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I am planning to sell popcorn spiced with my own personal recipes, and i am looking to purchase bags for them.

Each bag should contain a single serving of popcorn, but i'm not sure how much that would be.

what is the suggested serving size for an adult?

Terry
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  • Sorry Terry, but there is no "one size fits all" solution. You'll have to pick the size which sells best, based on marketing considerations. A cook can't tell you how much everybody will eat. – rumtscho Aug 25 '15 at 08:22

2 Answers2

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Suggestion:

  • Make a batch of popcorn, weighing all ingredients used.
  • Fill one bag.
  • Weigh the bag.
  • Calculate price per serving and total amount of ingredients required based on the weight of your initial batch.

In short, decide what kind of bags you have / want to use and calculate from there.

(Hint: We often instinctively think of popcorn as a volume, not as a weight based quantity.)

If you don't have the bags yet, meassure what you consider a one-person serving. I suggest making servings of plain popcorn larger and those with lots of sugar or similar smaller - e.g. 2 generous handfulls for caramel corn vs. 4 for plain salted.
Put it in a meassuring jug, read the volume scale, buy matching bags. If you need to calculate ingredients, weigh your serving and proceed as above.

Stephie
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  • thanks for you answer.I'm asking the question to work out what size bags i should buy. – Terry Aug 24 '15 at 20:53
  • That's basically unanswerable: Do you want to sell small snack-sized baggies or gigantic "feeds a family" bags or anything inbetween... The bags will have some description of size, weigh the corresponding volume of popcorn and you should be close enough. – Stephie Aug 24 '15 at 20:57
  • I'm wanting to sell enough for 1 person. – Terry Aug 24 '15 at 20:57
  • *Then meassure what you consider a 1-person serving.* I suggest making servings of plain popcorn larger and those with lots of sugar or similar smaller - e.g. 2 handfulls for caramel corn vs. 4 for plain salted. Put it in a meassuring jug, read the volume scale, buy matching bags. – Stephie Aug 24 '15 at 21:02
  • I've re-written my question to be a little more clear. – Terry Aug 24 '15 at 21:06
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I'd look at existing products in the same space and try to figure out if you want your size offerings to match them or if you want your product to be differentiated by size offerings. Go to a store and look at roughly who your larger-scale competitive landscape looks like.

As far as industry comparables, I have seen packaged popcorn products that target the same space as "sandwich and chips" lunch specials and they typically offer a weight around .5-.7 oz (maybe a bit heavier for sugar-glazed items, say 1-1.5 oz); 1 oz by weight will translate into a volume about 2.5 cups. Anything in that range (1/2 to 1 oz) can easily pass for a single serving.

Microwave popcorn packages appear to typically have 1.2-1.5 oz popcorn (4-5 cups volume after popping). Some people consider those single servings.

(I've done no particular investigation of the percentage of weight attributable to oil/fats/seasonings/sugar/salt, so your mileage may vary).

I would not be surprised if a large percentage of packaged foods are sized based on what packaging was available for what cost. One product (not popcorn) I previously sold with piece counts delineated by what packaging style was readily available to me for a reasonable price; I could fit 4 pieces in a small box, 8 in a large box, and then I had "bulk" pricing (25 units or something like that) for people who didn't care about the packaging; I varied the bulk packaging depending on what was available to me from PaperMart or U-Line at the time.

JasonTrue
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