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Resurrecting an old post from 2012 about me going into the popcorn pricing deep end, of all things. A decade later the Whirly-Pop is still going strong (after I replaced the original aluminum lid and plastic gears with stainless steel), and I’ve gone through a LOT of popcorn since then. |
~~~~(cue swirly time-travel effect)~~~~
I recently stumbled across a used Whirley-Pop popper at a yard sale – five bucks, and looked like it had never been used. You can purchase these new for $20 from Bed Bath and Beyond, or about $25 or so from Amazon or The Andersons (ed: rip). It’s fairly easy to use – a splash of vegetable oil, half a cup of kernels, stove top (or side burner of the grill), and good to go. I have never cared for the hot-air poppers: the popcorn tastes like cardboard.
After a few times using it, I was curious as to how cost-effective using a stove-top popper vs. the “traditional” microwave popcorn. Doing some research, there is lots of vague “it’s cheaper than microwave” and “microwave popcorn is baaaad for you” hand waving, but no actual cost breakdowns. So, taking my trusty cell phone into a few stores, buying a few packages of different popcorns (microwave and raw), and snapping pictures of price tags, I had some nice breakdowns of price per ounce, and etc.
The stores I sampled were Kroger, Meijer, Traders Joes, and Sams Club – all because they were next to each other. Meijer’s had the best selection and generally a better price, but we’re talking pennies per ounce difference. Using Sams Club (or Costco or BJ’s) as a data point skews the values horribly since bulk purchase is soooo much cheaper per ounce.
Comparing stove-top popcorn to pre-packaged microwave popcorn (yes, you can DIY microwave stuff, no I didn’t because I don’t have any brown bags), you run into some interesting results: most stove-top popcorn tastes pretty much the same, while the microwave option is all over the place in terms of taste. This is because when you pop it yourself, you are controlling the amount of oil, salt, and butter flavorings, whereas with pre-packaged microwave popcorn, that has all been done for you. For my money, the Act II microwave popcorn tastes the best, whereas with the raw popcorn, any white popcorn tastes great (see below for a side note).
Additionally, you also discover that with microwave popcorn, you end up with either a lot of unpopped kernels, or a bunch of burnt popcorn (now that’s an interesting smell). With the Whirley-Pop, from the first time (having never used it before), I never got a burnt pop and had very few unpopped kernels.
Most microwave popcorn bags say they have 3.3 ounces of popcorn; Act II is less at 2.75. Weighing out the recommended 1/2 cup of raw popcorn yields… 3.3 ounces. This makes comparing not just yields of popcorn but overall cost a straight-forward process.
The time-to-pop for both stove top and microwave is about the same – 3:30 to 4:00 minutes for each method. My microwave is a 1100 watt unit, so the energy cost for it vs my electric stove top should be about the same. I found no difference in time or quality using the side burner on my gas grill.
The chart below shows the store, brand, total weight in pounds and ounces, and the cost per ounce for each (ed: these are in 2012 prices, but popcorn price doesn’t seem to increase as much). Unless noted, these are the standard retail prices and not “sale” prices. Also, these are the raw consumer costs for the popcorn; there is no control for the amount of oil you use in the popper, and the weight of the microwave bag and packaging box, nor unpopped kernels.
| Micowave popcorn (ed: prices as of 2012) | |||||
| Store | Brand | Weight, oz | Weight, pnd | Unit cost | $ per oz |
| Kroger | Act II 3pk | 16.3 | 1.02 | $4.29 | $0.263 |
| Kroger brand 3pk | 10.5 | 0.66 | $1.29 | $0.123 | |
| Meijer | Meijer brand 3pk | 9.90 | 0.62 | $1.99 | $0.201 |
| Jolly Pop 3pk | 9.50 | 0.59 | $2.49 | $0.262 | |
| Pop Secret 3pk | 9.60 | 0.60 | $2.99 | $0.311 | |
| Pop Secret 6pk | 19.20 | 1.20 | $3.99 | $0.208 | |
| Sams Club | Act II 28pk | 77.00 | 4.81 | $6.98 | $0.091 |
| Orville Redenbacher 28pk | 92.40 | 5.78 | $8.68 | $0.095 | |
| Raw popcorn | |||||
| Kroger | Pop Secret | 30.00 | 1.88 | $5.99 | $0.200 |
| Kroger Brand, white | 32.00 | 2.00 | $2.19 | $0.068 | |
| Kroger bulk, yellow | 16.00 | 1.00 | $1.49 | $0.093 | |
| Orville Redenbacher, white | 30.00 | 1.88 | $5.99 | $0.200 | |
| Seasons | 28.00 | 1.75 | $3.49 | $0.125 | |
| Meijer | Meijer brand, yellow | 32.00 | 2.00 | $1.79 | $0.056 |
| Jolly Time | 32.00 | 2.00 | $2.29 | $0.072 | |
| Orville Redenbacher, white | 30.00 | 1.88 | $4.69 | $0.156 | |
| Black Jewel | 28.35 | 1.77 | $5.49 | $0.194 (see note) | |
| Traders Joes | Traders Joes brand | 28.00 | 1.75 | $1.99 | $0.071 |
| Sams Club | Sams Bulk | 800.00 | 50.00 | $21.38 | $0.027 |
So, exactly, how much cheaper is stove top popcorn vs the pre-packaged microwave stuff? Depending on which brands and stores you choose, anywhere from 2 cents an ounce up to a whopping 25 cents an ounce. If you are trying very hard to compare brand-to-brand – for example, Orville – you get a cost savings of 5 cents an ounce if you stop-top pop instead of microwave pre-packs.
What does this mean to the average consumer? If you’re trying to justify your retail store purchase price of a Whirley-Pop (again, about $20-$25), you’d be saving from 25 to 75 cents a bag (each bag is 3.3 ounces, so you need to scale that per ounce savings). So let’s say 50 cents a bag – so 40 to 50 popcorn evenings. If you’ve got a big family, or love popcorn, you’re probably going to shoot for the Sams Club bulk microwave, and that makes the cost justification a lot harder: you’re now only saving at the 2-3 cents an ounce range (or around 7 cents a bag). So now your $20 purchase requires at least 285 popcorn evenings to justify itself. So a cost justification is going to be very hard to make for the short term. For the longer-term or bigger consumption family, then a cost vs convenience is much easier to make. Again, this all depends strongly on where you shop – if you don’t have a wholesale club handy, you’re paying more per microwave bag.
If you have a smaller kitchen and pantry, it will also be very hard to justify the Whirly-Pop or a similar gadget: it can’t be collapsed, and is hand-wash and dry only (ed: unless you get the non-aluminum one). With microwave bags, it’s much easier; in this case, either pre-packaged bags or the DIY option is your best choice.
For me, even with the additional clean-up and storage issues, the justification comes from wastage and taste: I get so much less unpopped kernels with no burnt pops, and the resulting popcorn is not greasy.
Side note: the Black Jewel brand of popcorn pops up half the size of traditional white or yellow popcorn, and as such you will need to pop 2x the amount to equal the same volume. So your “true” final cost per ounce is 38.8 cents. This is tasty popcorn, but just not super-special to make it worth the extra cost and time to make a 2x batch. Also of note: the Krogers bulk yellow is pretty blah right out of the popper, but if you let it sit and cool off, then it is very good; the whites all tasted good right out of the popper.
2023 note: with the Whirly-Pop, you can directly dump in your flavoring of choice during the popping process – making a single batch of kettle corn is trivial, for example.