Live Episode! Angie's BOOMCHICKAPOP: Angie & Dan Bastian (2019)

Angie and Dan Bastian weren't trying to disrupt an industry or build a massive company, they just wanted to put aside some money for their kids' college fund. In 2001, Dan stumbled across an internet ad touting kettle corn as a lucrative side-business, so he and Angie decided to take the plunge, investing $10,000 in equipment. At first, they popped kettle corn in front of local supermarkets in the Twin Cities and at Minnesota Vikings games. Eventually, they moved indoors to Trader Joe's, Target, and Costco—and got a crash course in how to run a business along the way. Angie's Kettle Corn eventually took on a bold new name: BOOMCHICKAPOP. And in 2017, the company was acquired for a reported $250 million. This show was recorded live at Ordway Concert Hall in St. Paul, Minnesota in July 2019. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Guy Raz?

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• 0:46Guy Raz?

  build the prototype, analyze the market, maybe even come up with the idea, what separates the people who actually build something from everyone else? I don't have a clean answer yet, so I've been sitting with it with Claude. There's hope in hard questions. Ask yours at claude.ai/hibt. We get support from U.S. Bank. A question I love asking founders. What's the one decision you almost didn't make? The one that changed everything? Because it's never the obvious stuff. It's never, I decided to start a company. It's the small, boring, Tuesday afternoon decision you barely remember making until you realize it's the reason everything after it either worked or didn't.

• 1:32Guy Raz?

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• 2:14Guy Raz?

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• 2:58Guy Raz?

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• 3:40Guy Raz?

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• 4:23Guy Raz?

  And it reminds me a little bit of the founders I talked to on this show, because the best ones obsess over things their customers will never see. Tiny details, invisible improvements, relentless iteration. And not because anyone's watching, but because it makes the product better. That's what the mobile brand does. It engineers fuel the same way great founders engineer their products. Mobile Supreme Plus Premium Gas helps keep engines three times cleaner, which can mean better performance and improved gas mileage. It's for people who care about what's under the hood, even if they never see it. Three times cleaner compared to mobile regular gas in port-fuel-injected engines. Actual results may vary.

• 5:07Guy Raz?

  Visit mobili fuels.com for details. This message comes from NPR sponsor Edward Jones. Life is a series of moments. Make the most of them with an Edward Jones financial advisor. Whether you're planning the trip of a lifetime, retirement, or just need some everyday advice. Life is for living. Let's partner for all of it. Learn more at edwardjones.com. Hey, everyone. So some great news, because starting April 1, we're going to be releasing not one, but two episodes of How I Built This every single week. But in order to prepare for that, we've got a lot of work to do to get those episodes out to you. So in the meantime, we're going to run a few repeats, including this one that was recorded in the summer of 2019.

• 5:51Guy Raz?

  The team and I traveled to St. Paul, Minnesota, to do a live show with the founders of Angie's Boom Chicka Pop. We all ate a ton of popcorn that night. There were actually bags of their snacks everywhere. And as you'll hear, we also had an incredible time with them onstage. It's a really fun and amazing story. So enjoy.

• 6:15Guy Raz?

  You went to a bunch of banks. And what did they say? Were they eager to lend you the money?

• 6:22Speaker 01

  No.

• 6:24Guy Raz?

  You went to bank after bank and they just said what?

• 6:26Speaker 02

  Yeah, some were more open to discussing than others. And we eventually found a partner that worked with us and lent us the money.

• 6:36Guy Raz?

  And what did you have to... What kind of collateral did you have to put? You said you had no collateral.

• 6:40Speaker 02

  You know, probably receivables and...

• 6:43Speaker 01

  Personal guarantees.

• 6:44Speaker 02

  Personal guarantees.

• 6:45Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 6:46Speaker 01

  Which was our home.

• 6:47Guy Raz?

  Yep.

• 6:48Speaker 01

  Future earnings. Everything but the minivan.

• 7:00Guy Raz?

  From NPR, it's How I Built This, a show about innovators, entrepreneurs, idealists, and the stories behind the movements they built.

• 7:11Guy Raz?

  I'm Guy Raz, and on the show today, how Angie and Dan Bastian went from popping kettle corn in their freezing Minnesota driveway to building an international snack brand worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

• 7:29Guy Raz?

  So there's a piece of career advice that I've always struggled with because it feels a little hollow. And the advice is to follow your passion. For starters, not everyone has an obvious passion. And then, not all passions are easily translated into sustainable careers. But if you've heard most of the founders on this show, you might conclude that all of them pursued their passions, like James Dyson trying to build a better vacuum cleaner, right? Well, in fact, they are all passionate about what they created, but for the most part, the passion came after the product came into being. And in the case of Angie and Dan Bastian, neither Dan nor Angie ever had a particular love for popcorn.

• 8:13Guy Raz?

  Yeah, they liked it, but it wasn't their passion, at least initially. The idea behind buying a kettle corn kit was pretty simple. They needed a way to earn extra money to save for their kids' college funds. And popping and selling kettle corn seemed like a reasonable way to do it. So in 2001, after Dan literally saw an internet ad for kettle corn equipment, he convinced Angie that they should go for it. They could launch it out of their garage in Mankato, Minnesota, and then, you know, sell the popcorn at Little League games or in parking lots. And that was how Angie's Kettle Corn was born. It would be the beginning of a grueling grind.

• 8:56Guy Raz?

  The long hours, the freezing cold days, the crushing debt, and the stress on their marriage and finances. But 16 years after that kettle kit arrived, Angie's Boom Chicka Pop sold to a huge food conglomerate for a quarter of a billion dollars. It is, like many of the stories in this show, seemingly improbable. Two people with no business experience, no connections, no real passion for popcorn, still managed to build an incredible company. And a few weeks ago, Dan and Angie told me how they did it in front of a live audience at the Broadway Concert Hall in St. Paul, Minnesota.

• 9:45Speaker 01

  Wow. Those are our rowdy friends.

• 9:48Guy Raz?

  These are your people.

• 9:49Speaker 01

  These are our people.

• 9:50Guy Raz?

  You might notice some people in this crowd, huh? So, welcome. Thank you for being here. Angie, I want to start with you, and then we'll obviously get to when the two of you met. You grew up in Indiana. You grew up, I think mainly on a farm.

• 10:05Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 10:06Guy Raz?

  In a Mennonite community. Can you tell us a little bit about your childhood and your upbringing?

• 10:12Speaker 01

  Sure. Well, my parents were very young. They were 18 and 19 when they were married, and 19 and 20 when I came along. And they lived in a trailer in the back of my grandparents' yard on the farm. And my parents met at Mennonite high school.

• 10:31Guy Raz?

  And so, growing up, you went to the Mennonite church, and you were really part of the Mennonite community?

• 10:36Speaker 01

  I was. Culturally, religiously, socially, all Mennonite.

• 10:40Guy Raz?

  And just for people who aren't familiar with Mennonite culture, what does that mean? I mean, obviously, modesty, right? And so, like... Did you, I don't know, watch TV and go to movies and do all those things as a kid?

• 10:52Speaker 01

  I got to go to a movie when I, my first movie was The Sound of Music.

• 10:56Guy Raz?

  Okay, right. A little risky.

• 10:59Speaker 01

  And I'm married to Catholic.

• 11:04Speaker 02

  A little different upbringing.

• 11:07Speaker 01

  No, it was, it was very sequestered. It was very protected. I was very loved and cared for and very simple. And I didn't know I was an oddball until I, you know, until I was 28.

• 11:18Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 11:20Guy Raz?

  And, and, um, so you grew up in Goshen, Indiana?

• 11:23Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 11:24Guy Raz?

  Dan, you grew up in, in Mankato, right? I mean, that's where, that's where you're from.

• 11:29Speaker 02

  So I grew up in Mankato, uh, third of four boys. It was kinda chaotic at times in our household, I'd say. Fun in a good way, having loving parents. Uh, had an incredible experience growing up. Um, very competitive. All of us boys played sports, so a few heads were thrown through the wall.

• 11:50Speaker 01

  There's a picture over that hole.

• 11:52Guy Raz?

  And, and, and were you, were, I mean, tell me a little about, about your school. Like, were you a good student in school?

• 11:59Speaker 01

  I love school.

• 12:00Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 12:01Speaker 01

  I, I just...

• 12:01Speaker 02

  Are you gonna ask me that question?

• 12:05Speaker 01

  No, I did. I loved school. And, um, but I grew up in an environment that didn't necessarily encourage me to go to college. And, um, you know, it wasn't until my, my Aunt Christine in Colorado Springs said to me when I was 19, like, "Why aren't you in college?" And I, it was the first time anybody in my family said that they thought I had some potential, or I believed them to think that I had some potential.

