Popportunities Springs into Florissant Business Community

Shoppers catching a wiff of a popcorn smell in the Flower Valley Shopping Center could be discovering one of the newest additions to Florissant.

Popportunities Gourmet Popcorn opened its doors more than seven weeks ago next door to NY Grill, and it’s picking up as one of the favorite shoppers spot in town.

Long-time Florissant resident Geneva West opened the small shop with her daughter, Natalie Pennington. After retiring from her career at Boeing, West wanted to start a business, and after discussing with her daughter, who also works at Boeing, they decided on a popcorn business.

After shopping around the area, West and Pennington decided that the Flower Valley Shopping Center would be the best spot.

“This was a good area,” West said. “We get a lot of traffic through here.”

Once the show was featured on the Fox 2 segment "Tim's Travels," business started building even more, West said.

The small shop offers a number of flavored popcorns—ranging from simple flavors such as caramel popcorn and deluxe cheddar to more interesting flavors such as gooey butter, green apple, red velvet and buffalo blue cheese--as well as ice cream and pretzels.

Although they offer more than 30 flavors, the display case only holds 15 at a time. Most importantly, all of the flavors are made in house.

Although the store hasn’t even celebrated a six-month anniversary, West is already looking at bigger, better possibilities for the business, such as franchising. She said that a few people have already asked about franchising the business as far as Michigan, and she said they are considering it.

Popportunities is located at 115 Flower Valley Shopping Center and are open Monday-Saturday, 11 a.m.-7 p.m. For more information, call 839-1031 or visit their Facebook page.