By Carla Burgess
- 1: Introduction
- 2: Growing and Processing Popcorn
- 3: Marketing the Popcorn King
- 4: Tours and a Recipe
- Download the FULL
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After Hurricane Hugo blew through the western Piedmont in September 1989, Cas Booe could barely walk among the mature cornstalks on his Yadkinville popcorn farm, let alone drive a combine through to harvest it. So he tested an idea. He hand-picked a few ears from the prostrate stalks, took them into the house and put a whole ear into the microwave. The kernels popped. Popcorn-on-the-cob.
With the help of an exporter that fall, Booe (pronounced “boo”) found a market in Japan for popcorn-on-the-cob. In the meantime, his grandfather picked sacks of ears to sell locally. The Booes managed to salvage some of their crop while cultivating a new specialty market overseas.
Today, Cas Booe, 36, sells his Yadkin Valley Popcorn all over the globe—on the cob, unpopped or already-popped and seasoned. It’s sold ready-to-eat in gourmet tins and pillow-sized plastic bags and ready-to-pop in 1-ton sacks that are forklifted onto trucks bound for wholesalers. You can go into a Winn Dixie or a Lowes Foods and find Yadkin Valley Popcorn from Shallowford Farms.
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