(Ridgefield, Conn. The Hollywood Times, 02/12/2023) — This Valentine’s Day a unique popcorn company with a great deal of heart is offering a tasty treat that is perfect for the season…and all year around.
The Ridgefield Connecticut-based company, Prospector Popcorn, is more than a gourmet popcorn brand because it is one that provides competitive and inclusive employment for people with disabilities.
The key, says Ryan Wenke director of operations Prospector Popcorn, is they “sparkle and transform their passions into professions,” while earning paychecks with competitive wages.
Some 75 percent of the innovative company’s 125 employees self-identify with a disability. This is a staggeringly positive figure because some 75 to 80 percent of Americans with disabilities don’t have a job.
Meaningful employment is vital to a person’s mental, social, financial, and emotional health. Prospector Popcorn wants to transform the lives of people with disabilities by giving them competitive and inclusive employment opportunities.
Wenke says the company’s outreach is twofold. “What we’re trying to do here is show not only are we making a great product and an experience from the movie perspective, but we’re trying to work with employers to expand their opportunities,” for workers with autism, special needs, and other disabilities.
“We’re actually getting into the realm of consulting so that employers can understand that this is an untapped, underutilized workforce,” he added. “It’s one of the most dedicated, talented workforces out there.”
Customers who purchase the delicious popcorn create the thousands of opportunities and interactions that fuel the Prospector’s mission.
To coincide with Prospector Popcorn’s recent Valentine’s Day Gift Guide, through Tuesday, February 14, the company is offering a 15 percent discount on their new Chocolate Strawberry Popcorn and Sweethearts Pack of 3.
Read on for Ryan Wenke’s take on how we can provide jobs and careers for people with disabilities and improve our workplace at the same time.
You recently celebrated National Popcorn Day.
Ryan Wenke: Yes, National Popcorn Day was January 19, and we are now celebrating our Valentine’s Day promotions. Our whole site now is decked out for Valentine’s Day, so we have the Sweetheart Pack and which has Belgium chocolate, chocolate strawberry, classic caramel, and then the chocolate strawberry is our flavor specific to Valentine’s Day. Those are 15 percent off, so that’s our deal up until Valentine’s Day. But who doesn’t love popcorn every day of the year?
Do you want to talk a bit about more The Prospector and its mission?
Ryan Wenke: Prospector is a non-profit focused on competitive to integrated, inclusive, and competitive employment for people with disabilities, and we do that through a variety of ways. In 2014 we opened a first-run movie theater in Ridgefield, Connecticut, and to date, we have about 125 prospects. That’s the name of each and every employee that works here at the Prospector.
We’ve been showing movies since 2014, and we’ve also been selling this gourmet popcorn since then. Over the years we’ve had inquiries from other businesses in communities about wishing that there was a Prospector in their town and how would they replicate this model. That’s when we created the idea of shipping the gourmet popcorn directly to peoples’ doors. It was a necessity that spawned from the COVID-era of trying to send our sparkle and to have our reach bigger than just Connecticut, but we want our mission to be worldwide and global.
It sounds like every town and city needs a movie theater like yours.
Ryan Wenke: The great thing about a movie theater is that there are so many jobs within a movie theater, there are so many employers that have preconceived notions or stigma or they think that there’s going to be issues or incidents and all of those kinds of things. Which is absolutely not true at all.
In the general community the jobs that are available to people with disabilities, for the most part, are jobs like pushing shopping carts on a winter’s day outside or bagging groceries. There is nothing wrong with those jobs. But we’re so much more talented and capable than that.
So, a movie theater is a business that lends itself to so many job opportunities. You can work the phones and sell tickets. We have a café where we serve beer, wine, tea, and coffee. We have obviously a concession stand making popcorn. Before the movie starts each and every usher gives an usher speech to introduce the film.
Please tell me more about the popcorn operation.
Ryan Wenke: We have our kitchen, so all of the popcorn that we sell online at ProspectorPopcorn.org is made at our theater in a commercial kitchen. We have our own production team, so before each movie starts, we are playing videos promoting popcorn, and our different sponsors. And all of that is filmed, edited, and performed by the prospects. We don’t hire anybody third-party for those jobs because it’s part of our mission.
So, the movie theater has a wide variety of jobs. Same thing with the popcorn business; many jobs go into making one bag. You need someone to pop it, and caramelize it. You have the marketing that goes into it. Designing the package, shipping it out, all of this goes into one bag of popcorn. It made sense because of the number of jobs, and also movies in general are a common language for many of us.
How are movies a common language?
Ryan Wenke: Everybody has a favorite movie; everybody has a favorite actor or actress. So, it’s a common language that brings all of us together, and its guest-facing and customer-facing.
When you’re at the theater you’re seeing us sparkle and shine in the lobby, we’re not downstairs sorting buttons and doing recreational activities that never see the light of day. We’re up in the lobby welcoming guests, having this wonderful atmosphere. And that same level of energy is what goes into each and every popcorn bag that we ship to all 50 states in the nation.
I feel like we are on Shark Tank. Are you selling them mostly online and at the theater?
