SBDC Features Popzup Microwave Popcorn During NH Entrepreneurship Week

Small Business Development Center of NH Features Popzup Microwave Popcorn during NH Entrepreneurship Week. "Popzup is experiencing what some call "a good problem to have." The brand new business is going gangbusters in its earliest stages."-SBDC

Julie and Marty Lapham are the husband and wife
 team behind Popzup, which is pioneering a new way 
to prepare microwaved popcorn. It turns out that
 those usual little bags of popcorn you’ve been eating 
for your “healthy” snack aren’t so healthy after all, Julie
 explains. The paper itself is suspect and the lining has 
recently been banned by the FDA, and Julie
 also points to the plasticized or metallic mechanism that makes the popping work, the fake butter and other flavorings made of chemicals, and the chemically altered solidified oil that come with your typical microwave popcorn.

The alternative offered by Popzup is a reusable microwave air-popped popper, engineered such that it pops chemical-free popcorn--no oils, no flavorings, and no questionable paper products. The popper, made from paperboard that is free of recycled content, bleach and coatings, can be used 12 times, so it comes with 12 bags of GMO-free kernels from a fourth-generation family farm.

"The Popzup Popper is the safe, totally new way to microwave air pop popcorn that's naturally delicious. It looks and acts different, but more importantly it's better! One Popzup Popper equals 12 microwave popcorn bags - without the bad stuff like chemicals, plastics, silicone, or trans fat. The Popzup Popper Designed for a smaller carbon footprint - recyclable, compostable, reusable, and100% product of the USA. "

Julie Lapham, Popzup Co-Owner & General Manager

Julie and her husband had decades in business and in product development, but they still sought advice every step of the way when they decided to take this product to production. That led them to Kit McCormick, then a long-time business advisor with the NH SBDC in Durham. Above all, Kit helped them focus on what the ultimate price of the Popzup product needed to be in order to be viable. Materials were going to be expensive, they knew, so Kit helped them work through all the ways to cut those initial costs down without sacrificing quality.

“If the cost exceeded the value to the customer, we would be limiting ourselves from the start,” Julie said. After much figuring, they determined that if the reusable Popzup Popper was packaged with 12 bags of popcorn, it could be priced at an affordable $1.33 per bag SRP. Other quality microwave popcorn bags sell for well over $2 each, Julie explains.

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The full story is available on the Small Business Development Center website blog at this link.

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For more information on POPZUP visit: www.popzup.com and follow on Twitter and Facebook

Tags: microwave popcorn, air pop popcorn, healthy snack, non-GMO, gluten free, earth friendly, NH Entrepreneurship Week, Small Business Development Center

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