• 12:32Guy Raz?

  Cause you did not have any intention of doing that.

• 12:35Speaker 01

  Well, I didn't know what. I didn't know what, you know? I, I just said, "Oh, my gosh, you know, you think I could go to college?" And she said, "Of course, you should go to college." And I enrolled, well, I, I took a chemistry course that summer, just to prove to myself that I could do it. And I got a B, so I was like, "Okay, I think I can do this." So I'm going to college.

• 12:54Guy Raz?

  And Dan, and Dan, how about you? I mean, I mean, were you, would the school come easy to you?

• 12:59Speaker 02

  Uh, no.

• 13:02Speaker 02

  I mean, it was hard. I probably would have been diagnosed as ADHD back in the day. You know, it was just harder for me. Fortunately, I had, you know, my mom was really great about keeping her finger on me to kind of get me through school. And I had two really smart older brothers that allowed me to get into a really great school, St. John's University.

• 13:25Guy Raz?

  And you, when you went, I think you studied history in college?

• 13:29Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 13:30Guy Raz?

  And was your, and then you finished, when you finished college, was your idea to become a teacher?

• 13:37Speaker 02

  Toward the end of my senior year, I think I did like a month-long little internship in a classroom. And so, I just loved the kids. I kind of realized it was my passion, and I was really good at it.

• 13:50Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 13:51Speaker 02

  And I could kind of manage the classroom how I wanted to, rather than being told, you know, this is how you need to teach. And I think I really connected with the kids.

• 14:00Guy Raz?

  All right, in an entirely separate universe, Angie, you went off to study nursing, and you end up in Santa Fe, right? Or in Gallup, Gallup, New Mexico.

• 14:11Speaker 01

  Gallup, New Mexico.

• 14:12Guy Raz?

  And was that to begin your work as a, you were a psychiatric nurse?

• 14:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, I was working in Atlanta at Georgia Mental Health Institute, and I was interested in trans-cultural healthcare. And so, I got a traveling nursing position, which was in Gallup, New Mexico, and they had the contract for Indian Health and with the Navajo tribe and the Zuni tribe for their inpatient psychiatric care. And I was like, I'm going there. I want to see what this is like.

• 14:41Guy Raz?

  Wow. And you also, Dan, end up in Gallup, New Mexico, teaching high school, right?

• 14:49Speaker 02

  Yep. I had a family, a relative, that was working at the hospital in Gallup, New Mexico, and I ended up moving down to Gallup to teach at the high school. And just so happened that Ange was working at the same hospital where my uncle was. So that's how we met.

• 15:03Guy Raz?

  You met through your uncle? Like, or he introduced you, or you just met at the hospital?

• 15:07Speaker 01

  We met in Roger's Kitchen.

• 15:08Speaker 02

  Uncle Roger's Kitchen.

• 15:10Speaker 01

  Well, okay, this is, my jaw was broken. I had broken my jaw.

• 15:15Guy Raz?

  Wait, what?

• 15:18Guy Raz?

  How'd you do that?

• 15:19Speaker 02

  That is a lot to this story here.

• 15:22Speaker 01

  So, I don't know. I was not eating well. I fainted in the elevator and fell on my face and broke my jaw.

• 15:29Guy Raz?

  Oh my god.

• 15:30Speaker 01

  So, I was wired shut and my friend Raymond, who was the social worker at the hospital, was a good friend of his uncle's. And he said, "Let's go over and hang out at Roger's house." So, we went over to Roger's house, we hung out, and my jaw was wired shut. And Dan said immediately, "Oh, you broke your jaw." I broke my jaw in college.

• 15:47Guy Raz?

  You broke your jaw too?

• 15:50Speaker 02

  So, when I was in college, I was playing baseball and I got hit by a line drive. And so Angie, I could relate to her. Like, when she walked, when I walked into the kitchen, her jaw was wired shut. And it's like, I know what she's going through. She's blending food, she's like doing all that.

• 16:07Speaker 01

  Awful.

• 16:07Speaker 02

  So, that was kind of our connection.

• 16:09Guy Raz?

  So, you bond over this right away?

• 16:10Speaker 01

  Right away, right away.

• 16:11Guy Raz?

  There's an intense jaw, broken jaw bond.

• 16:14Speaker 02

  Jaw discussion.

• 16:15Speaker 01

  So, there was a group of people that lived in Gallup that just would hang out together. You know, Gallup is a very difficult place. And a lot of people come in and work in the schools and the hospitals. And there was a group of us that were there doing that. And we would just go hang out and do happy hour every Friday night. And we kind of got to know each other that way.

• 16:35Guy Raz?

  So, you start hanging out. Eventually, you guys become a couple. And I think within like two years of meeting, you got married, right?

• 16:44Speaker 01

  We got married. We had a destination wedding in Taos, in Mexico, where we just kind of had all, a small wedding, but had friends and family come and watch us get married.

• 16:53Guy Raz?

  I think a year later, your daughter's born, 95. You guys moved to Santa Fe.

• 16:58Speaker 02

  Right.

• 16:58Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 16:59Guy Raz?

  For a brief period. And then you eventually moved to Florida. You're a young couple and you've got a child and...

• 17:09Speaker 01

  Two kids.

• 17:09Guy Raz?

  Two kids at that point. Oh, your son is born, your son's...

• 17:11Speaker 01

  Son's born in Santa Fe.

• 17:12Guy Raz?

  In Santa Fe. Why did you move to Florida?

• 17:15Speaker 01

  We just kind of said, "Hey, you know, maybe it's time to get a little closer to grandmas and grandpas."

• 17:20Guy Raz?

  Your family was in...

• 17:21Speaker 01

  My family was in Sarasota, Florida, yeah.

• 17:24Guy Raz?

  So, you moved there and you start working for a clinic in Sarasota.

• 17:28Speaker 01

  A clinic, yeah. Coastal Recovery Center, which is a mental health clinic.

• 17:31Guy Raz?

  And Dan, what did you do in Florida?

• 17:33Speaker 02

  So, I stayed home with the kids, got to spend incredible time with them. And I also, at the same time... Started the entrepreneurial process and I started a-

• 17:47Guy Raz?

  Yeah, what do you mean by that? I mean, because you're the lead parent, right? You are at home and Angie's working.

• 17:55Speaker 02

  Yeah, so one day a week I'd go work at this golf course and Angie's mom would take care of Annika and Tripp.

• 18:00Guy Raz?

  What would you do at the golf course?

• 18:01Speaker 02

  I just schlepped bags and carts and I was just a cart guy.

• 18:06Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 18:09Speaker 02

  Which I was good at, I guess.

• 18:10Speaker 01

  And you got free golf.

• 18:11Speaker 02

  And I got free golf. But I started this golf business where I'd set up tournaments for corporations.

• 18:17Speaker 02

  I didn't get real far with it, but I only had one or two tournaments, I think. But it was just kind of a good experience of- Because Angie and I had started thinking about, you know, can we do something together? Is there an opportunity to do something together? And so we had some other ideas floating through our heads and-

• 18:32Guy Raz?

  But you would basically kind of start to think about, hey, you know, what could a business be like? What could it look like? This idea started to kind of enter your mind?

• 18:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, I got a lot going through my mind, guys. So I don't know if I was really like focused on anything specifically other than- You know, Angie and I wanted to do something together. We didn't really know what it was. We were thinking food at the time.

• 18:56Guy Raz?

  Right.

• 18:56Speaker 02

  Not popcorn, but like food, restaurant, co-op, cafe type thing where we could do it together and we could go after it.

• 19:04Speaker 01

  I think both Dan and I have this sort of restlessness about ourselves.

• 19:09Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 19:09Speaker 01

  And like when one adventure doesn't work, we're on to the next adventure. Like, let's go back to Minnesota. Let's go to Minnesota. I loved Minnesota.

• 19:18Guy Raz?

  And you guys decide, let's go to Mankato. You want it to be near your family?

• 19:24Speaker 02

  Yeah. And so we decided to move back to Mankato. I got back into teaching. Because when we moved back, we were thinking of, like I said, opening up like a cafe or some type of food place. And we just realized it was going to be too expensive. We weren't prepared for it. So we got back into our careers. I got back into teaching and Angie got a job with the state hospital.

• 19:45Guy Raz?

  All right. So you're back in Mankato and what is this idea for kettle corn even?

• 19:53Guy Raz?

  Happen like you're going to your job. You are a nurse. You're working at the clinic, right? And you're teaching.

