MY LIGHT BULB MOMENT
Cassanadra Stavrou Popcorn Entrepreneur
Cassandra stavrou, 34, co-founded Propercorn in 2011 with her business partner ryan Kohn. she lives in London with her boyfriend Charlie. ONE of my earliest memories is making popcorn with my father as a child. I was 16 when he died after a long illness, but I still remember the amazing smell and sound of those afternoons spent popping.
We used to experiment for hours with flavours, using whatever was knocking around in the cupboards — but my favourite was always sweet and salty.
After studying law at university, my first job was at an advertising agency in London. I noticed there was a workplace slump at 3pm every day, and a limited choice of snacks: sugary treats that left you feeling guilty or rice cakes that tasted of cardboard.
This was my light-bulb moment: there was a gap in the market for a healthy and delicious snack. And I knew exactly what could fill it.
At the time, there were no other big healthy popcorn brands — it was something you ate in the cinema. That’s why I knew it would work. There is so much nostalgia around popcorn: people have a relationship with it, just as I did.
I’d always wanted to set up a business and when I told my mum about my idea, she reminded me the last present my dad ever gave me was a retro popcorn maker.
It felt like the perfect storm of timing, insight and serendipity. I quit my job, moved back in with my mum and worked at a pub to raise £10,000 for the start-up.
The first year was challenging. I had to work out how to season the popcorn without lashings of butter and oil. I ended up ordering a cement mixer and car spray paint gun to tumble the popcorn and coat it in a layer of rapeseed oil.
Then I had to convince a manufacturer to make our samples.
We launched Propercorn in October 2011, with four flavours. Google Cafe was our first customer and it snowballed from there.
That year, our turnover was £500,000. This year we’re set to turn over more than £15 million. We are stocked in ten countries and three million packets are sold every month.
I know that my dad, who was also a businessman, would be proud. Especially since, eight flavours later, sweet and salty is still my favourite.