Love for Popcorn Sparks Business Venture : Bill Sanderson makes a living with his favorite snack. His Cal Corn Inc. in Irvine operates stores and a direct-mail business.
As a young man, Bill Sanderson sat at his corporate desk every day and munched on popcorn he had prepared in an iron skillet at home.
As it was his favorite snack food--and, more importantly, his boss’s favorite snack--he started experimenting in his kitchen, putting on special flavors and adding jello mix to caramel in order to make various candy coatings. Little did he know it was the beginning of a business.
Today, Sanderson runs Cal Corn Inc., an 11-year-old Irvine company that operates 10 retail Popcorn Palace stores in Southern California and two in Japan, and a growing direct-mail business in specialty buckets of popcorn and candy, especially popular during the holidays.
“I enjoy being an entrepreneur,” Sanderson said. “Ultimately you live and die by your own decisions. You can surround yourself with top people and create a family work environment.”
With 25 flavors--including macadamia nut, jalapeno, sour cream and chives, spiced apple and lemon--the company reported sales of more than $8 million last year and expects to do about the same this year.
Sanderson, 39, got his first taste of the food industry while working in his uncle’s doughnut shop as a teen-ager growing up in Seal Beach. While completing his MBA degree at the University of Southern California, he developed a business plan for a small health food restaurant concept called the “Daily Requirement.”
But after graduation, Sanderson found that opening a restaurant would be too costly, so he took a job with the conglomerate W.R. Grace & Co., which once owned several restaurant chains, to help open a chain of health food restaurants in Orange County, which never materialized. Quickly rising to the top, Sanderson became enamored of retail food outlets located in shopping malls, such as Mrs. Fields and Haagen-Dazs.
Because of his preference for popcorn, Sanderson became convinced that a store with high-quality, specialty popcorn could be a success. He developed a business plan and spoke frequently with his boss about his ideas. Finally, his boss called the 27-year-old Sanderson into his office and demanded his resignation.
The boss quickly explained that this was the perfect time for Sanderson to try his venture and handed him a $15,000 check. The boss said he didn’t care if he ever saw his money again, he just wanted to help Sanderson get the company started.
“So I learned that day, if someone gives you a $15,000 check, take it,” Sanderson said. He took out a second mortgage on his home and tapped family and friends to raise the $60,000 needed to get the company off the ground.
He opened his first shopping mall store in the Glendale Galleria, which is still Cal Corn’s busiest location.
“I personally like the smell of popcorn wafting through the mall,” said Nicolette Abernathy, spokeswoman for the Glendale Galleria. “We like to have a selection of food at our mall. People like snacks while they are shopping and I think Popcorn Palace’s business is doing pretty well, especially around the holidays.”
Sanderson’s hard work paid off. He was honored by USC and the city of Los Angeles as Entrepreneur of the Year in 1985 and former Mayor Tom Bradley designated a day in his honor.
In the kitchen and warehouse on Gillette Avenue in Irvine, the cooks at Cal Corn pop 3 million pounds of popcorn each year. Most of the work is done in November and December, which is the busiest time for the company; at least 40% of annual revenue is generated in the last six weeks of the year. It doubles the number of employees from 250 to about 500 during the holidays, to take orders, work in the stores and cook popcorn.
The warehouse is stuffed with brightly colored tins bearing Currier & Ives snow scenes or Happy Hanukkah messages filled with one to 10 pounds of different types of popcorn.
“This is our busiest time of the year too,” said Phyllis Cretors, president of the Popcorn Factory near Chicago, the nation’s largest direct-mail popcorn firm. “Unlike Cal Corn, which does a lot of the specialty popcorn flavors, we feature mostly the traditional flavors.”
Sanderson said Cal Corn has grown to the point where he is torn between keeping the company at its present size or finding a larger entity with which to merge. He is not interested in going public, he said, and is satisfied with his business as it is.
But he will never be totally satisfied with the popcorn. Even with all the special flavors in the books, Cal Corn is still testing more. Flavors to watch for: tomato basil and romano garlic.
