Doc Popcorn A Healthy Franchise Opportunity
Search For A
Franchise For Sale
SELECT FRANCHISE TYPE:

Types of Franchises:

  • Area Development Opportunities
  • Best Franchises for Women
  • Consumer Services
  • Earth Friendly
  • Existing Franchises for Sale
  • Fast Start-Up
  • Fastest Growing
  • Food & Restaurant
  • Home-Based
  • Mobile, Van-Based
  • Retail
  • SBA Approved Franchises
  • Sell to Businesses
  • Top Franchises for Students
  • Under $100,000 Start-Up Investment
  • Under $50,000 Start-Up Investment
Get Started

Doc's Healthy Pop

Doc's Healthy Pop


Local entrepreneur brands kettle corn

Source: Boulder County Business Report
Author: Einav Keet


BOULDER - America's collectively expanding waistline has inspired snack food
manufacturers to produce baked chips, organic pretzels and other healthier alternatives to junk. While these new options are breathing new air into the snack aisle, Boulder's own Doc Popcorn is doing so quite literally with a line of all natural kettle-popped kernels.


"Doc" is Robert Israel, an East Coast entrepreneur who settled in Boulder and made popcorn his passion after sampling kettle corn at a Colorado farmer's market more than five years ago. "There seemed to me to be some covalent forces that said there could be a really interesting business opportunity here," said Israel, who started Doc Popcorn with his own capital. "I'm kind of a consummate entrepreneur."


With bags of their special popcorn on Whole Foods' shelves, and new locations at
Northfield Stapleton Mall and the Broomfield Event Center, Doc Popcorn slowly is
permeating the snacking world. It's all part of the company's three-pronged business growth strategy: penetrating the mall environment, branding for stadiums and event centers and getting into customer homes through Web sales. The startup cost for a new store location is in the range of $100,000. "The interesting advantage of this business is that it's a relatively inexpensive business to get into," Israel said. "The magic sauce is that we do everything in one machine, so the material cost to create a store is relatively inexpensive. The product is a high-margin product with very good yields, and we feel that we're riding a trend in this natural craze."


The trick was finding a way to bring high temperature kettle cooking indoors. Once they had a manufacturer to make the proper equipment, Israel, his wife, Renee, and their business partners developed recipes using ingredients such as trans fat-free corn oil and organic cinnamon and vanilla. The flavors morphed into buttered brownie, sinfully cinnamon and joppin' jalape§o, along with solid buttery and cheesy standbys.


In December 2003, Doc Popcorn launched its flagship store at Broomfield's FlatIron Crossing. "Normally, you think popcorn and Coach (handbags) don't mix," Israel said, pointing to the high-end handbag retailer neighboring his FlatIron Crossing store, "But these guys really like us. "We think that there's an opportunity pretty much in every mall in America for our product," he added. Calls coming in from people interested in partnering and licensing arrangements with Doc Popcorn - and a healthy 30 percent annual growth in sales at the FlatIron location - are fueling the company's sense of manifest destiny.

The second element of the Doc Popcorn strategy is branding for stadiums and event centers. Robert Woodfield, general manager of the Flatiron store, pointed out that stadium vendors are stocked with Haagen-Dazs ice cream and Oscar Mayer hot dogs but still only sell generic popcorn. "There's a really big trend in stadiums and theaters to have the branded products," Woodfield said. "What we're offering is the same margin, but a brand that tastes 20 times better."
Israel said the challenge to getting placement inside stadiums and theaters, where
popcorn is such a moneymaker, is proving to vendors that they can maintain solid
margins and keep customers happy with Doc Popcorn. Tom Benzel, a general manager with Boston Culinary Group, the Broomfield Event Center's food and beverage supplier, can attest to the power of branding.


"We were trying to find those types of products where quality is above the run of the mill products," Benzel said about the decision to bring Doc Popcorn into the venue. "As you watch people throughout the concourse eating the popcorn, you can hear the comments that they enjoy the product."


The final arm of the Doc Popcorn strategy is getting its products into customers' homes through Web sales. At Docpopcorn.com, you can buy a 6-gallon Super Bowl Bag of any flavor and a home popping kit as well. "My dream is that we're in many, many stadiums, many, many malls, and just like consumers want HÑagen-Dazs, they want Doc Popcorn at their stadiums," Israel. said. "We sincerely think that in five years this will be everywhere."