Asheville craft food company's $3 million expansion plan, leadership change

ASHEVILLE - An artisan snack company is bringing in more talent and ramping up operations in preparation for a significant expansion, and it’s all beginning in Asheville.

In 2014, Poppy Hand-Crafted Popcorn blossomed as a small business on Merrimon Avenue. The maker was the brainchild of its founder, Ginger Frank, who desired to make an all-natural gourmet flavored popcorn brand using high-quality, natural ingredients.

Since 2018, Poppy Popcorn has experienced a 150% year-over-year demand growth that’s led to the business’s most recent leadership changes and growth plan. A sizeable investment will aid in its next development stage, ultimately getting more products to more consumers across North America.

“We’re definitely an Asheville brand. We started in Asheville. The first Poppy was a small retail shop on Merrimon Avenue, and Asheville’s been instrumental in our growth,” Frank said. “One of the things we all love about Asheville is Asheville’s great at supporting small businesses and entrepreneurs, and we’re no exception. That’s definitely how we got started, and it’s still the people who rally around us when we’re growing. Western North Carolina feels like home to us."

Over the years, Poppy has grown to include a production facility in Black Mountain and a shipping and receiving facility in Old Fort. The executive offices remain at the Asheville headquarters.

By next year, the plan is to relocate the company to a space that offers twice the size of its current spaces.

“We’re looking to, at some point, bring everyone under one roof as we scale our capacity. We’ll need more room to do that in, and we haven’t landed on a space yet but we’re looking for available options within Western North Carolina to see what will accommodate our growth best,” Frank said. “That gives an idea of the growth we’re looking for and the people we’ll need to power that growth.”

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The faces of Poppy Popcorn

Poppy Popcorn’s woman-founded, owned and operated ideology continues across the company.

Last August, Susan Aplin joined Poppy Popcorn as co-CEO, sharing the role with Frank.

“Poppy has grown like crazy over the years and I felt like we had gotten to a place where we just needed help – I needed help,” Frank said. “I felt like I was able to bring Poppy to a certain place … but now that we’ve grown and there are so many employees and so much at stake, I wanted to go into the future feeling more confident in the ability to lead the team and make the right decisions for the team.”

Aplin, who’s also the chair of the Board of Directors, has more than 30 years of experience with numerous global brands and startups.

Her resume includes key executive roles at Williams Sonoma Inc., The Gap, Bambeco, The Sports Authority, Staples, BillMeLater and The World Trade Center Institute. Her work has been in retail, wholesale, and e-commerce, product development and design, supply chain, operations, sustainability, sourcing, merchandising, and entrepreneurship in the public and private sectors.

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Aplin served as an adviser to Frank before stepping into the new position.

“Why the co-CEO role? I’ve done it on my own before, but it’s a lot more fun when you have the right two people who complement each other,” Aplin said. “Ginger and I have a set of skills that are different but complement each other.”

As co-CEO, Aplin oversees the day-to-day leadership responsibilities, including the areas of strategy and planning, operations and production, finance and accounting, sourcing, and growth management.

Frank, who’s also vice chair of the board, will oversee product design and development, brand and creative, and customer experience.

“When you put those together, we’re able to advance a lot more quickly than say a solo CEO with a team,” Aplin said. “For me, the model is exciting when you get the right two people. This is the second time I’m doing it, and it’s a lot of fun.”

Poppy Popcorn’s management leadership team is primarily women, except for one person, Frank said. Although it’s normal for Poppy Popcorn, it’s a unique situation for a company to have so many women on its workforce, particularly amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

“When you look at women as a whole, we have advanced so far over the last two decades. Then, to see the impact of professional women or women in the workforce take such a big hit during COVID – we lost record numbers of women in the pandemic who’ve not returned to the workforce,” Aplin said. “When you think about how we’re advancing in the sisterhood to roles of management and how we were pushing pay equality for women and getting more women on boards of directors, we made so much progress. Hopefully, it was a speed bump, and we can get back on track. … It’s up to all of us to help advance other women in the workforce.”

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Investment growth

This month, Poppy Popcorn announced the closing of a $3 million Series A funding round, led by JACS Capital, the family office of former GE CEO and investor Jeff Immelt.

In other leadership changes, Immelt, former executive chair of athenahealth, was appointed to the Advisory Board. And Chris Renno was announced to have joined the Board of Directors.

“Part of our mission at JACS is to invest in local entrepreneurs. We are big fans of this dynamic Co-CEO team with Ginger and Susan,” Immelt said in a news release. “Poppy has been redefining what is possible with quality and flavor in the gourmet popcorn sector for years. We believe that our experience in operations and selling can help Poppy reach its full potential.”

Poppy Popcorn’s distribution includes hotel chain gift shops, airports, and specialty shops across the U.S. and in regional grocery stores including Whole Food Markets, Earth Fare and The Fresh Market.

Aplin and Frank, Asheville residents, plan to keep the company rooted in WNC and founding model as a small batch, all-natural popcorn producer.

The business sources fresh ingredients from regional suppliers from within a 150-mile radius, Aplin said.

“Poppy is an Asheville brand and is part of this community. So many of our investors are from right here in Asheville, so we’re extremely excited about that, too,” Frank said.

Poppy Popcorn’s creative agency partner, Made Outside, a Charlotte-based women-owned brand development and strategic consultancy, won two gold ADDY awards from the American Advertising Federation at the 2023 American Advertising Awards for its advertising campaign crafted for the popcorn company that included a library of brand assets, overhauled creative direction, new photography, product styling and a spring 2023 catalog design.

More popping up

With the investment funding, Poppy Popcorn’s manufacturing space will more than double, and more than $2 million will be used to acquire new equipment and technology.

For five years, the company has endured capacity limitations and was unable to meet demand. Production capacity is expected to increase by six times with the potential to increase by 10 times the current capacity when fully up and running.

“It opens up the door for Poppy to really scale,” Frank said.

Many manual processes, like making and packing the popcorn, will be automated.

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“It’s still going to be a batch process because that’s who we are as a brand but the physical labor part of it that’s so hard at times is going to be taken out of the equation with this equipment,” Aplin said.

“There’s a lot of room for expansion but our first focus this year is let’s get our capacity addressed so we can meet the demand that we currently have which is very significant,” Aplin said.

The expansion will create more jobs ― a direct impact on the WNC economy.

Poppy Popcorn is made up of a 52-person staff, and it continues to grow. The company has been hiring steadily since the beginning of the year with more positions, of all levels, to open as the facility’s equipment arrives and predicted to increase in the next several years, Frank said.

“When Poppy started, I was the only employee to work there and there were two part-time college students who helped when they got out of school,” Frank said. “Now, the majority of those 52 employees are all full-time. For years, we’ve had to turn away orders because we just didn’t have the ability to produce enough popcorn to meet the demand, so as we’re ramping up machinery, we’re also ramping up people to be able to run that machinery.”

To apply, visit poppyhandcraftedpopcorn.com/pages/were-hiring.

For more, visit poppyhandcraftedpopcorn.com.

Tiana Kennell is the food and dining reporter for the Asheville Citizen Times, part of the USA Today Network. Email her at tkennell@citizentimes.com or follow her on Twitter/Instagram @PrincessOfPage. Please support this type of journalism with a subscription to the Citizen Times.

This article originally appeared on Asheville Citizen Times: Poppy Popcorn expands with $3 million investor funding, new leadership