- [Announcer] Additional funding is provided by The Friends of KTWU.

- Welcome back to another episode of Working Capital.

We've picked a couple of unique farming experiences that are really popping.

Join us for fresh farming.

It's all about business on Working Capital.

(upbeat music) For over 50 years, the Schlaegel Farm has planted, picked, popped, and packaged one of America's favorite treats, popcorn.

A family recipe for caramel popcorn passed down for generations started it all.

Now with over 20 flavors, Schlaegel Popcorn is seasoned for success.

Joining us today from Schlaegel Popcorn is Jon Yingst and Mike Tanking.

Welcome to Working Capital.

So guys popcorn farm in Kansas, and you guys are a little different.

I mean, you guys are going from the kernel to the end product.

So how did this all get started back in 1970?

What was the pivot for the farm there?

- Well, my father-in-law Gary Schlaegel and his wife Marian started the ... they had a farm, corn and soybean farm and they also had a dairy.

And Gary had always grown popcorn just for his own use.

Well, he gave some to some neighbors.

It was a very diversified operation.

He also did taxes in the winter 'cause he had a background in business.

He had been a bank examiner and worked as a hospital administrator.

So he started giving some to some of his tax clients and they liked it and thought, "Hey, this is pretty good.

Maybe you might consider selling it."

So he slowly started selling the unpopped popcorn back in 1970.

- So you're going from just the caramel corn.

And today you've expanded into quite a bit.

Tell me a bit about the beginning though.

How did the really the gourmet and the marketing and getting this out to the general public, how did this start?

- Yeah, so like Jon said, it was unpopped popcorn for many, many years, from 1970 all the way to the mid '90s.

And Gary got the wild idea that he was gonna start flavoring this popcorn.

And his mother had a caramel recipe that had been passed down for generations that he took and ran with it, got an opportunity to get some popcorn equipment from a local business that was going out of business.

And Marian was actually a nurse at the time.

She was working in town, and she came home and Gary and one of his friends had picked up some popcorn equipment, brought it to the basement of the house, painted up the walls.

And they were popping popcorn in the basement.

That was in 1995.

And for two years, the popped popcorn was being made in the basement of their house.

They built a new building in 1997 next to the house to house the popcorn operation.

But for two years, this business was actually in the basement of the house and it stemmed from that caramel recipe.

- That is awesome.

That would be quite a shock to come home one day, and well, I got a new business in my basement.

So I take it she wasn't too upset.

- Well ... (Jay laughs) (speaking simultaneously) Yeah, I think she was a little startled, and she had always helped a little bit with the popcorn, but she had been a nurse at the doctor's office.

And so once that started to grow, Gary needed more help and so she stepped away from the nursing and then she joined the business full-time too.

- One thing people may not know we're in a farm state, but I mean, popcorn is not just any corn you're gonna go grow.

It's not the corn of sweet corn you're eating from the store.

So tell us a little bit about the differences and what makes that kernel unique for this product?

- Well, popcorn's uniquely bred.

It's different than all other varieties, field corns, like you say, sweet corn.

And even within popcorn, there's different varieties.

We grow two kinds, we grow a yellow and a white, and we grow what's called a butterfly style.

It's the traditional kind that you're used to popping at home.

There's a mushroom variety that is much larger.

And a lot of the coated popcorns you see, the caramel and some of those others, they tend to use a mushroom style popcorn.

We have stuck with that butterfly style just because we think it has better flavor and it takes the coating, but it just has a better flavor.

It's not as tough, it's softer.

And so we've stuck with that butterfly style of popcorn.

- So how many acres do you guys have just for your popcorn?

I know you're still doing some other corn and soybeans there also, but how many acres do you have to sustain this business?

- It depends on the year.

I mean, we've planted as few as five and probably as many as 25 acres.

And then you might think 25 acres that doesn't sound like a lot, but 25 acres of popcorn goes pretty far and you'd be surprised at what that would yield and how far that would go.

- Well, I mean, if I think about getting my jar of kernels at home, I think of that how much that will expand to, it kind of makes a little sense, but I mean am a little shocked 'cause yeah, I would've thought, oh, they're out there planting 80 acres, 100 acres of popcorn for this to keep their business going.

- We try to raise enough to keep it fresh.

We don't have 10, 20 years a supply of popcorn on hand.

We try to grow it, get it sold, ready for the next crop.

So we probably have two, maybe three years at the most on hand, but we try to keep it as fresh as possible.

