Popcorn, nuts, pretzels making a tasty venture.Ross Wallach had sold about $100 million worth of Beverly Hills Beverly Hills, city (1990 pop. 31,971), Los Angeles co., S Calif., completely surrounded by the city of Los Angeles; inc. 1914. The largely residential city is home to many motion-picture and television personalities. commercial real estate through the 1990s when Kevin Needle, a close friend from college, asked him to be his partner in a popcorn business he planned to start out of a garage. A year later, in 2001, they bought Grandpa Miller's Popcorn Connection for $70,000. The pair sold the business in 2004 to Breaktime Snacks for about $150,000. Wallach stayed on as general manager for the firm's two lines: Popcorn Connection and Hardies Korn Kettle kettle, oval depression found in glacial moraines, which are landforms made up of rock debris. When a glacier melts and draws away from an area, a block of ice may break off and be covered by earth and rock. . "We turned around and revamped the company and started growing it the right way through sales and advertising. We hired brokers and reps around the country and worked with the National Association of Specialty Foods. We attended their trade shows and the L.A. Gift Show and started beating on everybody's doors. It's a lot more fun than real estate. "It was a different challenge. I went from a suit and tie every day, dealing with very powerful people, to a much more competitive atmosphere. "We sell to Sheratons, Marriotts and all the Ivy League Ivy League Group of eight universities in the northeastern U.S., high in academic and social prestige, that are members of an athletic conference for intercollegiate gridiron football dating to the 1870s. schools. Fifty percent of our business is on the East Coast. Mom-and-pops account for 40 percent, then the big boys like Marshalls and T.J. Maxx T.J. Maxx is a chain of American department stores owned by TJX Companies. It is the largest off-price apparel retailer in the United States offering brand name clothing, footwear, bedding, furniture, jewelry, beauty products, and housewares. . "We sell pre-packaged gourmet popcorn in four- and six-ounce bags and larger retail-size bags, and during the holidays we do a lot of tins. We also do retail from our site; if somebody wanted to buy a case of popcorn, with 24 bags per case, they range from $1 to $1.50 per bag, depending on the flavor. We have over 40 flavors of popcorn. "We also have the nuts, we also do pretzels. We manufacture them at our site in Paramount. We have a spicy pretzel we call chipotles and we're coming out with a creamy cream·y adj. cream·i·er, cream·i·est Rich in or resembling cream. cream  i·ly adv. praline pretzel in the first quarter of this year. "We pop the raw kernels in large cooker-coaters and then send the popcorn through a vertical bagging machine. We have five employees and we do about a half million to $750,000 in annual sales, and growing. "I wasn't a big fan of popcorn before I bought the company, but now I like it. I'm not an addict Any individual who habitually uses any narcotic drug so as to endanger the public morals, health, safety, or welfare, or who is so drawn to the use of such narcotic drugs as to have lost the power of self-control with reference to his or her drug use. . I don't eat enough to get sick of it. "I still hold my real estate brokers' license and sit on the board of the Arizona (mortgage) company I founded. Every now and then I dabble dab·ble v. dab·bled, dab·bling, dab·bles v.tr. To splash or spatter with or as if with a liquid: "The moon hung over the harbor dabbling the waves with gold" in sales." |
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