Opportunity Knocks at Popped!

Very soon Popped! will have a lot more elbow room upstairs of the shop. This expansion has been in the works for several months and I'm looking forward to it with the same cheerful trepidation that I had when opening the shop a year ago. I spent much- ok, all of last year behind the counter rather than hiring a team of employees, specifically so I could reinvest in the business. I just hadn't decided how I wanted to reinvest.

The opportunity to rent additional space coincided with a decision I made regarding the direction I'd like to drive this popcorn ship- basically I have no interest in exploring additional Popped!'s or franchises outside of Kent. The thought of having a handful of little Popped!s around that I would have to manage, staff, and fret over, sounds about as much fun as moving piles of rocks. Moving piles of rocks in the freezing rain while being stung by bees.

Popped! is doing very well by my estimation. During the holidays the shipping orders were plentiful and I was jammed between wanting to order ingredients and supplies in larger quantities, but I was being squeezed out of space inside the shop. Sometime during the summer I had anticipated this outcome and spoke with my landlord, Ron Burbick about the possibility of finding extra storage. Instead of just storage, he had space directly above the shop.

Opportunity knocks all the time in business and in life in general, and here it was again rapping on my door. I thought it may have been a little too early to talk expansion, but I was feeling bullish about the business and downtown redevelopment, so I snatched up the space and signed a nice long lease. Opportunity knocks, but it won't make itself a drink in the living room while I perform a risk assessment.

Now that the holidays are ancient history in the minds of most shoppers, I need to look to the future. The expansion will be finished very, very soon and I'll take on the added financial weight of the rent and utilities. Now's the time for me to hustle up some more business to make that opportunity glad it stopped by. I've started aggressively pursuing some wholesale accounts with businesses that I feel are a compliment, and the website is about to get a lot more attention to draw more traffic. I have some ingredients that I've been experimenting with that I'd like to introduce soon too. Bottom line is that with opportunity knocking, I'm going to spending this spring hustling to the door.