• 20:00Speaker 01

  Can I just tell you that when we were doing all of that, right? Like successfully employed, everything. And yet we said, oh, you know, we don't have any savings. Like, we got to figure out a way to put some money away for our kids' college fund. We have to figure out how to create something here so that we have money. Because we both just absolutely valued education, right?

• 20:23Guy Raz?

  And you had a six-year-old and a four-year-old or three-year-old.

• 20:26Speaker 01

  Three and five at the time, three and five, right? So we were like, we haven't started yet. Everybody's already got a college fund and a 401, whatever that is.

• 20:33Guy Raz?

  And you don't have the cash, right?

• 20:35Speaker 01

  We don't have anything. We don't have anything. Let's do something together. And so Dan was like, OK, we'll figure something out.

• 20:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, so I'd go, I'd be teaching during the day. And then Ange would, I'd get home and Ange would go into work at 5 o'clock to like 1 o'clock. So at nighttime, when the kids were bed, I'd go online looking for different businesses and.

• 20:55Guy Raz?

  You would just search?

• 20:56Speaker 02

  Just search.

• 20:57Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 20:57Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 20:58Guy Raz?

  And what did you, what did you come across?

• 21:01Speaker 02

  So.

• 21:01Speaker 01

  For businesses.

• 21:02Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 21:06Guy Raz?

  Like what, you would type things into Google? Like, this is early Google. You type in like.

• 21:10Speaker 02

  It was real early.

• 21:10Guy Raz?

  Early Google, you type in like, how can I make money from a side business? Like, what were you, what were, yeah, what were your search parameters?

• 21:18Speaker 02

  You know, I don't know. But I somehow, this guy, I stumbled across a site that said, make thousands of dollars every weekend or day popping kettle corn.

• 21:30Guy Raz?

  Which is like a total scam.

• 21:33Speaker 02

  Right.

• 21:35Guy Raz?

  How many scams have you seen like, like? Make thousands of dollars selling kettle corn and you thought, eureka?

• 21:41Speaker 01

  Eureka, you got eureka.

• 21:44Speaker 02

  Well, $10,000 into it, we realized, uh, this is a potential scam, right?

• 21:49Guy Raz?

  No, but I mean, I mean, you see, you see this and you think, yeah, this is cool. Like, and, and what, what did the site say like?

• 21:57Speaker 02

  It just, it had popcorn profit.

• 22:03Speaker 02

  And it's so, I just like, I said, Ange, I called Ange up and it's probably like 11 o'clock at night. And I said-

• 22:10Speaker 01

  Calls me at work.

• 22:10Speaker 02

  And she's at work and I said, Ange, this is something we could do on the side. I'm a teacher, we could do this on the weekends, during the summers, um, you know, we could pop, we'd, with this, $10,000, you'd get a kettle.

• 22:23Guy Raz?

  It was $10,000 to invest in-

• 22:25Speaker 02

  Yeah, something like that.

• 22:26Speaker 01

  But, but I, I remember distinctly the phone call. I'm in the middle of maybe a takedown or something, like medication for a patient that's severe. And at the phone call, your husband's on the line. So I run back to the nurse's station and he's on the other end and he says, Ange, what do you think about kettle corn?

• 22:47Speaker 01

  I'm like, I like kettle corn.

• 22:50Speaker 02

  I didn't even know what it was.

• 22:51Speaker 01

  Can I call you back?

• 22:52Guy Raz?

  Yeah, I mean-

• 22:53Speaker 02

  I didn't, I, I really, I mean, I, I don't, it was, I, I thought of it as popcorn. I knew it was kinda like sweet and salty, but I don't know if I had ever tasted it.

• 23:01Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 23:01Speaker 02

  But it looked like a cool side adventure where we could make thousands of dollars every weekend.

• 23:07Guy Raz?

  Of course, of course, no brainer. So, so what did you do? Did you, did you order, like, what did you order?

• 23:14Speaker 02

  We called them and we bought it on a credit card like everyone else. And, uh, we bought it, we, we got a kettle, a tent, you know? If you go to a fair, one of those outdoor kettles and all the equipment, a table, it, it probably wasn't worth eight or 10,000. But we, it was already a prep packaged deal that they shipped to us.

• 23:34Guy Raz?

  They shipped you, so it's a big kettle and you, and, and basically instructions on, on, you know, the proportions of sugar, salt and oil?

• 23:41Speaker 01

  No, didn't have that.

• 23:42Guy Raz?

  No, it didn't even have that?

• 23:43Speaker 01

  No.

• 23:44Guy Raz?

  Oh my god.

• 23:45Speaker 01

  No, but it was this, to be fair, it was this couples, uh, out of Gig Harbor, Washington's, their own entrepreneurship, sort of like they were building these kettles and these packages to sell to kettle corn vendors.

• 24:00Guy Raz?

  Right.

• 24:00Speaker 01

  Uh, and they were making a business out of it.

• 24:02Guy Raz?

  What does a kettle look like? Is it, is it, yeah, it's like a-

• 24:05Speaker 01

  It's a big, it's like, I don't know, how many quarts is it? Like a-

• 24:09Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's, it's, if you go to fairs, you see people stirring it.

• 24:12Guy Raz?

  And that's what it was? It was a hand stir?

• 24:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, with this-

• 24:14Guy Raz?

  Okay.

• 24:15Speaker 01

  This open flame-

• 24:16Guy Raz?

  And you plug it into electricity?

• 24:17Speaker 01

  No, no, open flame, propane, open flame.

• 24:19Guy Raz?

  Oh, gotcha.

• 24:20Speaker 01

  It was like 500 degrees.

• 24:21Guy Raz?

  Right.

• 24:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 24:22Guy Raz?

  So do you remember like unpacking this stuff and like looking at each other and say, let's make kettle corn?

• 24:28Speaker 01

  It's exactly what we did. We, in fact, we-

• 24:32Speaker 01

  Oh my god. We did.

• 24:33Speaker 02

  I know this seems farfetched, but it worked. It really worked.

• 24:37Guy Raz?

  Wait, no, so you unpacked the so the stuff arrives?

• 24:40Speaker 01

  A semi truck pulled up and couldn't go down our alley. Our alley was too small, so it pulled up on the street outside and we had to haul these things up the alley to our little like garage that was on the alley.

• 24:53Speaker 02

  We were on the phone, that first batch or five batches with the couple who had sold us the equipment, trying to figure out how this worked. So it was just, it was a little chaotic.

• 25:03Speaker 01

  We burnt the first two batches, right? And then after that, we had it down. And then we just like tweaked the recipe. It was really good.

• 25:10Speaker 02

  It was great.

• 25:11Guy Raz?

  And it's basically a kit? So you could go and sell kettle corn? And just out of curiosity, could you, I mean, at that point, could you just set up the tent and sell it? Or did you need like a permit and all that stuff?

• 25:23Speaker 01

  No, no, we need it. We had to, we, I started, that was my job, to do the research, like get this, get us licensed, get the health department or whatever. And we, you know, we had to actually find a place that would let us pop and sell so that they could inspect us.

• 25:37Guy Raz?

  So what was the first place that agreed to let you set up a tent?

• 25:39Speaker 01

  Rainbow Food, and in front of Rainbow Foods.

• 25:43Guy Raz?

  It's a supermarket?

• 25:44Speaker 01

  A supermarket chain.

• 25:45Guy Raz?

  But they let you set it up in the parking lot there?

• 25:48Speaker 01

  In front of the front door. And we decided to do it the night before Thanksgiving because we thought that the traffic would be good.

• 25:55Guy Raz?

  Okay. This in 2001?

• 25:57Speaker 01

  2001. So that's November 21st, 2001. This was my first winter in Minnesota, so I, I, I decided the date that we were gonna do it, and Dan was like, "Well, okay, November 21st. Let's see what happens." And fortunately, it was a beautiful fall day, and it took us an hour to set up and we sold $300.

• 26:21Guy Raz?

  Of popcorn?

• 26:22Speaker 01

  Of kettle corn.

• 26:23Guy Raz?

  Let me just step back for a sec. When you, Dan, I mean, your family was in Mankato, your, I guess your brothers were, maybe you were around, your parents, like when you said, and they said, "Hey, um, what do you do in the city?" And you're like, "I'm gonna sell kettle corn in front of this supermarket under a tent." Was anybody like, "That's weird."

• 26:44Speaker 01

  A lot of people.

• 26:45Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 26:47Guy Raz?

  Okay, I'm just curious.

