C Magazine - Summer 2018

C People

Patricia Miller 2018-07-31 03:04:53

POPPING with PRIDE

CRUNCHY TREATS LAUNCHED THE BACKUS FAMILY INTO A HOMEGROWN BUSINESS.

What do you do with a million pounds of harvested popcorn languishing in storage? If you’re Gaylen and Shirley Backus, you head to the kitchen. That’s where Shirley concocted the caramel corn that blossomed into a line of tempting sweet-salty popcorn treats marketed online and throughout the Midwest as Gaylen’s Popcorn.

It started in 1995 with an ad looking for growers to raise popcorn. The Backuses had just sold their livestock business near Madison, S.D., and were focused on crops. Gaylen says he missed the daily challenges of managing 3,000-plus head of cattle, so the ad was enticing. He replied.

After custom-growing popcorn, he decided to break out on his own and switch from a white heritage popcorn to a more marketable hybrid yellow, popular with movie theaters. He even developed an export market with theaters in Thailand, Vietnam and Cambodia.

Then came the popcorn glut — and the trip to the kitchen. “Shirley made a small batch of caramel corn in the oven,” he recalls. “It was pretty tasty.” So they bought a 5-gallon caramelizer and started perfecting their big-batch recipe. “It took us about five months of trials before the caramel corn turned out consistently good.”

They carted their caramel corn to a local craft fair, where they quickly sold every kernel. Soon they were experimenting with new popcorn concoctions. The Sioux Falls Argus Leader did a story on them, and suddenly the Backus family was in the popcorn-treat business.

“It was the holidays and prospective customers were calling all our phones,” Gaylen says. “By Christmas, we’d sold $8,000 worth of popcorn products.” Three years later, their business has tripled.

The operation is based in the licensed kitchen and packing house in Gaylen and Shirley’s garage, where the family brainstorms ideas and Shirley perfects recipes.

F & M Co-op Oil sells Gaylen’s Popcorn treats at its gas station in Madison, and supplies energy and other inputs to the Backus farm. Farmers Ag Center, LLC, also in Madison, provides cropping advice, including a custom fertilizer program for popcorn production.

“This has taken us all by surprise,” Gaylen says. But it’s no surprise he found just the challenge he was looking for.

LEARN MORE: Find out what’s popping at gaylenspopcorn.com.

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