- And with this fresh, I mean you guys have it pretty much down to a science, but you used to do everything in farm, but there's one thing you have to do now just because of the scale I think.

So tell us about the time consuming having to wash it and then tell us about this other local partner you found that helps at least keep it fresh and local for you guys.

- Yeah for a long time, actually, the popcorn was cleaned by hand there on site, literally over a screen, and letting everything that was bad fall through and you're picking out bigger things that don't fall through literally by hand.

We graduated to a demo sized grain cleaner that vibrated and air blew through the bottom of it.

We could clean a 50 pound bag in two or three minutes, but again, that process still took a while.

And so now we actually ship the popcorn off to Belleville, Kansas, actually have it cleaned there offsite and they ship it back to us and 50 pound bags on pallets ready to go.

So definitely expedites that process a lot for us.

- And it started off as a family business, generational farm.

But Mike, you've been involved with this since you were 14.

- [Mike] Yeah.

- And you're kind of part of the family now.

Tell us a little bit of that passion and how that stuck with you.

- It was really neat.

So I grew up about five miles from where the farm is at.

The first time I stepped foot on the farm, my mom actually had bought some popcorn from Gary and Marian and she said, "You gotta come see this place, this is pretty cool."

Actually she was teaching preschool and they took a field trip out there.

So we came over there and of course my parents were tax clients as well from the onset.

And so they knew about Gary and Marian and their business, but I'd never been over there.

And Gary and I hit it off pretty well.

I was probably 14 years old at the time and it became my high school and weekend summer job.

And then went and got my degree in business administration and Gary offered me a chance to come back home, and you don't have that opportunity every day.

So came back home, did taxes and popcorn.

We have a tax preparation and accounting business that we run, and then the popcorn as well.

And just it's been what I've done my whole entire professional life.

- That's fantastic.

Well, it's time for another short break.

When we return, we discuss the kernels of success.

We'll be right back.

You're watching, Working Capital.

(upbeat music) Welcome back.

All right guys.

So, all these different flavors.

How do you come up with these flavors?

How do you test them?

- It's really a trial and error.

We could name probably two dozen flavors that we have tried and or canceled over the years.

We at one time had a watermelon popcorn.

We had a black licorice popcorn.

There's just some flavors that don't go, and you find out pretty quick what does and doesn't go.

But a lot of it is just in house and we're pretty good taste testers, I would say ourselves.

So we come up with an idea, might see an idea on TV or maybe in the gas station and say, maybe we can try that.

See if we can come up with some variation of that, and give it a go.

And if it works, it works.

If it doesn't, it doesn't.

- How long does it take to develop one of those, every couple days, or are you tweaking it for a week and then you're like, oh no, that one's gone or that one's definitely gonna be a hot seller?

- It depends.

I think one of my favorite stories is one of our newer flavors that came about within the last seven to eight years was cherry cheesecake popcorn.

And Jon's son, Jacob, owner of the company was actually in college at the time.

And he was headed to a Kansas state bowl game in Arizona.

Driving through the Panhandle of Texas in the middle of the night, and he stopped at a gas station and found cherry cheesecake popcorn.

And I got a text message at like 2:30 in the morning about this popcorn.

And I woke up and looked at this and it said, we're gonna make this.

And I just thought, that's great, I'm going back to bed.

But Jacob found this popcorn in Texas in the middle of the night.

So I mean, we literally get ideas from wherever whenever.

- I mean, you're never shutting off your ideas for this.

So that shows me there is definitely some passion, it's just not, we found a niche, we can make some money.

We're gonna crank this out.

You guys truly love what you're doing.

- [Mike] Yeah.

- Did your son always know he wanted to come back and do this on the farm?

- He did.

Of course he had worked for grandma and grandpa as soon as he was able.

Worked there through high school in the summers.

And that was always his goal was I'm gonna come back and work with grandma and grandpa.

And he went to K-State, got a degree in Ag Economics and came back and started working for the tax business and the popcorn business and had been at it ever since.

- Tell us about everything someone could get online and buy from you.

- Essentially, you could buy unpopped.

We have unpopped from two pound bags up to milk jug containers, seven and a half pounds.

If you wanted to, you could buy a 50 pound bag popcorn.

And our flavored, we have small bags, about three ounces for our glazed flavors.

Our dry flavors are a little lighter than that, just 'cause of the weight.

We go all the way up to a large size of 14 ounce bag.

We have gift boxes, different size gift boxes, boxes of six small bags, 12 and 20.

We also sell some tins.

At Christmas time we sell quite a few tins.