• 26:49Speaker 02

  We had experienced, we didn't get into this, but there were a couple of kind of crazy ideas that we had experimented with before, like a network marketing gig. And so my family was probably like, here's

• 27:01Speaker 01

  Here they go again.

• 27:02Speaker 02

  Dan going again.

• 27:03Guy Raz?

  Like here's another just harebrained idea.

• 27:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, and so, you know, for us, I think it was more about, you know, we're trying to, trying to just, we were spinning our wheels. We couldn't figure out what we wanted to do and this was a way to get started.

• 27:16Guy Raz?

  But $10,000, I have to imagine investing that kind of money then was probably a kind of a big deal.

• 27:23Speaker 01

  It's a big deal, right. Well, 0% credit cards.

• 27:26Guy Raz?

  Yeah, but still, you gotta pay it back.

• 27:29Speaker 02

  Yeah, but we used another credit card to pay off that credit card.

• 27:32Guy Raz?

  Right.

• 27:33Speaker 02

  There was a lot of credit cards going around at that time.

• 27:36Guy Raz?

  And so you start selling the popcorn. The first time you set up a tent, you sell $300 for the popcorn. And are you bagging it in like Ziploc bags? And just, no.

• 27:44Speaker 01

  Twist tie.

• 27:44Guy Raz?

  Twist tie bags, okay. And you're just hand scooping it and selling it.

• 27:49Speaker 01

  Just hand sifting it.

• 27:50Guy Raz?

  And popcorn, right, is like an amazing, like the difference in what you pay for the kernels and what you can sell the popcorn for, right, is it's a nice margin.

• 27:59Speaker 01

  People told us no one would pay $3 or $5 for a bag of popcorn or kettle corn or whatever, but

• 28:06Guy Raz?

  They did.

• 28:07Speaker 01

  They did, because it's really good.

• 28:09Guy Raz?

  So 300 bucks, you come home. What's the next step?

• 28:13Speaker 01

  Let's do this again. Like, I mean, it felt, I don't know, it felt exhilarating a little bit, you know, that like we're in business now. Like, we're actually doing this.

• 28:23Guy Raz?

  Yeah, but you were still teaching, you were still doing your, would you see your students like on the weekends? Or would you see, you know, folks from the hospital?

• 28:30Speaker 01

  Yes, and they would look at me like, what are you doing?

• 28:34Guy Raz?

  Yeah. Right?

• 28:36Speaker 01

  I would have, like, when I was in the clinic in the afternoon, I saw patients. I was a nurse practitioner, so I was writing prescriptions and making referrals. And then I'd run home and I'd change into my kettle corn clothes and go to the, um, go to the local baseball game or, uh, with Dan or whatever, and we'd make kettle corn. And sometimes my clinic patients would be at the amateur baseball games and they would come up to the table and look confused.

• 29:03Guy Raz?

  Yeah. Because you were just writing a prescription, now you're selling them kettle corn.

• 29:07Speaker 01

  Yes, exactly. And my message was, you can always be more than one thing in life.

• 29:13Guy Raz?

  You can. You can.

• 29:20Guy Raz?

  All right. So you've got a license, you've got a tent, you've got a kettle. And what were you calling the company at that point?

• 29:27Speaker 01

  Kettle Corn Cafe.

• 29:28Guy Raz?

  Kettle Corn Ca- okay, got it. So 2002, you take the winter off because you can't really sell it outside.

• 29:34Speaker 01

  Well, we, we did pop in January in the snow. Because there was a girls' basketball tournament at Minnesota State University and they didn't have any concessions, and so we said, here's our opportunity.

• 29:44Guy Raz?

  And you have to do it outdoors, right? Because of the propane?

• 29:47Speaker 01

  So we put the tent outside the garage and it was snowing and we just put the sides up and we'd pop it outside and deliver it over to the college.

• 29:55Guy Raz?

  All right. I think it was that summer of 2002 where you basically started to sell kettle corn at the Minnesota Vikings training camp. Right? So what, how did that happen? Did you just, like, go there and set up, you asked them, I'm assuming, if you could go and set up a tent? Or no, you didn't ask?

• 30:13Speaker 01

  No, no, we asked, we asked. We're Midwesterners.

• 30:17Guy Raz?

  And when you, and when you asked, would they say, yeah, you have to pay us, uh, you know, a certain amount of money if you want to set up outside here, or it was?

• 30:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, so with the, with the Vikings, I had a former college classmate of mine that was assistant athletic director at the college at Minnesota State University. And he, um, opened the door for us to set up our tent, um, at, at the training camp. And, and I think there may have been a fee or commission on that, but we thought, I mean, that was a huge opportunity for us to make, make some extra money.

• 30:49Guy Raz?

  And fans are, are going there to see the players train?

• 30:53Speaker 02

  Correct.

• 30:53Guy Raz?

  So you start, um, uh, selling popcorn there. And I guess one of you has this idea, let's, um, let's send the players, the team, popcorn.

• 31:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, right. Like, let's leverage this opportunity. Because Dan, like most Minnesotans, are huge Minnesota Vikings fans.

• 31:13Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 31:14Speaker 01

  But I didn't understand it yet, because I had just moved here.

• 31:17Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 31:17Speaker 01

  But he was like, Minnesota Vikings, everything, all about it. And, and, you know, it was at the time of Randy Moss and Dante Culpepper and, you know, that it like, all that, that era. And, and he was just like, wouldn't it be fun if the players ate our kettle corn? And we were like, well, let's figure it out. Let's figure out how to make this happen.

• 31:35Guy Raz?

  So what did you do? You, you just made tons of bags of kettle corn and just like...

• 31:39Speaker 01

  We made a few phone calls, just to see if we could give it to them.

• 31:42Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 31:42Speaker 01

  And we waited, and we waited, and we...

• 31:44Guy Raz?

  Nobody called back?

• 31:45Speaker 01

  No, we got a phone call back, and they said, "So we hear that you have some kettle corn that you want to give the players. We'll take it as long as it's free." So we were like, "Okay, we'll give it to them for free." So we popped 120 bags and sent it over to them.

• 32:02Guy Raz?

  And you didn't even know if the, if the players ever saw it? It was just in the locker room and some...

• 32:06Speaker 02

  Right. So we, so they came, the sales and marketing team came over and more or less offered us a contract on the spot.

• 32:13Guy Raz?

  Wait, because the players loved it so much?

• 32:15Speaker 02

  Yeah, and I think, I think the sales people at the Vikings saw it as an opportunity to bring in another, uh, company to, as another sponsor. Because it wasn't like free to pop kettle corn for the Vikings. There was a fee involved.

• 32:30Guy Raz?

  Of course.

• 32:30Speaker 02

  And we didn't really understand that until we got really excited, and then all of a sudden...

• 32:35Guy Raz?

  So they came to you and they said, "Hey, we have a great opportunity for you. You can be the official kettle corn of the Minnesota Vikings, but it's going to cost you a sponsorship fee."

• 32:45Speaker 01

  $8,000.

• 32:47Guy Raz?

  $8,000 to be the official...

• 32:50Speaker 01

  It wasn't official either. It would, they, it, they, they said preferred.

• 32:59Speaker 02

  It costs more for a, the word official.

• 33:01Speaker 01

  It costs more for official.

• 33:02Guy Raz?

  Oh, wow.

• 33:03Speaker 01

  We, but we said, "We're going to be official."

• 33:07Guy Raz?

  All right, so you are starting to sell in front, and so this is like football season. You're going there every weekend to, in front of the stadium, tailgaters, not inside the stadium, right, just in front?

• 33:20Speaker 02

  Correct.

• 33:21Guy Raz?

  And were you, I mean, were you selling a lot of kettle corn? Were you doing well?

• 33:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, we were selling, I mean, every Sunday, we'd get up at like 5:00 a.m., pack the trailer and take our equipment up, and we'd be up and ready to go by 9:00 a.m. They had a party on the plaza, on Kirby Puckett Drive, in front of the Metrodome. And there'd be a band, it didn't matter if there was a blizzard, or if it was 10 degrees or 0 degrees, the party was still on, and we popped kettle corn.

• 33:49Guy Raz?

  And it was just the two of you?

• 33:51Speaker 01

  No, we had friends come and help us. Volunteer friends.

• 33:54Speaker 02

  A lot of them are in this audience right now.

• 33:58Guy Raz?

  And, I have to assume, I mean, your costs weren't that high, right? It's salt, sugar, some oil, and corn, right?

• 34:11Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 34:12Guy Raz?

  Corn kernels?

• 34:13Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 34:14Guy Raz?

  So were, but, so you were probably making some money, or, but not too much money, like a little bit of money, or were you, actually, was it, were you starting to be able to save for this college fund?

