St. Cloud Company Specializing in Theater Commercials Expanding

ST. CLOUD (WJON News) -- There is a production company that has been in St. Cloud for over 20 years that you've probably never heard of. However, moviegoers across the country are certainly familiar with their work.

1 Better sells, creates, and produces pre-show content for theaters before the movie starts. They've made over 20,000 commercials seen around the country. They are in 85 theaters right now, including as far away as Alaska. Since 2004, they've worked with over 350 movie theaters.

Now, co-owners John and Carol Engel are creating a second separate company called 919 Studio focused on local content.

Mainly, what we want to do is make advertising for the business owners that are looking to do something a little bit more fun, a little bit more eye-catching.

It's called 919 Studio because they are located at 919 West St. Germain Street in downtown St. Cloud.

They are on the second and third floors of the Paramount Theater building above Jules' Bistro.

Carol Engel says the move to downtown made sense for them.

We love the idea that we are downtown because we are a very artistic group.  You have your art, your culture, your great restaurants, all of that.  It has more of a fun atmosphere than where we were before.

The second floor was most recently used by a law firm, and the third floor was used by GREAT Theatre, which still leases space from 1 Better.

They've been in that building since 2018.

Originally, the space was owned by the Knights of Columbus, and the Germain Athletic Club was also there.  You can still see the remains of the pool and poker area, three saunas, two racquetball courts, and a half gymnasium.

The building dates back to 1921.

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The company has a total of 16 employees, including the co-owners, many of whom are family members. Nine of the 16 have been working there for 20 years.

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