But you're used to getting the tins that have the dividers and the popcorn in there.

We just fill 'em with our bags.

So they're still in the bags sealed and fresh.

- Don't get quite as stale.

- Yes.

- Though my brother would hate that.

My brother likes to age his popcorn and just leave it out and let it get crunchy.

- Yeah no.

We try to bag it and keep it as fresh as possible.

- Gary's favorite saying is, if you get one with a cardboard divider, throw out the popcorn and eat the cardboard, 'cause it probably tastes about the same.

He likes it fresh.

- I probably agree with you.

Now, a lot of places are looking for opportunities to fundraise.

Do you guys have any of those kind of opportunities for schools or businesses?

- We do.

We work with a lot of schools that do use our product for fundraising.

We just, this spring a matter of fact school's out now, but we finished up some of those this spring, but we have lots of schools, high schools, as well as elementaries use our product in their fundraising.

We also can customize a label for customers and use that.

So a lot of our business is starting to be custom labeling.

This time of the year we do a lot of weddings, and so they'll use our small bags to give for their wedding guests.

- One of my favorite foods to me, it's a meal replacement.

I can eat it all day long.

So I'm glad you guys are in it.

And it's cool seeing from planting to the picking to the whole production there in farm.

So congratulations on the success and I hope you continue in the future.

- Well, that's our plan.

- Thank you guys.

It's time for another short break.

When we return, we'll look into Berry Hill UPick farms, different approach to harvesting.

Stay with us.

You're watching, Working Capital.

(upbeat music) Welcome back.

Our next family farm has a unique approach to harvesting their crops.

You pick them.

The Shively family operates Berry Hill UPick farm in Berryton where you have the pleasure of picking your own produce or sunflowers right in the field.

What started with fresh berries has grown into new opportunities.

And today we have Jay Shively on to talk about them.

Jay, welcome to the show.

- Thank you.

Thanks for having me on.

- So this, picking your own produce.

How does this farming idea come about for you?

I mean you have a full-time job on top of this.

So why take on a whole nother career up, UPick?

(Shively laughs) - I guess I'm crazy, I don't know.

The reason why we're doing the UPick, what we discovered when I was farming with my father-in-law, which is too much work, and if you go pick the produce and nobody buys it from the farmer's market, 'cause there's 20, 30 other vendors, and it goes waste and you can only freeze and can so much.

So the idea was born actually from a UPick farm in Lawrence, it's called Wohletz Strawberry UPick Farm.

- Okay, yeah.

- And so we got the idea and my father-in-law went there and picked strawberries.

So we started our own UPick and we started with 1000 strawberries that took us a lot of time to do it all by hand.

- Wow!

- And it was overwhelming with the amount of traffic.

So we made it bigger in '17.

So we saw the writing on the wall that UPick was the way to go to save time and get family balance.

So that's why we just started the idea and that's where we built it from there.

- It's kinda nice, yeah, 'cause you get families out together.

It's really an experience.

I mean the farmer market's great.

But when you can go and see it in the field and yeah, you're picking that one that is so juicy to you.

I mean it's memories that last a lifetime and you might even be inspiring some new farmers that way.

I know you've I think inspired your own family and your own son to start with this farming.

'Cause tell me a little about your experience getting into the farming 'cause you also, like I say, you have a full time job working at Kansas Gas Services.

So how do you fit this in and how is the family adapting to it?

- Well, the family is tough having two kids and a wife.

We've went to the UPick 'cause it's a lot easier on family life 'cause it's planting on a bigger scale to be able to spend some time working, prepping the ground, and then have some time in the middle to relax.

And then you're back setting up a stand and letting people come out.

And what you were talking about, the experience, we've also got chickens and goats and cows to let people, they've never really seen it (indistinct) be able to feed 'em.

So that's the experience.

And back to talking about the juicy part is, and the biggest reason why we went to UPick it's more fresh because we're into sweet corn now.

Well most sweet corns are picked either Friday or Friday night.

Well when it sits there and gets hot, it either dents or gets turns to starch faster.

So experience and sharing memories of families and friends that like their grandparents.

I love the stories when grandparents bring their grandkids out, and they say, "Well, when I was a little boy, I had to do this or I had to weed the garden."

Because families back then did all the canning, they'd have to have their own produce for the winter.

And so I loved hearing the stories.

Well I used to do this when I was a little boy and now they're 50, 60, 70, and now they're bringing their grandkids and their kids out.

And they're all taking pictures in the cornfield or picking strawberries.

