Business & Tech

Popped! About Tasty, Not Gimmicky, Popcorn

New specialty popcorn store will open in Acorn Alley II this summer

You can describe Gwen Rosenberg's popcorn as savory, sweet-hot, bitter or plain old delicious.

You can even call it a dud. Just don't call it gourmet.

"Popcorn is huge," Rosenberg said. "People love it. It’s kind of one of those things I laugh about, because everybody thinks they’re the only one who’s as crazy about it as they are. It’s frustrating that you can’t actually buy good popcorn."

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You can expect that to change starting this summer in Kent.

Rosenberg will open Popped! as one of the many in downtown Kent this year. She'll run a small operation of about 500 square feet selling popcorn flavored with her own recipes.

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Rosenberg said the store will look like a candy kitchen with the cooking and sales space separated only by a half wall and a specially made glass display counter, which is being built by alumnus and glass artisan Marc Konys of Bruening Glass Works in Rocky River, OH.

To start, the store will offer at least three different recipes ready to go: kettle corn, caramel corn and a firehouse popcorn, which she named in honor of Kent's firefighters for serving as test subjects on the flavor. "It's kettle with cayenne ... it definitely has a sweet hot to it," she said.

But there's a lot more to come. She has at least 25 recipes on paper — derivatives from her experimentations over the years with caramel and other flavors. And she's got more ideas floating around in her head of popcorn coated in chocolate, drizzled in maple, sprinkled with walnuts or dashed with nutritional yeast and sea salt.

"Some of it sounds a little bit … it sounds a little odd," Rosenberg said. "I happen to like the taste of popcorn, so none of it is trying to mask it or make it something it isn’t. It’s not going to be sour-apple popcorn.

"I plan to continue experimenting to come up with different recipes," she said. "So if there’s something that catches on. Some might be total duds. Depending on the popularity, depending on how much people like it, I can tweak it."

And don't expect artificial flavors or additives. "I prefer tasting a real ingredient," Rosenberg said.

Local, natural ingredients comprise her recipes. The mushroom and butterfly kernels come from two Ohio farms. "Which is really important to me," she said.

That's not the only local "ingredient" of the business. Bill McCollough of Twin Lakes is building her a small popcorn wagon modeled after the old-time Cretors style, horse-drawn wagons. The wagon will be functional, used at events like Kent Heritage Festival, as much as it adds to the store's motif.

"I went back and forth on it a little bit, trying to figure out the vibe I wanted (the store) to have," Rosenberg said. "You can really go either way with it. You can take it down a carnival path, or you can kind of go high-end. I tend not to take myself too seriously. It’s popcorn, you know what I mean?”

The store will face Acorn Plaza and have a walk-up window along Acorn Alley. It will feature her custom varieties of popcorn along with some hard-to-find candy bars and other sweets.

The store will feature the latest in retail software and technology. An iPad will serve as the store's cash register so it can receive online orders as well and track both the physical and digital stores' sales.

Prices for all the store's offerings, such as refillable popcorn tins, aren't finalized. But the single-servings will be comparable to a cup of coffee and range from $1.50 to $3. Pre-packaged flavors are ready to ship anywhere, and Rosenberg expects to have a healthy online presence.

What began sort of as a hobby sprouted into a business plan when, on a whim, the Kent resident called developer Ron Burbick and talked about her idea for a popcorn shop. Unlike, say, Cleveland or Chicago, the Kent resident and mother of four sees a better opportunity for her niche snack here.

"In Kent the scale is smaller," she said. "You can really give something a shot without threatening your family’s financial future, without totally putting everything on the line. Kent supports local businesses. People are game to see what’s going on."


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