Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Food

How Two Orthodox Musicians Got Oprah To Love Their Pricy Popcorn

In the dead of the summer, when people crave popcorn the most, Aaron Zutler and Jacob Goldenthal, the two owners of artisanal kosher dessert popcorn Popinsanity, used to make ten batches of popcorn a day. Now they make forty batches daily, and it’s all thanks to Oprah Winfrey.

“We started February 2013, and didn’t sell our first bag until November 2015,” says Zutler. Popinsanity’s prices are on the high side — on their website it’s $12.95 for a 12-ounce bag in its best-selling flavor, Cookies and Cream,, while in grocery stores it can be $15 and in Beverly Hills it can hit as high as $18. “That was two years of understanding the popcorn market, asking where we do fit in, and are we smoking crack thinking we’re going to sell a bag for $12,” said Zutler.

It was an expensive gamble that started with a failed business venture. Goldenthal had been planning to open a cafe, but two days before opening he had to pull out. He was able to return all the appliances except the popcorn machine, which was final sale. “It was sitting in my living room for about a year,” said Goldenthal, who is a trained chef. Eventually he started using it, and Popinsanity was born in Goldenthal’s Monsey basement. “We made 4-5 bags every hour,” said Goldenthal. “Now we produce 10,000 pounds a week.”

Jacob Goldenthal and Aaron Zutler, Popinsanity owners. Image by Popinsanity

Zutler and Goldenthal were musicians playing the Orthodox wedding circuit before they were businessmen. After taking on Popinsanity, they went for what Zutler calls “the low hanging fruit,” the caterers they had once worked with.

“Hey, I have an item for you,” Zutler told his first caterer, Avi Krasnow of Chap-a-Nosh.

“Popcorn, really? How much is it?” was the response.

“This tub is $18,” Zutler said.

After tasting those sweet-and-salty kernels, customers started placing their orders.

It’s called Popinsanity because the domain name Popsanity was taken, but that doesn’t really matter. Google searches for Popsanity just bring you to Popinsanity. And the name isn’t because the prices are insane. “It’s because the taste is insane,” says Zutler. They’ve got a proprietary formula, their recipe is a trade secret and the name is trademarked. A trip inside the factory revealed employees pumping out batches of popcorn using a custom-made $150,000 popcorn machine.

Their caramel flavor took the duo two years to create — and while they’ve seen some copycats offering dessert popcorn at a fraction of the price, no competitor has lasted. “And at the end of the day there aren’t many popcorn companies that are offered at a $5-million wedding, and we do that quite often,” says Zutler. In fact, party planners were some of Zutler’s biggest customers before he went national.

All the popcorn is made in a small one-room factory off Route 59, across from a fire station and down the block from a Walmart. They have 11-18 employees and no publicist. And they had zero idea what Oprah’s favorite things list was, until they were included.

“We thought it was only Jews who knew how to buy $80 worth of dips and newspapers for Shabbat,” said Zutler. So they started going to trade shows and setting up booths complete with chandeliers and magicians. It was at one of those trade shows on July 12, 2018, when they were approached by Adam Glassman, Oprah’s creative director, who was scouting America for Oprah’s annual December favorite things list.

Oprah examining her 2018 favorite things. Image by Popinsanity

“I had no idea what it was,” said Zutler, of Oprah’s list. Following that was a Good Morning America appearance – but there was a hitch. Good Morning America offers its viewers a discount on the Oprah-approved products, but Popinsanity, as per policy, doesn’t do budget items or sales (although they’ve been pondering a more affordable version for wholesale).

In about 7 hours, they sold 14,000 units to Good Morning America viewers.

Since Oprah, Popinsanity sales “have increased about 400%,” said Zutler.

“We found out later that there are consults, there’s a course, there are books to read on how to get to Oprah, on how to present yourself to Oprah,” said Zutler, who is planning a hefty thank you Popinsanity-filled gift basket to send to her. “We’re just two guys on Route 59 in Monsey, and she’s taken us national.”

Or in Oprah’s words, “What can I say? I love a big can!”

Shira Feder is a writer. She’s at @shirafeder and [email protected]

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.

If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.

Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism. 

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.