The mom-and-pop-and-son owners of a new popcorn store on Sand Island Access Road hope the shop will become a destination. It’s not conventional wisdom but crazier concepts have succeeded.
Primo Popcorn is Rylen Sato’s part of the business, with brightly colored and flavored popcorn that complements the pidgin-emblazoned T-shirts, coffee mugs, mouse pads and other items produced by Pidgin Overdrive, the longtime business and craft fair veteran run by his parents, Patrick and Leo (short for Leonette) Sato.
The Primo Popcorn concept was inspired by popular popcorn shops on the mainland.
Garrett Popcorn, established in 1949, has 10 stores in and around Chicago, while Popcorn Girl, founded in 2009, has two stores in the Las Vegas area.
As it happens, Rylen Sato recently returned home from Las Vegas, where he was a manager at Roy’s for five years — and was surrounded by culinary- and mixology-related inspiration.
"I’ve got some ideas," he said. Opened just this week, the shop so far offers 40 sweet and savory flavors, including "fully covered cheese, dill pickle, loaded baked potato, spicy crab," as well as candy-coated fruit flavors such as raspberry, guava and peach.
"We do chocolate-covered ones in dark, white, milk" chocolate as well as caramel, he said.
Sato’s Twitter feed sports eye-poppingly colorful photos of other flavored popcorns, including green apple, mango, lemon meringue pie, pineapple, banana cream and a white chocolate-pretzel combo.
Most of the savory flavorings are powdered, but the candied popcorns use a liquefied base of C&H sugar or Hawaiian brown sugar, Sato said.
The thought of paying lease rent for a commercial space selling only popcorn is daunting. "That’s what brought us out to Sand Island," he said. "We’re paying half of what we’d be paying on Kapahulu."
The shop also is near the airport for last-minute omiyage shoppers, he noted.
Primo Popcorn is at 120 Sand Island Access Road in the Malolo Business Center just past the old Kilgo’s store, and is next to First Hawaiian Bank. Store hours are 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Friday and 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturdays for now, said Leo Sato.
The basic bag of popcorn contains up to 3 1/2 cups of popped popcorn, ranging in price from $3.50 for the savory flavors, $5.50 for the candy-coated varieties and $7.50 for the more elaborate combos.
One, called Salty Dog, is on-trend in the food industry with its mix of regular caramel corn and sea-salted milk chocolate popcorn.
Popcorn sales will not be the only revenue source for the store, since Pidgin Overdrive products can be paired with popcorn purchases for individual sales or for gift tins, boxes and larger gift baskets.
"Anything we can slap pidgin on, we pretty much have it," Rylen Sato said. The pidgin phrases used include "AiDono" (I don’t know), "pua ting" (poor thing) and "ejamacated" (educated).
Pidgin Overdrive has an e-commerce-capable website, while the Primo Popcorn website and Facebook page are still in progress, he said.
Being craft fair veterans, "My mom’s pretty good at setting up the whole year" of events at which Pidgin Overdrive will ply their pidgin-applied apparel and accessories, Sato said.
Pidgin Overdrive and Primo Popcorn will be vendors at the New Year’s Ohana Festival at the Japanese Cultural Center of Hawaii from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Sunday.
» www.pidginoverdrive.com
Reach Erika Engle at 529-4303, erika@staradvertiser.com, or on Twitter as @erikaengle.