• 34:23Speaker 02

  Not really.

• 34:25Speaker 01

  No. It all went back in the business. We bought a trailer, we bought more equipment, we bought, I don't know, a heater for the, you know, I don't, it was just, everything seemed to go back into the business.

• 34:38Guy Raz?

  So, was this a kind of a turning point where you started to get attention? Because I think within a year or so, a local supermarket chain in Minnesota approached you and said, "Hey, you know, do you guys want to sell your popcorn here in our stores?" Is that, is that how it happened?

• 34:54Speaker 02

  Well, yeah, so we started, after a couple of years of being this outdoor event company, we started realizing, like, this is not something we want to do for the rest of our lives. I mean, it was, it was an, it was an opportunity to reach people, but it, we thought, you know, is there another way to get our kettle corn into people's hands, their mouths?

• 35:15Guy Raz?

  And it was cold.

• 35:16Speaker 02

  Right, it was cold, exactly.

• 35:18Speaker 01

  Freezing.

• 35:19Speaker 02

  And so, when we, we started in 2003, two years into it, I quit teaching. And I started focusing on the business. Ange was continuing to work full-time, supporting the family as well as helping in the business. And we met with a local grocery chain, Lunds and Byerly's, and they said, more or less, get your act together and come back and talk to us. Get nutritional panel, get packaging, you know, twist ties don't work in grocery stores.

• 35:49Guy Raz?

  Right, because you were hand packing.

• 35:50Speaker 01

  And you can't make it in your garage.

• 35:52Guy Raz?

  You were hand packing the popcorn with twist ties and cellophane bags.

• 35:56Speaker 01

  Right.

• 35:57Guy Raz?

  So what did you do? How did you, how did you start that process?

• 35:59Speaker 01

  Well, we just said, we'll get our act together and will you see us again? And it took us six months. We found a small kitchen. We bought some equipment. We moved the operation indoors and got that, that kitchen licensed. And we came back in six months and launched.

• 36:18Guy Raz?

  And what did your packaging look like at that point?

• 36:21Speaker 01

  It was like a clear cello bag with a label that we, that we would paste on top.

• 36:27Guy Raz?

  Like manually, by hand?

• 36:28Speaker 01

  The kids would do it.

• 36:29Guy Raz?

  Your kids would do it?

• 36:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 36:31Guy Raz?

  Wow. So you were still doing this by hand? And you were sealing the bags?

• 36:35Speaker 02

  So Annika, Tripp, and Ange and I, and whoever else we could find, would do these labels every night.

• 36:42Guy Raz?

  You'd slap on, what was it called at that point?

• 36:45Speaker 01

  Well, we called it Ange's because somebody said, you gotta name your pop, you gotta name your product because it can't be kettle corn cafe, right? Like, so we didn't know what popcorn was called, really. So we went to the grocery store and we looked online. And what we saw at the time was, in the grocery store, it was Orville, it was Vicks, it was Cracker Jack, Poppycock, Dale and Thomas, Harry and David. And I just turned to Dan and I said, where are the popcorn women?

• 37:19Guy Raz?

  When we come back, how Angie's kettle corn eventually managed to get into Trader Joe's, even though it almost didn't, and how it eventually spread just about everywhere. I'm Guy Raz. Stay with us. You're listening to How I Built This from NPR. Does your team want a website that looks and feels handcrafted but is still fast to ship? Well, Framer is built exactly for that. With Framer, you design on a visual canvas with responsive layouts, hosting, and a CMS built in, so the work is production-ready from day one. And you can get it done with help from Framer's AI agents. Framer is the

• 38:02Guy Raz?

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• 38:44Guy Raz?

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• 39:26Guy Raz?

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• 40:09Guy Raz?

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• 40:53Guy Raz?

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• 41:15Guy Raz?

  Hey, welcome back to How I Built This. I'm Guy Raz. So it's the early 2000s, and Dan and Angie have started to get their popcorn into a few local grocery stores in the Twin Cities. They are still doing most of the popping and bagging and delivering, and barely making enough money to hire anyone. But then, they find two people who seem to be willing to help out.

• 41:38Speaker 01

  Well, we hired-- Don and Jeannie were retired third-grade teachers, and they helped us out. They were married, they retired, they just wanted to do something together. And they said, "We don't care what you pay us." And so we said, "Well, we could pay you $8 an hour for both of you."

• 41:57Speaker 01

  And they said, "Sure."

• 42:01Speaker 01

  And they were amazing. They would do demos for us in one store while we would be in another store and, you know, over time, we were able to pay them more. But they said yes because they were kind people and they wanted to help us.

• 42:14Guy Raz?

  I mean, at this point, you know, 2004, 2005, I mean, how are you financing this? Just through the sale of popcorn?

• 42:23Speaker 02

  I don't know.

• 42:26Speaker 02

  And I'm not sure. I mean, yeah, we were probably going further and further in debt, to be honest with you.

• 42:32Guy Raz?

  Because you had to buy equipment, you had to buy bags.

• 42:34Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, it was just a continual drag.

• 42:36Speaker 01

  Totally chaotic.

• 42:37Guy Raz?

  Right.

• 42:38Speaker 01

  Totally chaotic. And just doing, doing, doing. I mean, we used a lot of credit cards. We funneled all the money back in. There was a time when I think we had enough credit card debt that a family friend came to us and helped us. He was an accountant. He looked at our books and just said, "You know, why don't I just give you a loan here? And we can relieve your credit card debt and you can pay me back."

• 43:02Guy Raz?

  Right.

• 43:03Speaker 01

  "But I don't want to see you going on vacations and spending money at the golf club."

• 43:07Guy Raz?

  I mean, that's fine.

• 43:08Speaker 01

  You're like, "Okay."

• 43:09Guy Raz?

  I mean, that's the question, right. It's, you started this out to create college funds for your kids. And it sounds like for the first seven years, you just buried yourself further and further into debt. Like, they weren't going to college, they were never going to go to college on this plan, right?

• 43:27Speaker 01

  Right. And the other thing is, we had the misunderstanding that when you have your own business, you own your time.

• 43:35Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 43:36Speaker 01

  That the opposite is true. The business owns your time. Like, we were like, "How did we go so wrong here?" I mean, like, we-

• 43:43Guy Raz?

  Well, that's what I mean. Like, was there ever a point in that, in the first five or six years where you were thinking, "What are we doing? I mean, we're in debt. We're working, like, all the time."

• 43:55Speaker 02

  It was hard.

• 43:55Speaker 01

  It was hard.

• 43:56Speaker 02

  I mean, it was really, I mean, I think early on, you know, it just takes over your life.

• 44:04Guy Raz?

  Did you guys fight?

• 44:05Speaker 01

  All the time.

• 44:06Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 44:08Speaker 01

  We did. We fought a lot.

• 44:09Speaker 02

  Yeah, and maybe that helped us.

• 44:11Guy Raz?

  I imagine it would.

• 44:12Speaker 01

  We're not ones to spare words with each other.

• 44:16Guy Raz?

  Yeah. But I mean, Angie, how did you compartmentalize? Like, you're dealing with patients who have serious mental issues, and then you're like pivoting...

• 44:26Speaker 02

  Where's he going with this?

• 44:29Speaker 02

  I was one of those patients, guy.

• 44:33Guy Raz?

  And then you are pivoting to kettle corn.

• 44:35Speaker 01

  Well, OK, wait, at the end of the day, I mean, even though all of that stress was there, we're both pretty tolerant of each other. We were committed to each other, and both of us are pretty kind people. So, we gave each other some latitude in the whole situation, and we just, you know, I think we both just said, "We'll be fine." Like, "We'll get through this. We'll be fine."

• 45:02Speaker 02

  It was really hard to refocus and to realize that, you know, "We gotta keep moving forward here because we're, you know, knee-deep into this, and we have to find a way to continue to grow it." Not really understanding where it was going or what the outcome, future outcome, was gonna be still.

• 45:20Guy Raz?

  All right, I think it was around 2008. You had to get a loan to get a much bigger space, think like a million-dollar loan. And you went to a bunch of banks, and what did they say? Were they eager to lend you the money?

• 45:38Speaker 01

  No. They were not eager.

• 45:40Guy Raz?

  Even though you had, clearly, you had revenue coming in and...

• 45:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, but we had debt. We didn't really have any collateral. And, I mean, looking back now, I can kind of understand bank's position at that time where we were. And it was just, it was a long journey. It was really hard.

• 46:00Guy Raz?

  You went to bank after bank, and they just said what?

