New Waupaca store delivers flavor

By James Card

The smell of fresh popcorn on Main Street will be strongest around mid-morning.

This is when husband-and-wife owners Scott and Gina Diem produce new batches for the upcoming day. Their doors open at 10 a.m.

The newest downtown business is Main Street Popcorn located at 209 N. Main St.

A bag of fresh grab-and-go movie theater-tasting popcorn can be purchased for a stroll around the city but their specialty is flavored popcorn sold by the bag. Bags come in a variety of sizes – big enough for a party and small enough for a snack.

The flavors range from dill to banana to bacon. There is Buffalo Breath (tastes like Buffalo Wings) and there is the Waupaca Mix which is a cheese and caramel recipe. There are flavors for the sweet-tooth crowd (strawberry) and those with a spicy-inclined palate (creamy jalapeno ranch). Their grandson likes macaroni-and-cheese so they have a mac-and-cheese flavored popcorn in development. The current bestseller is garlic parmesan.

“School got out early the other day and we had these three little boys coming in. They were all brothers. They all had five dollars – I guess from lunch. They were trying all these samples. And the one little boy chose garlic parmesan,” said Gina.

“He didn’t want the sweet stuff,” said Scott.

After visiting popcorn shops in other cities, the Diems toyed around with the idea of opening one. They did some research for a couple years and when the location on Main Street opened up; they decided to make it a go.

Popcorn shop owners in Oshkosh and Door County gave them guidance and help in the getting the business started.

Owners love Waupaca

“We were only going to do it if we got a building in Waupaca, on Main Street. I didn’t want to do a side street or a different town. We wanted to be in Waupaca. We used to have a lake house on Old Taylor Lake. We’ve loved Waupaca forever,” said Scott.

Gina is originally from Texas. Scott grew up in the Manawa and Hortonville areas but when he was 17, his family moved to Texas. He lived there for the next 28 years.

From Corpus Christi, they moved back to Wisconsin 11 years ago. Gina worked with special needs kids at Greenville Elementary School and Scott recently retired as a technician at Bergstrom Ford in Neenah.

They also sell Door County fudge, saltwater taffy, candy bars, cookies, ice cream and 20 flavors of gourmet cotton candy. They will be selling beverages but have yet to get a cooler and soda machine installed.

One of the roadblocks in starting the business was supply-chain issues. There was a problem getting the popcorn popper machine, acquiring basic supplies and finding available contractors to help remodel the interior and do some plumbing.

There are two main kinds of popcorn not counting the heirloom varieties. There is butterfly popcorn which is the kind served at movie theaters and there is mushroom popcorn, which is often used for caramel corn as its round and crusty shape holds the flavoring better.

In the future they will paint the front of the building and get an awning and better signage installed.

They are open from Tuesday through Saturday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. and are closed Mondays and Sundays. They can be contacted at 715-942-2654 and [email protected] Their website is under development.