You got the little girl with white dress on, it's beautiful now, it's just completely full of red juice because they've been out indulging in the sweet berries in the field.

So it's rewarding for us instead of just saying, well, here's your bag of tomatoes or here's your green beans.

It's stories and time at the farm to get outta the city is another reason why we've done that.

- And with the sunflowers, I mean it really has turned into a phenomenon.

I think, thank goodness to Facebook, I think years ago I worked for travel and tourism and Grinter's Farm really started a big push, but there's fields out by Pratt they're all over, but you do something cool 'cause there's multiple planting.

So you get more than a peak weekend or peak week.

You have three to weeks to a month time worth of sunflower pictures.

And actually to that point, I believe the one behind you, I actually took in your field in 2017.

So that actually kind of a full circle here.

- That's what I was wondering if that was ours or Grinter's or not, but yeah, I mean just the sunflowers had just blown up, I couldn't believe it.

And we used the sunflowers to get our farm known for the strawberry picking in 20 ... we picked in 2018.

But to start, we used that as advertisement as we saw Grinter's get shut down in 2016 because it blew up on Labor Day weekend.

But yeah, the three plannings has helped, but it's also taken more time to management because there's not enough chemicals to take care of weeds per se.

So it's a lot more manual, but it is nicer 'cause people always have something to do.

It's usually in August and they're doing trips or they didn't see it on Facebook 'cause their algorithm holds us back now, per se, since we've grown so big.

So people's like, just for instance, I had a girl messaged me the other day, "Hey, I need to come get strawberries."

I said, "well we picked a little bit later and it ran into June, but we're completely done now."

"Well I needed to pick 35 pounds."

I'm like, "Well that was, Memorial weekend was your time to come."

But so sunflowers just, it's nice to plant three fields, but it is a lot more work.

It gives great opportunities to photographers just because they can stretch their season out as well to work all those bookings in instead of try to fill 'em up.

So that's been the biggest push lately 'cause the traffic's been down just 'cause it's not something new, which is fine, but the photographers are really been loving it because there's a little bit less traffic so they can have more of a shot of the field instead of just a little.

- [Jay] Yeah, (indistinct) - Yeah, so it's good and bad time wise and management wise, but it is benefit to other people in the industry as well.

- That's pretty cool.

I know you keep a donation box out there.

So if anyone comes out, wants to cut off their own sunflower head to take with them, it's a cool momento of course.

- Yeah.

- I mean you probably don't want people coming out and making bouquets because as you probably know, sunflowers don't last too long once you pick 'em.

- Yeah.

- But people were part of the experience.

- It is.

And I mean it's, I just ask people to cut 'em on the side.

It's not something of a big a deal.

Just don't cut 'em outta the center and hey, it's all good.

- It's time for another short break.

We'll be right back.

(upbeat music) Welcome back to Working Capital.

All right, Jay, so where did you really get your green thumb growing up?

- I would have to say probably my grandma on my mom's side because they had a family of 10, so they had to raise all of their own produce.

(chuckles) So they had all the helpers out there working in the garden.

So I think I got it from her 'cause that just my parents followed along on it, but mainly it was from them.

So my fondest memories of getting my green thumb was going to get my Halloween pumpkin from my grandma.

So we'd drive to Seneca, or sorry, we would drive to Centralia to get the pumpkin and it's usually over 100 plus pounds.

- [Jay] Oh my!

- Yeah.

- Okay, so yeah.

You had the pumpkin in the neighborhood that you brought back.

- Yes.

- So that's a pretty amazing experience.

So it's probably what you're trying to cultivate with your own farm now.

- Yes.

- Tell me how you found this piece of property and really how all these different things came to play at finding this piece of land and all the connections to it.

It seems serendipity 'cause really you're starting off a generational farm.

You're a first generation farmer really in your family for this kind of scale.

But I know it seemed like Colt really is taking to it so he could be the second generation.

So just tell me how life pulled this all together.

- So it came all together because my son, we found out at three needed hearing aids.

So we sent him to Berryton for early childhood education, and to stay in that school district, we got a letter from the school that says you need to live in the district.

And we lived at 23rd in Croco.

And so we were calling around, calling around trying to find some land, and we just happened to stumble upon one person that happened to know my grandpa and it was on Croco Road and they decided they'd sell us a little piece, 26 acres out of 100, which is about what we needed to start our farm.

And so when I told my wife, she couldn't believe it, 'cause she used to take photos of sunrises and sunsets there.

And now we're taking photos of sunrise, sunsets and sunflowers and- - [Jay] And sharing it.