• 46:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, and we had communication with some, you know, a variety of banks, and some were more open to discussing than others. And it was just, I think ultimately, we just weren't strong enough, in a strong enough position for them to lend us a lot of money. We needed a lot of money.

• 46:20Guy Raz?

  You needed money for a bigger facility to ramp up production.

• 46:25Speaker 02

  Correct. Because we had just, at this point, decided to move into a bigger facility, a 25,000 square foot.

• 46:29Guy Raz?

  How many people were working for you at that point?

• 46:32Speaker 02

  Probably at that time, 2006, '07, maybe '20-ish or something.

• 46:37Guy Raz?

  All full-time or mixture of part-time?

• 46:39Speaker 02

  A mixture of both. But, you know, we eventually found a partner that worked with us in a bank and lent us the money.

• 46:49Guy Raz?

  They gave you the money?

• 46:50Speaker 02

  Yeah, gave us the money and gave us a line of credit.

• 46:52Guy Raz?

  And what did you have to, what kind of collateral did you have to buy? You said you had no collateral, so what?

• 46:56Speaker 02

  You know, probably receivables and...

• 46:59Speaker 01

  Personal guarantees.

• 47:00Speaker 02

  Personal guarantees.

• 47:01Speaker 01

  Which was our home.

• 47:02Guy Raz?

  Yep.

• 47:03Speaker 01

  Future earnings.

• 47:04Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 47:05Speaker 01

  Everything but the minivan.

• 47:08Guy Raz?

  Because, you know, your kids are getting older and you guys are in your 40s at this point and, you know, for a lot of people, that's kind of a turning point, too. You start to think about, okay, college and all these things. And was any part of you nervous about that?

• 47:26Speaker 02

  I don't, I don't think you, when you make that decision, like, if you start going down that path, you're going to crack. Because the bottom line was, people loved our product. We just had to figure out how to make it better, more efficiently, and how to get it into more stores.

• 47:45Guy Raz?

  Yeah. But did, I mean, I imagine there was probably a little bit of frustration, right? Because people would probably come up to you and say, "Oh, you guys are Angie's. I love your kettle corn. It's awesome. You guys are crushing it. We're so, it's so great." In the meantime, you're struggling financially.

• 47:58Speaker 02

  Right.

• 47:59Speaker 01

  Well, can I just say, like, when you, when you don't have any real money to start out with and all you have is ambition and potential and skills, you count on those things, you know, to make your way through, you know? And so, we never really had any money and we did all kinds of amazing things in our lives, you know? So, if this whole thing went south, we'd owe a lot of people a lot of money, but it wouldn't stop us from living our life.

• 48:25Guy Raz?

  Did you feel the same way, Dan?

• 48:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, I'm pretty, I have a pretty high tolerance for, for risk and debt and, I mean, it was about, you know, if we had money, let's put it back in, let's grow, grow, grow, grow, and that wasn't the scariest part. The scariest part came the next spring of 2008.

• 48:46Guy Raz?

  This is Trader Joe's, when Trader Joe's approached you?

• 48:49Speaker 02

  Yeah, and so, but before, so we had, we were just very persistent with traders, and we ended up getting...

• 48:56Guy Raz?

  How did you even get to Trader Joe's?

• 48:58Speaker 02

  A lot of phone calls, and a lot of product being sent to the buyer. It was, you know, I think finally the buyer got sick of me, and like, said, I finally got ahold of her, she was in her office, Marcy was her name, and she, like, said, "All right, what do you got here? I've tried popcorn before, it's not gonna work," and I said, "You haven't tried ours." You know, it's that line that all of us use, is that we have the best product. Anyways, she, she liked it, she said, "All right..."

• 49:27Guy Raz?

  Did you, did you send it to her, did you go out there?

• 49:28Speaker 02

  No, I sent it to her.

• 49:30Guy Raz?

  Right.

• 49:30Speaker 02

  And so, we, she agreed to bring us on.

• 49:34Guy Raz?

  What was the order that she put in?

• 49:36Speaker 02

  She put in an order for 25 trucks.

• 49:38Guy Raz?

  What does that mean? How many bags of popcorn is that?

• 49:40Speaker 02

  That was, uh, what, four, $500,000 worth. It was crazy.

• 49:45Guy Raz?

  And that would go all across the country in every Trader Joe's?

• 49:48Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 49:49Guy Raz?

  So she, and, and this was a one-time deal?

• 49:52Speaker 02

  Well, we didn't know, she was gonna try, and we obviously, we had some problems with some clumping, that first order, and she immediately called and said, "Fix it, or we're kinda done."

• 50:02Guy Raz?

  Right.

• 50:02Speaker 02

  And, but at the same time, the scariest part was, our line of credit for $150,000 had run out, and we didn't have any money to buy some...

• 50:08Guy Raz?

  And they're not gonna pay you for 30 or 60 days?

• 50:11Speaker 02

  It wasn't gonna be paid until later in June, or July, or something of 2008.

• 50:15Guy Raz?

  And you had to deliver it?

• 50:16Speaker 02

  But we had to buy the supplies.

• 50:18Guy Raz?

  Buy it, I see.

• 50:18Speaker 01

  We didn't have enough money to buy the wrong materials.

• 50:21Guy Raz?

  To buy all the sugar, and corn, and salt, and...

• 50:22Speaker 02

  So that was a terrifying, it was like, we were this close.

• 50:26Guy Raz?

  How much did you need?

• 50:28Speaker 02

  Well, there was a credit card that came through the mail, just another credit card.

• 50:35Speaker 02

  And it said, "Call for $100,000." And I got on the phone one night and said, "Can we get this $100,000 wired to us?" And our credit was good. And so they wired us $100,000.

• 50:49Guy Raz?

  At like a high percentage?

• 50:51Speaker 02

  Probably.

• 50:54Speaker 02

  And so that allowed us to get to...

• 50:58Speaker 01

  Was that check thing?

• 51:00Speaker 02

  Was it?

• 51:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 51:01Guy Raz?

  Oh, like when they send you a check that says, "Sign this, you get $100,000."

• 51:05Speaker 02

  I don't remember. But it was in our bank account quickly.

• 51:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was.

• 51:08Guy Raz?

  I'm gonna start paying attention to those checks in the mail. I didn't realize those are real, okay.

• 51:14Speaker 02

  But once, so once we had that, we could pay our staff, we could buy supplies, and we could, it would tide us over until we got paid by traders. And then traders came back with another order of like 25 trucks, because it was going bonkers. And then that, that's when we turned the corner.

• 51:31Guy Raz?

  When we come back in just a moment, how Angie and Dan did a complete rebrand of the business and why they rejected the name Boom Chica Pow Pow. Stay with us. I'm Guy Raz and you're listening to How I Built This.

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• 53:30Guy Raz?

  Hey, welcome back to How I Built This. I'm Guy Raz. So it's around 2008, and things are looking up for Angie and Dan, because Trader Joe's has just ordered another 25 truckloads of popcorn. But that also means the business has to scale up quickly and hire a lot more people.

• 53:49Speaker 01

  We were fortunate to look to hire people during 2008, when the economy was sort of in the tank. And so there were a lot of people looking for work.

• 53:59Guy Raz?

  And you guys were not that affected by the economic downturn?

• 54:03Speaker 01

  And this was Dan's sort of strategy. It's when things are going south, he's going north.

• 54:09Speaker 02

  You know, I think we just knew that there was opportunity out there, because a lot of big companies were pulling back during the recession. And we were getting vibes from stores and from warehouse Costco and others that, hey, there's an opportunity here if you're willing to invest, because others are not. And so we went for it at that time and kind of said, we'll do this, this. And we kind of said yes to everything. And because of that, we had to hire a lot of people quickly to work in our plant so we could manufacture enough to ship out.

• 54:42Guy Raz?

  So you are starting to sell the, I mean, really, this is selling well at Trader Joe's. Do you remember what your revenue was in 2009?

• 54:51Speaker 02

  Maybe three, four million.

• 54:54Guy Raz?

  So, pretty great. I mean, you could start to see some momentum.

• 54:57Speaker 02

  We started to realize there was a chance here.

• 55:00Guy Raz?

  But Angie, you stayed on until 2010, working as a nurse. What was the turning point for you, where you thought, okay, now I'm going to be in this, you know, full time, I'm going to stop.

• 55:12Speaker 01

  Well, I had left the state because there was very little flexibility at the state hospital. So I had left the state and started my own contracting business so that I could contract my time and have my own flexibility and say this is when I can work and I can't work.

• 55:30Guy Raz?

  Because you were still basically supporting your family, right?

• 55:33Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 55:34Guy Raz?

