bigrus

Founder’s resignation opens a new era in retail

Harry November 8, 2024

Patrick Yee enters as Jonas Tempel walks out.

Tempel, founder and CEO of flavored popcorn company Opopop, will hand over the management of his company entirely to Patrick Yee, former marketing director of website Refinery29 and frozen food company Daily Harvest, later this year.

Yee started working at Opopop as a consultant in April and became CEO in July. Tempel has since left the company “very smoothly”.

“My work has focused on fundraising, brand and production development,” Tempel said. “I’m giving this entire stack (direct-to-consumer) to Patrick to move into broader retail channels.”

Tempel founded Englewood-based Opopop in 2021. It has developed an online, direct-to-consumer model and says it will generate more than $7 million in revenue this year.

Opop beans are rolled in flavors like Super Buttery, Cinnalicious, and Maui Heat, so they come out of the microwave fresh and seasoned. Opopop is the only company on the market using this technology, Tempel said.

“We are a house of taste,” Tempel said. “All our competitors have is salt.”

Opopop sells an 11.3-ounce bag of beans for $17 or $18, depending on flavor. For comparison, a 19.74-ounce six-pack of Orville Redenbacher popcorn sells for $4 at Target.

“We are expensive, but that’s because we use real ingredients. (Other companies) don’t care about popcorn,” Tempel said.

“It’s a race to the bottom,” Yee said.

Other Opopop product options include a snackier version called the Pop Cup, which holds a smaller serving by peeling and pouring and comes in a $17 three-pack, and product bundles in this range for first-time skeptics or gift givers. From $50 to $325.

He and Yee hope to replace Orville Redenbacher and other companies that have dominated the field for decades. They also see the entertainment industry as a fertile market and hope to recruit studios, actors and directors to help with marketing.

“This is about reaching people where they are already,” Yee said. At Daily Harvest, he helped the frozen food brand triple in size as it reached grocery stores across America.

Since September, Opopop has been available in Meijer grocery stores in six Midwestern states, Yee said. Although this is Opopop’s first sale in a brick-and-mortar store, it generated nearly $500,000 in revenue last year from wholesale deals with Williams Sonoma and Pop Up Grocers.

“We’re not trying to immediately knock down every distribution door we have,” Yee said. “We are just learning how to market this.”

Going direct to consumer wasn’t Opopop’s original plan. The company initially aimed to target businesses and become an office staple through a patented popcorn machine optimized for its flavor-wrapped kernels. But the COVID-19 pandemic changed these plans, and the success of the online model suggests the business can be scaled up.

Yee and Tempel expect to sign several deals with retailers next year and see revenue grow more than the roughly 20 percent average it has achieved over the past three years. During that time, they delivered to just under 200,000 customers and collected copious amounts of data on everything from regional taste preferences to purchase times.

The average customer buys beans every 28 days, they said, and they’re all produced at Opopop’s 12,000-square-foot headquarters in Englewood.

During normal business months, they typically ship about 1,000 orders per week, but during a five-week period around the holidays, that number jumps to 15,000. Tempel said that Opopop generated 65 percent to 70 percent of its revenue during this period, and they increased the number of staff from 20 to 30 to take this increase into account.

Opopop also recently raised more than $2 million through Chicago-based Valor Siren Ventures, which is backed by Starbucks and contributed to a significant portion of the $14 million total the company raised.

“This isn’t a huge tour,” Tempel said. “It’s just about supporting the business to the next step.”

Tempel will remain on the board of the business next year and work full-time for Alfa, the creative agency he founded as an arm of Opopop, in early 2023. He did Opopop’s website production, photography, and design (which he said are his areas of expertise), and other companies asked if he could do the same for them.

Tempel currently advises three startups on branding.

“The product is really good and we have a great brand foundation,” Yee said.

full story From Business

Get more business news by signing up to our Economy Now newsletter.

First Publication Date: November 7, 2024 17:00 MST