MY LIGHT BULB MOMENT

Laura Jackson, 35, co-founded gourmet popcorn brand Popcorn shed with her cousin sam Feller, also 35, in 2016. They both live in north-West London.

I’VE always been a foodie. Growing up, my large, tight-knit family would cook together, and we’d take turns hosting dinners. You had to make a new cuisine each time.

I was particularly close to my cousin, Sam. We grew up more like siblings. After graduating from university — I studied psychology at Birmingham, and he trained in real estate at Reading — we both moved to London.

I got a job as a management consultant at Accenture, but it wasn’t my passion. I never really felt like I fitted in. Sam was a property manager.

We both had entrepreneurial streaks. I was running a singles supper club in my spare time and Sam organised club nights.

We would always discuss our side projects and say how much fun it would be to start a foodthemed business together.

Then, in 2014, we visited Chicago, where we discovered the world of gourmet popcorn.

In the U.S. you could get all these wacky flavours, such as seaweed,

Delicious: Ten-shed variety pack, £33.50, popcornshed.com or cheese and caramel.

There would be queues around the block at a shop which sold it fresh. I hadn’t seen anything like it. Back home, the most exciting flavour you could buy was sweet and salty.

After our holiday, I remember sitting in Sam’s flat, talking about how much we missed the popcorn. This was our light bulb moment. We’d spotted a gap in the market for a luxury popcorn brand.

We bought rows of hot air poppers to make popcorn, and tried out recipes on evenings and weekends. It became an obsession. We made so much mess in my mum’s kitchen that she made us store all our equipment and popcorn in the shed — hence our name.

In September 2016, we finally launched our business at the Speciality & Fine Food Fair. We had three flavours: salted caramel, pecan pie and rich chocolate. We had only made our website that very morning.

Luckily, we won Harrods as a customer, and things snowballed from there. Now, we’re stocked at John Lewis, Ocado, Harvey Nichols, the Co-op and Amazon, too.

I feel so fortunate to be working with Sam, and I’m proud of what we have achieved.

Popcorn Shed is all about sharing those moments that really matter, and bringing joy to people’s lives through food — just as we were taught growing up.