NEWBERG, Ore. — What started as a farmers market stand now occupies a 4,000-square-foot warehouse along with a kitchen and retail space as Miss Hannah’s Popcorn continues to grow out of its Newberg, Oregon, headquarters.
“It’s a little scary, of course,” said Miss Hannah’s Gourmet Popcorn President and CEO Hannah Jodoin. “Not only did our rent expenses go up, but now we have this big warehouse space to fill. But truth be told, I don’t think it’ll be too long until we feel comfortable here.”
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On Monday, June 27, Hannah, along with her parents, Mike and Linda Jodoin, and company employees, moved desks, equipment, and thousands of bags of popcorn two blocks away to their new warehouse. At one point, the team rolled a particularly tall piece of metal equipment that wouldn’t fit into the moving truck down the streets between the warehouses.
“It sounded like a bunch of shopping carts rolling down the street,” Hannah said. “But we got it here in one piece.”
From Farmers Market to Storefront
Jodoin has seen her family’s company scale from its beginnings in 2001 as a kettle corn farmers market stand. Her parents, Mike and Linda, started the kettle corn business, naming it after their daughter without knowing she would one day rise to the level of CEO.
In 2017, Miss Hannah’s had become successful enough to open a kiosk in Tualatin’s Bridgeport Village shopping mall and realized the company was growing fast and needed help. Mike and Linda connected with Hannah, who was working with Young Life at the time, and asked her to come back and manage the store.
“I had a whole vision for my life, and that vision was not popcorn, but youth ministry,” Jodoin said. “I did that for a sec, but then my parents opened their first brick-and-mortar.”
The popcorn was a hit, and they realized they needed more space to produce it. In 2020, Hannah said they were driving down Highway 99W in Newberg when they saw a “For Lease” banner on an old auto shop. That would lead to the company’s popcorn shop, which started primarily as a production facility they figured could serve as a small retail space.
Sure enough, the Newberg production facility became a hit in its own right and saw more people come through the door, or “pop in for a visit,” as the sign facing the highway reads.
“As soon as we put that sign up, people would wander in,” Hannah said. “We heard a similar thing from everyone: ‘Wait, is this a store with just popcorn? Cool!'”
Meanwhile, Bridgeport Village kept growing, and Miss Hannah’s moved from a kiosk to a full storefront. Soon after, they realized they could not store all of the backstocked popcorn in their production space and began seeking a warehouse space. They found a 1,600-square-foot space in 2023 and suddenly had space to breathe. But not for long.
A Packaging Change Drives Growth
The Jodoins made a pivotal move when they started researching new packaging, switching from a clear plastic tube-style bag to a resealable pouch that kept a small window for customers to see the popcorn inside. That change alone extended shelf life by a few months.
Then they cut the window altogether for the staple products, keeping the windowed resealable bags for seasonal products since those are limited runs. Without the window, the packaging holds the popcorn’s quality for triple the shelf life from four months to a full year. Hannah said the longer shelf life meant more stock on hand between retailer orders, a steadier production pace instead of a holiday-season scramble, and more consistent product for customers.
“It helps us with so many things,” Hannah said. “But then we realized we couldn’t make that much, because we couldn’t store that much.”
That’s about when she found the warehouse space a few blocks away, again locating it because of a prominently displayed “For Lease” sign.
People And Popcorn
The company has been on the rise in the past few years, due to what Hannah believes is a commitment to the product as well as the people.
“Spoiler, I guess — I’m not in the popcorn business because of the popcorn,” she said. “The popcorn is a vessel for the people, so we can’t cut the people out of that. Our purpose is the people, whether they be enjoying a bag or working to get the bags out to people. Our slogan is ‘all kinds of popcorn for all kinds of people,’ and we mean that.”
That’s why she’s hired and is hiring locals to help the business grow — the company now employs a team of about 20, many of them part-time. There are plenty of opportunities for technology and automation implementation, but that would stray from the company’s ethos. Attempting to compete with large, industrial snack makers would be a challenge, but she fears it could also impact the gourmet product.
“There are humans involved the whole time,” Hannah said. “Which allows for error, of course, but also I think it’s evident in the final product that this was made by people for people.”
The business’s visibility has hinged on that commitment to people. Not only have Miss Hannah’s combined social media profiles surpassed 18,000 followers, but she was featured on a George Fox University billboard placed on Interstate 5 in 2025, and Miss Hannah’s Rocket Pop! was an officially licensed America 250 product. A variety of bags are now available at regional retailers like New Seasons Market and Market of Choice.
And that commitment extends to the customer. Hannah said that in the early days, when she was helping her parents run the stand, she noticed her mother Linda’s commitment to making sure every bag had the right amount, and any batches that didn’t meet the quality standards were redone.
“They told me that it may be some family’s Disneyland, coming here with cash in their pockets to spend on their kids,” Hannah said. “We don’t cut corners because we don’t know if this is going to be an important memory from this summer.”
Settling In
Now that they’ve scaled up their production, Hannah said they’re mostly looking forward to growing and settling into the new space and having offices within their warehouse. Their previous office space — desks in the back of the warehouse — was abandoned long ago to make space for more popcorn boxes, leaving workers to work from home most of the time.
While Mike and other employees were moving boxes to the new warehouse, Hannah, Linda, and other employees were testing out different sounds for the new warehouse’s doorbell, ranging from a rooster’s call to a train’s horn, giggling at the absurdity of some of the options.
“We’ve always said this is the Lord’s business,” she said. “That’s why it’s silly and joyful. It’s popcorn. It brings people joy and togetherness and an experience. As long as He wants us to keep going, we’ll keep going.”
