Grant Staples is a dreamer, and he listens to his dreams. Hope Staples is a realist, but she listens to her husband. Together, they have taken a leap of faith that has paid enormous dividends in a short period of time with the most American of commodities — popcorn.
You won’t find a store location for Sweet Daddy’s Kettle Corn because the Stapleses have turned a backyard kitchen outside of Laurel into one of the fastest-growing distributors of gourmet popcorn in Mississippi.
“My mom has a commercial kitchen out in (Jones) county, in the Myrick community,” Grant said. “When I was young, she ran a business called Aunt Bee’s Kitchen. She built her kitchen to spec, she jumped through all of the hoops to get everything lined up.
“We were told early on that if we could package out of our facility, we’d be in good shape.”
The Stapleses have built a distribution room next to the kitchen, and that’s where they pop the corn and ship out the finished product, custom-made to order.
“It’s truly a mom-and-pop shop,” Hope said. “He’s popping it and I’m bagging, labeling. We deliver it, and I’m the person who sends out the invoices, the quotes. I’ll talk to you about your event, figure out how many gallons you need. It’s just us, and our kids help whenever necessary.”
Grant Staples first had the popcorn dream in 2008, while the couple was performing mission work in Honduras.
“It was so real,” Grant said. “At that time, I began to explore the options of starting my own business. It was something I was a little afraid to jump into.”
In 2012, after having the same dream for the third time, Grant Staples decided God was trying to tell him something important.
“The same popcorn dream, three times in a row, must mean that I need to check this out,” Grant said. “I decided that I’d step toward it, we’d start it and if it was something we were supposed to be doing, He’d let us know.”
With a background in marketing, public relations and communications, Grant holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the University of Southern Mississippi. Hope also has a PR background. The first order of business was the name. Grant Staples turned to his faith for the answer.
“The Sweet Daddy’s name is a spinoff from the heavenly father,” Grant said. “He’s the sweetest father of them all.”
The Stapleses started out in June 2012, popping corn on Thursdays at the Livingston Farmers’ Market in Madison. They quickly hit the road for weekend festivals. Their big break came that fall when they were invited to have a booth at the South Mississippi Fair in the couple’s hometown of Laurel.
“We weren’t ready at all,” Grant said. “But we took a leap and did the best we could. We popped over 2,000 gallons in seven, eight days. Just brutal.”
By the end of 2012, the couple had made more in their six months of popping corn than Grant’s annual salary was as an instructor at Holmes Community College in Ridgeland. Decision time came three months later.
“I had to sign a contract for another year at the college,” he said. “We decided to take a leap of faith and start full-time — move home to Laurel, start the business.”
The couple still sells their popcorn at fairs, festivals and farmers’ markets, but the bulk of their work now is online orders shipped all over the country and even to Afghanistan and Iraq. They ship popcorn to weddings, birthdays, football tailgating parties and for corporate gifts.
“Probably during our first year, we had a corporate order that sent 210 three-and-a-half-gallon tins all over the country,” Hope said. “Everything about those orders has to be precise, because these companies are hiring us to give a gift to companies that do business with them. They call us, place the order, send us the labels and we do everything else. We put it in the box, label it and we send it off.”
The Stapleses use a variety of popping corn that the family calls a state secret, sharing only that it ships from a warehouse in Missouri.
“It costs me $20 a bag more to buy this popcorn, because I have to ship it in,” Grant said. “It gives us a better yield, a better product, prettier popcorn. I think that’s been a big part of our success; we never skimp.”
Even though it is more expensive, they say it creates more of a mushroom-shaped kernel, rather than the butterfly shape found in most commercial microwaveable popcorns.
“It makes a big, fat, round ball,” Hope said. “It holds coatings very well, so it is a premium kind of corn.”
Currently, the business’ website offers 38 flavors that range from plain to Queso Loco to Chocolate Cocoa Crunch.
The couple is using some of their profits to buy and restore a well-known home near downtown Laurel that they hope to use as a base for their business and for their missionary work.
The home previously was owned by John Bissell, an executive with the Wausau Southern Lumber Company, who built the house in 1917. Following a 1971 addition to the back of the house, it served as a popular bed-and-breakfast until closing in 2007. Since then, it has been derelict.
It’s just one more leap of faith for the dreamer and the realist. They are confident, even when their choice translates into popping popcorn in July in Mississippi in a kettle that cooks at 500 degrees before the first kernel pops.
“Having to let go, with a family, scared me to death. I remember meeting with the president of the college to tell him I would not be back. And he asked me, ‘Do you have any fears?’ I said, ‘Doc, I’m more afraid of regret than I am of failure. I could sit in my air-conditioned office three years from now, wondering what it could have been.’ And what it has been, is it’s gotten us to this place.”
STORY Stan Caldwell
PHOTOGRAPHY Eli Baylis