if you heard about we had Dog Days of Summer, we had our pickle fest. We had a luau. We’re having a car show next weekend, on Friday. And we’re going to continue to have more events. Eventually, I think we’d like to expand our food offerings and be able to expand our kitchen a little bit more and have some more fun, nostalgic things that are available for people to purchase. But also, we want to keep doing more community events”
In fact, Mindi tells us that the Cherry Bowl was the highest grossing drive in theatre in Michigan.
During the summer, the Cherry Bowl saw between 50 and 200 vehicles per night.
While more screens would mean more movies, Mindi says she likes the family feeling the set up they have now brings.
Mindi adds “I love having one screen. It would afford us more opportunities to play more movies if we had to. But there’s just something so unique about coming to the Drive-In, and you come. It doesn’t matter what’s on the screen. It doesn’t matter what’s playing. You’re just here for all of the experiences and the fun that is here.”
This weekend, The Cherry Bowl Drive-In Theatre is doing a double creature feature of Squatch, a Michigan made horror movie that first premiered on their screen in June, and the 1994 horror movie Mosquito.