Ed Fitch is a long-time resident of Colleton County and the new owner of Ivanhoe Family Cinemas. Fitch recently retired from Frito-Lay and has been a fixture in the community for a long time. He says, “My family’s worked for the school district, and I spent 25 plus years in Colleton County either coaching baseball, coaching soccer, and I spent 10 years at the high school coaching. We’ve always been community oriented, either through church, athletics, or anything like that. I told my boys and told the family. I’m going to retire, and we’re going to buy something, build something, or do something and it’s going to be something that’s for the community, not just financially or anything like that. We wanted to do something that could support the community. So when the theater became available, we decided, as a collective group to go for it. We’re just trying to branch out, to do as much as we can by working with different organizations to get the word out that we’re here and have every intention of improving on what Chuck and Faith did with the remodeling and the rebranding of the movie theater.”
Fitch moved to Colleton County with his wife, Ellen, who worked for the local school district for 25 years. They have three married sons and six grandchildren, with the older two helping run the theater’s box office. They will maintain affordable ticket and concession prices and plan to expand by utilizing an unused fourth theater for events and meetings. The family aims to continue community-oriented activities like summer programs and trunk-or-treat events, seeking sponsors to support these initiatives. They emphasize their commitment to the community and the theater’s affordability.
They have made it a family business Fitch adds, “Our two oldest grandkids usually run the box office. They’re both almost 16, and then our younger grands. They’re what we call our cleaning crew. After the movies are over, you’ll find them in the in the theaters, cleaning up for the next show.”
The theatre has lots of possibilities, “We can do birthday parties, private events, and if an organization wants to come here and utilize one of the auditoriums. I mean, I got, I’ve even pitched to a couple people that if they wanted to come up here on one of the nights that we’re not open, we can open and they can have a showing for their company. If a corporation wants to have a business meeting and they need to utilize a space that needs 50 or 100 seats, we can accommodate it.”
Fitch is also looking to expand the theater offerings, “There’s some opportunities we have. There’s a fourth theater in here that’s not operating. We’re brainstorming on different things we can do to expand the business, even if it’s not using it as an actual theater. Options such as an event space, meeting space, something that could be a multipurpose use of that room, that can open different avenues for the community.
Fitch adds, “This is definitely a family run business. There are 14 of us in our family. We’re just trying to get our face and name out there. A lot of people know us. They just don’t know us or association with the with the movie theater.