  Dan was not, you were not taking income from the company quite yet.

• 55:37Speaker 01

  Yes, we had a mortgage too. You know, so that was, we were doing pretty well in that regard, but I started weaning my time back because Dan would call me and he would say, okay, we have a Costco meeting on May 12th or whatever. Can you move your clinic around and go to Costco? Sure.

• 55:54Guy Raz?

  And when you did those meetings, like when you went to Costco, how did you pitch them? Would you, Dan, would you have Angie kind of be the face of the product and make the pitch? Or did you make the pitch? Or did you guys kind of bounce off each other like you're doing now?

• 56:07Speaker 02

  Well, initially I did all the sales calls early on. And then by the time we got to 2008, nine, 10, especially after that, when Ange came on full time, they wanted to see her. I mean, she, her name was on the package.

• 56:24Guy Raz?

  Her name was on the back, yeah.

• 56:25Speaker 02

  And she, you know, told the story really well. So I kind of took, you know, instead of just, instead of doing ops and sales and everything, I kind of stayed focused on kind of the operational side, working with Greg, my brother, and kind of managing the team. And Ange started focusing more on working with the sales side.

• 56:44Guy Raz?

  You guys get a, an outside investment firm, Sherbrooke Capital, it's a VC firm, come in, make an offer. Did you feel at that time you needed, you needed to have that capital to grow in the way that you, you know, that you wanted to?

• 57:03Speaker 01

  Honestly, we didn't know what they wanted.

• 57:05Speaker 02

  We didn't really understand private equity. We didn't know, I mean, I wasn't a business person. I didn't know exactly how it worked, you know, and angstin'. And so it was more my brother Greg who started taking some interest in that. And he's the one who initiated the dialogue with Sherbrooke after they contacted us or him.

• 57:24Speaker 01

  Well, and he said, like to us, he goes, you know, we don't need the money now, but if we're going to continue to grow, we're going to need money sometime. And we understood that because we had just been through years of like, oh, God, we need money.

• 57:35Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 57:35Speaker 01

  Right? So even though we don't need it now, it made complete sense to us. And now we were in a position where we didn't need it, and that's the time to go ask for it. So, okay.

• 57:45Guy Raz?

  But that money obviously helped because at that, I think, at that point, you decide to begin a rebrand and to introduce, to move beyond just kettle corn.

• 57:57Speaker 01

  Right. Well, and they, okay, so a couple of things that when they, when we decided, when we understood what private equity was about, like, I had only ever seen private equity in movies, and they were deconstructing businesses, and they were the bad guys, right?

• 58:11Guy Raz?

  They were the bad guys, yeah.

• 58:11Speaker 01

  But, you know, we, these, this private equity was a small shop, and they had built brands, and they were interested in partnering. And we said we wanted our people's success to be, you know, success along with us. Can you help us figure out what to do? And they helped us set up an employee equity pool. They helped us set up a board. They helped us set up a professional sales team and build a marketing team.

• 58:38Guy Raz?

  So it was a whole new, entirely new ballgame.

• 58:41Speaker 01

  And it felt like, like, we understood partnership because Dan and I were in partnership, you know, this whole way. And so now we just had another partner. You know, we had, we were now, our business was marrying their business.

• 58:53Guy Raz?

  And so what was the impetus to, you know, because your kettle corn is your bread and butter, right? What is the impetus at that point to go to, you know, salted popcorn, or buttered popcorn, or other flavors? Was it, was it them? Was it, was it other people saying, hey, you know, we want different flavors?

• 59:11Speaker 01

  Well, in 2011, we were in the natural and organic snack section, right? So, and that's where we live.

• 59:18Guy Raz?

  And you're in Costco?

• 59:19Speaker 01

  We're in Costco, right.

• 59:20Guy Raz?

  You're at Target at this point?

• 59:22Speaker 01

  Yes, we're in Target. And in a lot of regional grocery chains, doing very well in the natural and organic section. But to me, when I looked at it on the shelf, it looked very masculine.

• 59:34Guy Raz?

  You're talking about other natural and organic products?

• 59:37Speaker 01

  All of it. You go to the groceries. I used to walk the stores and just stare. You know, stare at the salty snack. And the natural and organic snacks that were aimed at women, I thought, looked like they assumed we were all on a diet.

• 59:50Guy Raz?

  Right.

• 59:51Speaker 01

  And so, I was like, okay, like, we can do that, but we don't have to do it in that way.

• 59:58Guy Raz?

  Right.

• 59:59Speaker 01

  So, let's do that, along with our kettle corn. Let's do more. So, we built out an innovation, sort of product innovation map, and started looking at innovation as more than just the product, but in the messaging and branding.

• 1:00:12Guy Raz?

  And did you, I mean, this has also coincided with like, the gluten-free explosion, right? Which we are still, did that, did you also, were you also able to kind of ride that wave?

• 1:00:23Speaker 01

  We absolutely did. We would have mothers calling us, saying, "Is your product certified gluten-free?" And this was early on. Dan's cellphone was on every single package, because that was our business.

• 1:00:34Guy Raz?

  Oh, really?

• 1:00:35Speaker 01

  That was our business number. And so, his cellphone would ring, and it would be some mom standing in front of a Costco pallet, saying, "Is this allergen-free?"

• 1:00:43Speaker 02

  Well, the reason I did it, I did it early on, before we were very big, and I wanted all complaints to come to me. And it just, we never ended up taking it off until...

• 1:00:56Speaker 01

  Until 2011, until this private equity said, "It's time to get your phone number off the back."

• 1:01:02Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 1:01:03Speaker 01

  But, yes, so we said, yes, that we heard all these mothers calling us, "Yeah, we gotta get certified gluten-free." So, we did.

• 1:01:08Guy Raz?

  2011, you decide to find somebody to help you with a new name. You go to a branding agency.

• 1:01:17Speaker 01

  We go, yes.

• 1:01:18Guy Raz?

  And what, and what names did they come up with?

• 1:01:21Speaker 01

  Four really boring ones, and one that I thought, we thought was interesting.

• 1:01:25Guy Raz?

  What was it?

• 1:01:26Speaker 01

  It was called Boomchickapowpow.

• 1:01:30Guy Raz?

  Good name.

• 1:01:31Speaker 01

  Well, we laughed, right? Like, everybody laughed. Boom, chica, pow, pow. And this, the brief was like, hey, we don't want to be diet. We want to elicit curiosity. We want to be something different. Uh, we want to be celebratory and come from a position of empowerment, right?

• 1:01:48Guy Raz?

  Right, so this is gonna be Angie's Boom, Chica, Pow, Pow.

• 1:01:51Speaker 01

  Pow. And, and we, this was the days that, um, we were all at one table together. And we had a business analyst at the end of the table, eavesdropping on the presentation. And after the creative agency laughed, he said, you know, Boom, Chica, Pow, Pow is 70's porn.

• 1:02:13Guy Raz?

  That would not go down well in the Mennonite church.

• 1:02:15Speaker 01

  No. No, it would not. And we were, we said, and how do you know?

• 1:02:24Speaker 01

  So we said, okay, but if, there was energy, you know, there was energy. And it, and it, it had, it struck the right tone. And we just told them, go back and fix it. They came back, Boom, Chica, Pop. We launched it in May of 2012.

• 1:02:39Guy Raz?

  How did your customer base respond to the new name?

• 1:02:44Speaker 01

  Well, we had buyers that said, oh, it's just awful. You know, it's, don't do that.

• 1:02:49Guy Raz?

  It's confusion, brand confusion, right?

• 1:02:51Speaker 01

  Yes, right. And, and we don't really like it. They don't really get it. We had people internally that said, don't do this. Um, you know, and, and, you know, there were two of us women on the leadership. Um, Mary Hanahan was our marketing director and myself. And we fought, like, yes, we want this. Um, because it is, we are not gonna do Angie's Nearly Naked. We're not gonna do Angie's Skinny. We're not gonna do Angie's, whatever that is.

• 1:03:19Guy Raz?

  Right.

• 1:03:20Speaker 01

  We wanna own something else.

• 1:03:22Guy Raz?

  It's gonna be fun, it's gonna be...

• 1:03:24Speaker 01

  Creative, it's gonna be dimensional, it's gonna celebrate the feminine. And, you know, for years, women have bought, you know, chips and everything that had, that, you know, are marketed to men, and we don't think a thing about it.

• 1:03:37Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:38Speaker 01

  Um, and so, why not put a package out there that appeals to women? And I will say, and, and it was that first non-GMO branded popcorn on the market. And it, it became our number one selling SKU in four months.

