Weaver Popcorn CEO Jason Kashman Discusses the Recent Ups-and-Downs of the Popcorn Industry
Weaver Popcorn Manufacturing, based in Van Buren, Indiana in Grant County, has been in business for nearly 100 years! It’s the largest bulk popcorn producer in the world, selling under its Pop Weaver brand, as well as co-packing six distinct varieties of kernels to serve businesses in more than 90 different countries.
“We really want to stay focused on popcorn long-term and do it better than anybody else,” says Jason Kashman, CEO of Weaver Popcorn Manufacturing.
Part of that focus, he says, is navigating through the recent downturn of the ag economy.
“We came off of 2021 and early into 2022 with some really steep cost inflation on the input side,” he says. “As a result of that, prices got really high. I think consumers tolerated that for a couple of years. We started to see some easing finally in 2023 and 2024 of costs that allowed us to take some pricing down, but it seems like it’s ramping back up.”
Kashman says the uncertainty over President Trump’s tariff strategy is another factor that is having an impact on the popcorn industry.
“There’s just some slowness, at least across the snack food sector, as all prices are going up, and we have some uncertainty around tariff situations and manufacturers trying to adjust for that to keep costs down,” he says. “I think there’s some tightening of the belt [among consumers] and some rationalization of spending in food, and as a result, I think most of our industry peers would say that it’s a little more sluggish than we thought it would be this time of year.”
But, Kashman adds that sales of microwave popcorn were sharply higher during the pandemic.
“During COVID when everyone was spending a lot more time at home and eating at home, it reintroduced consumers to the microwave popcorn product,” he says. “There had been a lot of innovation and quality improvements in microwave popcorn probably 10 years before that, and so during that time when people are naturally consuming more at home, they were reintroduced to [microwave popcorn], so that did drive some growth in the microwave popcorn industry that’s been sustained. During that same time, you also had the lull in concession-related products because movie theaters weren’t open and ball games weren’t happening with the same number of spectators. However, that has really bounced back strongly since.”
In May 2024, Weaver Popcorn Manufacturing announced a $22 million upgrade to expand its operations at its Van Buren facility to help modernize the company’s manufacturing operations, increasing production efficiencies. The company said the upgrades would include additional state-of-the-art packaging and food processing technology in addition to new production lines for continued growth.
Indiana ranks number one in the U.S. for popcorn production according to the USDA. Indiana farmers harvested 90,000 acres of popcorn in 2023.
CLICK BELOW for Hoosier Ag Today’s radio news story:
Hear more from Jason Kashman in the AgBioscience podcast. It’s part of the Hoosier Ag Today Podcast Network.
You can also watch the AgBioscience Podcast below—presented by AgriNovus Indiana.