- Yeah.

- [Jay] You're sharing the love of that spot with a lot of new people.

- Yeah, and people love it out there.

It's pretty crazy.

They look at me like, well you're awful young to have this and to share it.

And they're just so appreciative.

So when I see people at the sunflower field, they look at me funny like, well who's this guy driving up the road and wanna know what's going on, and who's who, and it's pretty magical that people appreciate and take care of it out there and enjoy the sunflower fields.

- So how are the kids and the wife enjoying this experience?

(Shively laughs) - Some days, yeah, some days good during sunflower season, 'cause sometimes I hide other fields so they don't know where they're at.

So they drive up the driveway, so the wife gets upset about that, but that's okay.

The kids are doing well.

Colt's loving it.

'Cause now we've ventured into doing livestock and he's already a cowboy, as you were saying, how possibly second generation.

And he thinks he's a cowboy now that now we've got young steers and we're selling beef.

And so he's just living the dream right now and the daughter, she loves it too.

She's right there right behind him.

- I mean, you're learning together.

You're teaching him.

But I mean you really are experiencing this all together.

So I mean making memories every day, whether there's people out there or not.

- We're trying making memories of my ...

Probably my fondest is him dressing up as a cowboy and bringing home the first set of calves.

And I've got video and pictures, and then when COVID hit, we were stuck at home and we had our first sweet corn patch.

They did what we're doing here, had a promo video and people went nuts for it.

And so it's really cute watching him grow and take part in what we're doing out there.

- So how many acres are you planting now?

- So right now for sweet corn, we're at three acres, and sunflowers has grown from when you came out there, it's grown to about four acres in three different fields.

- [Jay] Oh wow.

- And then now I've planted 10 acres of pumpkins right now and gonna plant another two next week.

- So the pumpkins just one month, month and a half before Halloween, is that the peak season for what you just planted now?

- Mm-hmm, so we're looking at probably about the third week of September through Halloween.

- What are your future plans out there?

I mean, where do you go from here?

Do you see some more growth?

Do you see just holding steady for five, 10 years, what's your plan with this?

- I think what we're gonna probably end up doing is trying to hold steady where we're at now.

Like I said, we added the beef and now we have goats, but we're probably just gonna keep with the sunflowers and the sweet corn for now.

But our goal is to grow per se into a Gary's Berries.

We're trying to grow into that format of size and trying to figure out parking and all that stuff.

So it's gonna be slow growth trying to make sure we provide something fun for family, 'cause it's like a tradition thing and we want that to happen out there.

And it's later in the season and a little bit less work per se leading up to it instead of all the other activities I have.

So we might scale back some and mesh 'em all together.

'Cause I've been planting fall sweet corn.

So we might try to do fall sunflowers and then fall sweet corn and the pumpkin patch, and just make it a one stop shop instead of through the summer and just try to make it all one stop.

- So marketing wise, what channels do you use?

Is it all social media?

Is it just Facebook?

How do you get your word out?

And if you are out there, make sure you do check them out on Facebook and everything else and give them a like 'cause there is a lot of cool stuff happening out there.

- We mainly just use Facebook's our number one.

I've tried Instagram a little bit and then just word of mouth, photographers tagging us.

- [Jay] Sunflower pictures are huge.

- Yes.

- [Jay] I mean just such good marketing all the way around.

- Yeah, it definitely gets the name out there when it's peak or when it's started, 'cause it gets a lot of likes and a lot of shares, and then it kind of dwindles off.

But then people remember for next year.

- Has your wife toyed with having a photography business where she just goes out and takes people's pictures in the field, and comes back in when she's done?

- We've thought about it, but her sister, my sister-in-law's the one that takes all the photos, but she's a little preoccupied right now.

But that was our thought, but there are just so many good photographers out there.

It's like everybody has their favorites.

So they just let ideas swept off to the side right now.

- Well, congratulations on creating such a great experience just right outside of here in Topeka and in Berryton.

So yeah, thanks for being on the show today.

- Well, thanks for having me again.

- Well, that's a wrap for tonight's show.

I like to thank Jon Yingst and Mike Tanking from Schlaegel Popcorn along with Jay Shively, from Shively Family Farm, for joining us on Working Capital.

If you know of an interesting business or management technique, we want to hear from you.

So give us a call, drop us an email or send us a letter.

We look forward to hearing from you.

See you next time and thanks for watching.

It's all about business, and you've been watching, Working Capital.

(upbeat music) - [Announcer] Additional funding is provided by The Friends of KTWU.