• 1: Introduction
• 2: Growing and Processing Popcorn
• 3: Marketing the Popcorn King
• 4: Tours and a Recipe
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Growing and processing popcorn

On a catwalk high in the plant, the air outside the poppers is hot and dry, permeated by a buttery mist. Each of the two hot-air poppers can pop 650 pounds of kernels in an hour. Unpopped kernels, called “old maids,” are expelled. The popped corn is ejected into a rotating tumbler where the seasonings are applied. Then the fluffy snack goes up a conveyor, into a sorting bin and down through chutes. Several workers catch the still-warm corn in plastic bags, which they seal immediately and stack into shipping boxes.

Booe grows about 700 acres of popcorn on land he owns or leases. He contracts with North Carolina farmers to grow most of the remainder of the corn the company processes. In addition, he also employs 15 people full-time at the plant.

North Carolina is a ways off the beaten path of the Corn Belt in the Midwest, where most popcorn is grown. But the conditions are just as favorable here, says Booe.

Until Booe got rolling, processing also was a novelty in this region too—not just North Carolina but in the southeastern United States. The biggest popcorn-growing states are Nebraska and Indiana, and the nearest processors are Kentucky, Pennsylvania and southern Indiana. There are only 19 major processors in the country, according to the latest Census of Agriculture (1997). Those include processors that handle more than 4 million pounds of popcorn a year, and Booe is one of them.