• 1:03:52Guy Raz?

  The...

• 1:03:52Speaker 01

  The yellow bags.

• 1:03:53Guy Raz?

  The yellow bags.

• 1:03:54Speaker 01

  After nine years of business.

• 1:03:56Guy Raz?

  Wow. So I think around 2014, TPG growth comes in a bigger private equity firm. They buy out Sherbrooke.

• 1:04:06Speaker 01

  Sherbrooke, yeah.

• 1:04:07Guy Raz?

  And take a pretty big stake in the company. And it's real money. And I think at that point, you guys started to distribute money to people who had been with you and worked with you for a long time.

• 1:04:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, those granted equity shares became liquid for our staff. Best three days of my career.

• 1:04:31Guy Raz?

  People probably was transformational, right?

• 1:04:33Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:04:33Speaker 01

  I think so, yeah.

• 1:04:39Guy Raz?

  Do you remember? Do you remember how much money you were able to distribute?

• 1:04:42Speaker 02

  Millions.

• 1:04:43Guy Raz?

  Millions of dollars, wow.

• 1:04:44Speaker 01

  Millions, yeah.

• 1:04:46Guy Raz?

  And I mean, that can't, probably doesn't happen very often in Mankato, right? Like a liquidity, a liquidity event. I'm not, I mean, right?

• 1:04:54Speaker 01

  No, it's true. It doesn't, it doesn't.

• 1:04:56Speaker 02

  It was an emotional time. I mean, it was, you know, for everyone that had given, you know, everything to us for, in the company. And, I mean, it's still emotional, you know, thinking about it. But it was, it was kind of a thank you to everybody. And then we got to do it again.

• 1:05:17Guy Raz?

  And 2017.

• 1:05:18Speaker 02

  Yeah, when we sold.

• 1:05:19Guy Raz?

  So 2017, Conagra, huge company that owns many brands, buys out your company reportedly for a quarter of a billion dollars. Astounding, quarter of a billion dollars.

• 1:05:33Speaker 01

  For popcorn.

• 1:05:33Guy Raz?

  For popcorn.

• 1:05:37Speaker 01

  And, and, and the brand.

• 1:05:40Guy Raz?

  And the brand.

• 1:05:40Speaker 01

  And the brand.

• 1:05:41Guy Raz?

  I mean, talk about a great $8,000, $10,000 investment for a fly-by-night kettle corn kettle. Man, now, now we're all thinking, phew, wish I saw that ad on Google with a popcorn popping in 2001. So they buy it out and...

• 1:06:01Guy Raz?

  I mean, what, did you even have time to absorb what that meant? I mean, were you just, I don't know?

• 1:06:09Speaker 02

  You know, the last three years, from 14 to 17, when TPG came on, we sold a pretty big share of our ownership to TPG. I mean, I think if we had to jump out in 14, it would have been really hard. But we had three years run where we were able to kind of slowly step back and participate as much as we wanted to and as much as the staff needed us. And so I think when 17 came, it was, the 14 sale was much more emotional in the sense because it was like, oh my God, we did it.

• 1:06:47Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:48Speaker 01

  Yeah. And that whole thing about like, hey, we started this to put our kids through college and have enough money.

• 1:06:56Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:56Speaker 01

  Now we're doing that for all these other people.

• 1:07:07Guy Raz?

  I mean, also, I know you are a brand ambassador and you are on contract with Conagra. And Dan, are you involved with the company at all?

• 1:07:15Speaker 02

  I'm not.

• 1:07:16Guy Raz?

  Not at all. First of all, I mean, the fact that you came into such a substantial amount of money, has that substantially changed your lives? Has it? And so how?

• 1:07:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean...

• 1:07:34Guy Raz?

  I know we're in Minnesota, no one likes to talk about money.

• 1:07:39Speaker 02

  I think, yeah, I mean, you know, we just, we got into this later in life. And so, I mean, I'm still wearing these jeans that I've had for 10 years, so...

• 1:07:53Guy Raz?

  Yeah, those are nice dad jeans.

• 1:07:55Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:07:57Guy Raz?

  I noticed those, I noticed those jeans.

• 1:08:02Speaker 02

  So, but yeah, it's allowed us, it's given us an opportunity to do things that we never would have had the opportunity to do.

• 1:08:10Guy Raz?

  I mean, could you have imagined when you ordered that kettle and it arrived in your garage and you were like mixing it and burning the corn, the popcorn, like that you would go on, it would go on to be purchased for a quarter of a billion dollars, like 16 years later? Could you have imagined that?

• 1:08:31Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:08:32Speaker 02

  No.

• 1:08:33Speaker 01

  No, never. I mean, not even, not even probably halfway through or three quarters of the way through did we think about it in that way. I mean, it was just for us looking at the next horizon and the next thing that we needed to do and the next right thing that we needed to do.

• 1:08:49Guy Raz?

  I have done interviews with co-founders who were married before and are still married. In some cases, Melissa and Doug are still married, but then there have been examples, we had an episode recently, EO Products, they divorced, they kept the company going. You guys had a marriage, you had a family, you had a partnership, a lot of stress, I mean, just, just being married and having kids, right? Anyone who experiences that, there's stress, right? You argue and, and that's normal, but, but running a business together on top of that and a business that for years and years is a grind and just you don't really know if

• 1:09:28Guy Raz?

  it's working and the people calling and there's stress, how do you, how did you survive, how did it survive?

• 1:09:37Speaker 02

  Go ahead.

• 1:09:38Speaker 01

  That's hilarious. Um, you know, at the end of the day, it's about love, right? Like you just, you decide, do you love this person? Yes. You, do you, are you willing to commit to this person no matter what? Yes, you know? And, and I think for Dan and I, we both had that sort of frame of mind. And, uh, you know, it, it doesn't make it easier, uh, but I think that, you know, both he and I have this mindset that we're gonna make something work, you know? By God, if anybody can make it work, we'll make it work. And, um...

• 1:10:21Speaker 01

  You know, I think it just took, with the business and with our marriage, just recommitment all the time, you know, every day, every week, whatever it meant.

• 1:10:32Speaker 02

  And still is.

• 1:10:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:10:34Speaker 02

  I mean, still is.

• 1:10:35Guy Raz?

  Do you think, Dan, first to you, do you think that what you achieved in this business was the result of your work and your skill and your intelligence, or do you think that luck played a big part?

• 1:10:45Speaker 02

  I knew this question was coming. I love it. You know, Guy, I think there's a ton of good fortune that has come our way. People have been so embracing and kind and helpful in so many ways, so many people, this crowd is the reason we're up here. But we put a lot of energy into creating an environment that was about giving to the consumer, giving to the customer. I think there's some skill in that. I think I was blessed with the ability to interact with people and build rapport pretty quickly, and I knew the importance of that.

• 1:11:27Speaker 02

  And Angie had so many other gifts, the marketing side, the creative side, the initial finance side, that we were able to understand our talents and pool it together. And, you know, no doubt there was good fortune and luck that comes your way. At the right time, things happen, a credit card mailing comes in. So, I mean, it's, there is, there's luck involved in this, and we were just fortunate at the right time. We made some good decisions and rebounded well from some bad decisions.

• 1:11:55Guy Raz?

  Angie?

• 1:11:56Speaker 01

  Boy, you know, I've seen a lot of really good people work just as hard as us, or harder, and not experience the same good fortune that we've had. And so, I think it does take, I mean, we made a conscious effort to create goodwill and positivity, and when you do that, I believe that that comes back to you, but you can't do it without hard work.

• 1:12:25Guy Raz?

  Angie and Dan Bastian, co-founders of Boom Chicka Pop.

• 1:12:37Guy Raz?

  I spoke to Angie and Dan Bastian at the Ordway Concert Hall in St. Paul, Minnesota. And by the way, that original kettle they bought in 2001, Angie and Dan no longer own it. When ConAgra bought the company in 2017, they also acquired that old kettle. And Angie believes it is now sitting in the back of a very large storage facility somewhere in Minnesota.

• 1:13:07Guy Raz?

  Hey, thanks so much for listening to this live episode of How I Built This. Our show was produced by Rachel Faulkner, with music composed by Ramin Arablouei. Thanks also to our live events team, Ali Prescott, Rachel McGrath, John Isabella, and Andy Huether. Our production team includes Neva Grant, Jeff Rogers, J.C. Howard, Casey Herman, Julia Carney, Alex Chung, Kerry Thompson, and Elaine Coats. Our intern is Margaret Serino. I'm Guy Raz, and you've been listening to How I Built This.

• 1:13:42Guy Raz?

  This is NPR.