How I built my popsicle business, starting in college
Daniel Goetz spent many nights to blend a university senior segment and fresh fruits and sell them to Popsicles to sell them to roasted customers near Texas University in Austin.
While visiting Mexico City with his university girlfriend, Paletas fell in love with the Mexican ice explosions. Inspired by Goetz, in 2009, during a lesson, he began to mock his potential brand names and scribble logos. He landed in the name of “Goodpop”.
Today, the frozen desserts of the Austin -based organic popsicle and ice cream bar company are sold in more than 10,000 places in the United States, including Costco, Walmart and Whole Foods Market. According to the documents reviewed by CNBC, Goodpop brought more than $ 63 million in gross sales in 2024. Goetz, never external financing, says Goetz.
Goodpop has been profitable every year since its launch, as 2024 exception. A company spokesman will not be profitable in 2025 after the hugging of a non -popular product series, but is expected to return to profitability in 2026.
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Still, Goetz, CEO of the company, has built Goodpop with extremely little experience or industry expertise. He says, “He didn’t know anything about the supply chains or the consumer packaged goods market, and for years he spent a lot to” run all over Texas and deliver “for years.
After graduation, he spent his first four years asleep on the sofas of his friends around Austin, so he can save money while trying to build Goodpop. He cut the fruit and froze 80 Popsicle per hour in a local palette that allows him to use his kitchen per hour, hours, hours.
“I knew that we had this delicious pop with only lower sugar, real fruit, and there was no such thing on the market,” Goetz says 38 -year -old. “I did any opportunity to put these products in front of Austinites, introduce them and see if we were on something.”
For Goodpop, a ‘cold, sloppy’ early setback
Goetz’s family has an entrepreneurial history: his great grandfather emigrated from Russia to the United States a century ago and says, “A Pushcart made love from ice.” This great grandfather then established a grocery store in Houston in 1923, which turned into an operation. Multibillion Dollar annual income When Goetz’s family sold their interest in 2014.
“I am very lucky to have grown up in an entrepreneurial family. But I also knew I had to leave your own mark on this world and do it on my own,” Goetz says.
He spent $ 3,500 with Goodpop-he spent the money he saved from a lawn mowing in the middle school-Tabela, to make his own Pushcart and the first Popsicles to sell and sell.
He sold them for $ 2 in local music festivals and farmers markets, bought more materials with their revenues, and spent three weeks to sell at the Annual Austin City Limits Music Festival in October 2009.
Then rain Converted the festival into “mud festival” says. “IT [was] A cold, sloppy confusion … And we sold four of 18,000 pops. I thought this would start [the business] And change everything and stayed with 17,996 pops and I have to understand what to do. [almost] No money. “
Goetz ran Popsicles to a cold storage facility, paid $ 50 a month to hide them, and returned to the “grieving” school. A few months later, he cut off his losses and distributed them free of charge at Austin’s annual SXSW festival.
Long hours to start a business and total depletion
After graduating from the college, Goetz could not shake his idea. However, the only part of the company was the website – so Goetz put its marketing skills to work and maximized the site’s search engine optimization (SEO). Soon, when you look for organic frozen pops or organic popsics, there was none of them at that time, Goodpop was actually the number 1 result, “he says.
A week later, a marketing agency named Manifold asked for a price quote for 50,000 organic Popsicles with a special package. Goetz gave an offer and won: Manifold paid him $ 80,000 for work and brought him half to meet his production costs.
“I stigmatized every pop bar manually, Go says Goetz.
The second half of the payment returned to Goetz pure card and Goodpop. Similarly, Goodpop gave Goodpop his first big retail partner: Goetz’s roommate played with a Whole Foods employee for fun with a representative of a representative from the Southwest regional office of the grocery chain.
In 2012, Daniel Goetz poses next to the Goodpop screen in a Whole Foods market.
Source: Goodpop
Goetz brought some examples and received approval of the representative’s receivers in the individual Whole Foods stores. As he won the buyers – he spent early to get up to sleep on the sofas of his friends for four years, to stay late to make Popsicles, and to deliver them to the Whole Foods places and other small markets.
“I put 212,000 miles in Toyota, I run from all over Texas and make years delivery,” says Goetz, the practical devotion often left “completely exhausted”, he added.
In 2014, Goodpop’s products were sold well enough to get the distribution of Whole Foods for the southwest and Rocky Mountain regions, so Goetz no longer had to make delivery. The company says that that year Goodpop brought gross sales of $ 1,3 million.
In 2017, the Whole Foods Goodpop expanded to national distribution. The brand entered Walmart and Costco the following year.
In the midst of great competition, ‘double ending’
US Popsicle market was valuable More than 1.3 billion dollars In 2024, according to an estimate of Cognitive Market Research. This makes a small player in a market where Goodpop is dominated by packaged goods. More than $ 9.5 billion In 2024, Magnum comes from frozen dessert brands like Ben & Jerry’s and original Popsicle.
Even among the plant -based, real fruit -frozen desserts, Goodpop, Nestlé and French private capital company Pai Parts Pri partners, with brands such as Shute, and Low Sugar Fruit Pops selling Chloe’s -based Chloe’s compete. More than 10,000 stores Walmart and wegman’s country -wide.
They all face a challenging way that convinces more Americans to get lower sugar desserts. Goodpop injured a line in January Low Sugar Drinks – After saying that customers do not think that their children do not think that the drinks were sweet enough, this mixed with glittering juice mixed with sparkling water.
“We were not willing to compromise on the added sugar or additional sweeteners, GO says Goetz,” We have some difficult times to continue to reset these taste buds. But this is a valuable reason. “
Ultimately, Goetz’s goal of the university remains roughly the same: Make Goodpop’s desserts into as many new hands as possible. Company in February Made a license agreement With Walt Disney Company, “Star Wars” and Mickey Mouse themed products added to Goodpop’s offers-a new strategy for the company to attract customers’ attention.
“The future seems to double the things that make our products wonderful.”
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