I worked at an ~independent (the owner had three fairly spread out and independently managed 'local' cinemas) cinema as a teenager, tickets were dirt cheap and almost entirely went to the distributor. Food & drink was 'a rip off', yes, but a lot of people would be happy to to 'support' the local cinema, was pretty much exactly where it made money.

I imagine even mega chains charging literally up to 10x our ticket prices couldn't survive on tickets alone, the distributors still take the majority of admission, as I understood it.

There was a fair amount of distributor-driven quirks/'politics' that to a customer is a weird cinema decision - something else I recall is having to show a certain film, or for a certain length of time, even if it's not selling ('why don't they just stop showing it') under threat of not getting the upcoming blockbuster that definitely will. Sometimes it wasn't even that it wasn't doing well, manager would know in advance (by local demographics) that a film wouldn't do at all well, but basically not have a choice.