Originally published in the Jan. 22, 2014, issue
By Dallas
Duncan
King of Pops is the king of Georgia Grown gourmet popsicles. With flavor combinations
including blueberry lemongrass, tangerine basil, grapefruit mint and pineapple
habañero, the company built a business that thrives on locally sourced
products.
And it’s
about to get a lot more local — co-founders Steven and Nick Carse are hiring a
farm manager to help them start growing their own ingredients.
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| King of Pops co-founder Nick Carse mans the store window in Atlanta, Ga., on a sunny day in January. The popsicles, already made with Georgia-grown ingredients, will soon contain elements sourced from around the company's farm. Photo by Dallas Duncan |
They
haven’t nailed down a farm location yet, but the brothers have lots of plans
for when they do.
“We want to
do honey, berries, melons, herbs and kind of experiment from there,” Steven
Carse said. “With greenhouses, we can push the limits more, possibly do
persimmon and cherry.”
Once they’ve
figured out what plants work, he said the remainder of the farm will focus on
one or two crops. But first, they have to do soil testing and figure out which
of their ingredients will grow best in the ground.
"Herbs will
be the quickest thing that we’ll be able to get to and grow a good bit of what
we’ll use,” Steven Carse said.
The goals
of the farm are three-fold: take over the company’s produce composting, grow
their own ingredients and continue Tree Elves, a living Christmas tree
operation that “rents” potted Christmas trees to families during the holidays,
and takes care of them the other 11 months of the year. When the trees get too
big to deliver to new families, they will be planted, donated or sold.
“We’re both
pretty big dreamers and we have pretty high goals of what it could eventually
be,” Steven Carse said.
King of
Pops sells about 500,000 popsicles each year, between its carts, catering and
retail sales. Inspirations for the unusual flavor concoctions come from
everywhere, including creative cocktails. Roughly 50 percent of the produce,
all of the dairy and honey ingredients are locally sourced, Steven Carse said.
“We go to
the State Farmers Market, we deal with Destiny Organics a good bit. Then we do
a lot of kind of really small scale with some of the farmers at farmers markets
we attend. We get all our peaches from Peterson, all our milk from Southern Swiss in Augusta,” Steven Carse said. “We shoot for as much local as we can
get.”
Though the
business has only been around since 2010 — the inspiration came years before
when Steven and Nick visited their elder brother, an anthropologist, and became
enamored with a variety of Latin American fruit-based popsicle — its
distributors have already taken note of the growing fan base.
Destiny
Organics is one such distributor.
“We see how
popular their products are and how well they’re selling,” Communications
Director Ben Pruett said. “I think that they’re able to do something that is
very unique and I think that being able to produce their own ingredients could
really add to the possibilities of the unique market that they’ve already
carved out.”
Pruett said
he believes King of Pops will be the first Destiny Organics producer that grows
its own ingredients for a prepared product.
“We kind of
have somewhat of a responsibility to be outspoken leaders in this because our
business model is so closely tied to this,” Steven Carse said. “Almost as
important as the food we’re going to be creating is our ability to familiarize
our fans with local food in general, sustainable food and using it as a
marketing tool and learning experience.”
