Alamo Drafthouse Denton Employee Relief Fund

On the morning of Thursday June 6th, over 600 employees of five Alamo Drafthouse locations across DFW and one in Minnesota were shocked with the news that we are no longer employed. My name is Hannah Stalnaker and I was a manager at the Denton, Texas location of Alamo Drafthouse Cinemas. I am speaking on behalf of our 73 person staff who have been affected by this loss.

The franchise owner Bill DiGaetano and his father filed for bankruptcy and closed every location under their ownership without proper notice. That is the key point there, without proper notice. Despite the press release and articles written about the bankruptcy claiming there was "an attempt to contact all affected employees", this is not true. There was one message sent out on our scheduling app, two hours after the termination of every employee. The way the message was sent out does not even notify the person receiving it, resulting in many people coming in for their shifts that morning.

Most importantly: because of the bankruptcy, we have not been paid for the last two weeks of labor we provided or our available PTO. The bankruptcy was filed on the last day of our pay period, meaning we were unknowingly providing labor that we would not be paid for in a reasonable time period. In fact, we are being told we may not see compensation for those wages for as soon as a few months to as long as a couple years. We are all filing for unemployment but for some of us it may not yield results for up to thirty days. Most of us were already living paycheck to paycheck and this has made all of our situations even more uncertain.

I have been working for the Denton Alamo for almost three years and many others have given even more time to building our store into something we were proud of. Alamo Drafthouse has meant so much to each and every one of us and I know so many of you out there feel the same way. I have met some of my best friends at this job and we are heartbroken to be leaving behind the community we have created.

It has meant the world to all of us at the Denton Alamo Drafthouse to have been able to serve you guys for as long as we did. The people who have spent their time and money appreciating cinema with us mean the world to us, and will always have a special place in our hearts. Connecting with you all through this medium has been a one-of-a-kind experience and it hurts that it has been taken from us so suddenly. I truly thank you guys for listening to our story and giving anything that you can to support us!

Any money donated here is going to be split between the Denton employees that need help the most in this unsure time.