Ryan Wenke: Right, so we have all of these available at the concession stand for those that are seeing a movie, but primarily through ProspectorPopcorn.org. That’s where you would buy any of our eight current flavors and packs, and it would be shipped directly to your door through our website.
How many movie theaters do you have right now?
Ryan Wenke: We have one theater, one location that has four screens and our largest is 165 seats. And we show first-run movies, meaning that it’s all current stuff. Last December we showed Avatar 2, and Puss in Boots, and we’re showing some Oscar-nominated films. It’s all current, latest, greatest blockbusters.
Now when people come to you and say, ‘We want this in our community,’ how hard is it to replicate?
Ryan Wenke: So, making the movie theater in general, we typically don’t advise because of the cost of it, and especially with COVID restrictions. But we constantly tell people, ‘Look, we just happened to create a movie theater because, one, there wasn’t one in our town,’ the closest was about 10 miles away. But it doesn’t have to be a movie theater. In our popcorn business, you have a kitchen, you have an oven, and a caramelizer; it doesn’t have to be an extraordinary expense.
What’s important is the value that you have as an employer and the standard operating procedures that we’ve created here the teaching and training tools. Making sure that you have accessibility at the forefront when you’re creating a business, making sure that you offer accommodations. Getting to actually learn who your employees are. And when we’re hiring, we have our own process of hiring called ‘Sparkle Mining’.
How is your hiring different from others?
Ryan Wenke: In the traditional hiring situation somebody might say, “I need a computer programmer, and you must know these languages. And if you don’t know those languages, I’m not interested.” What we do is we look at the person and we say, “Hey, what are you good at? What are you interested in?”
And if somebody says to us, “I’m interested in music and rapping, and singing,” you might say, “Well, how does that tie into popcorn or a movie theater?” But what we’ll do is we’ll say, “Okay, why don’t we try having you usher? And why don’t you sing an usher speech or rap an usher speech? Or why don’t you work with our production team and make a video rapping about popcorn? And then we can use that to promote our popcorn business.”
What else can you say about this?
Ryan Wenke: It’s those kinds of tools and techniques that are important for people who want to replicate our model. Somebody can have a garden in the middle of Kansas City and employ people with disabilities to plant and grow vegetables and sell them with a relatively low overhead cost.
So, it doesn’t have to be a big brick-and-mortar business. It’s really, to your point earlier, breaking stigmas, breaking preconceived notions about those of us with disabilities. And understanding that we are one of the most talented, reliable, hardworking workforces, we’re just not getting enough opportunities.
Do autism experts like Temple Grandin know about your company and your mission?
Rene Wenke: Yes, we’ve been sending out influencer boxes. We have a great relationship with Temple Grandin. She’s spoken to our employees twice since opening, and has met many of us and learned our story, so we have a good relationship there. We’re constantly through Publicity for Good, which originally got in touch with me, we’re working with them on sending these things out to people that are within this space, this industry, this movement, to try to help spread the word.
Because one, it’s delicious popcorn, but it’s supporting a wonderful mission. And really, we just need more people aware of our mission. Not just to help support what we’re doing but to be like, “Oh, wow, only through this mission could this popcorn taste so good,” through this workforce.
We don’t want to be the only player in town. We have parents that come to us that say, “When my son,” who’s currently four years old, “When my son is 18 years old, I want him to work at the Prospector.” And that’s great to hear, but then we kind of aren’t doing our part if 14 years down the road there are no other opportunities other than them working at the Prospector.
So, it’s really also trying to get employers to commit to accessibility, commit to inclusive hiring. And to remove those stigmas of, well, if I hire somebody on the spectrum is there going to be incidents? Am I going to need to have a job coach or things of that nature? And really focus on the person and their sparkle and what they bring to the business. And if you do that your business will be a success.
I know several parents who want to start a business for their adults with autism or other special needs. I would like to open a local coffee shop where my son and his friends with autism could find successful employment. Is that a good idea?
Ryan Wenke: Absolutely. What’s needed really are more people like you. The call to action and the need, people need to understand that, one, this is a problem, 80% of people with disabilities don’t have a job, that’s a large amount. So, we need more leaders, entrepreneurs, and community members, to be able to work together and be willing to jumpstart a project or business. We always say we’re not doing this because it’s nice to do, we’re doing it because it’s good business. There’s a reason why we’re successful, and it’s because of the workforce that we hire.
These businesses I know about were not only run by people with disabilities they were also rated A+ and wanted to be the best in the community. So, the product had to be really good in addition to having an important mission.
Ryan Wenke: Oh, absolutely. We always tell people that in terms of the movie theater portion of our business, we make sure we’re super accessible so that we welcome everybody. If you’re limiting access to a business, you’re not inclusive or you don’t have acceptable parking. Or you need stairs to get into your business and you don’t have a ramp, you’re excluding people who want to spend money.
And you’re removing a part of the American population that wants to support a business and have income. From a business perspective, it’s just smart to do also. It’s not again the right thing or nice thing to do, it’s not solely that. It’s you’re limiting business when you’re not totally available and inclusive to everybody.
For further information go to:prospectorpopcorn.org
