Popcorn Paradise in Marine City is retirement plan for master tech at Ford dealership
Jerry Salisbury works with cars by day and popcorn at night.
This time of year is especially brutal.
Salisbury, 56 and of East China, leaves for work at 7 a.m., arrives at LaFontaine Ford in St. Clair by 8 a.m. to oversee car repairs as a senior master certified technician and shop foreman until 6 p.m. Then he'll head to Popcorn Paradise in Marine City and stay as late as 1 a.m.
He'll meet his wife and business partner, Kathy Salisbury, 55, who is taking a week of vacation from nursing at a local hospital to work her side gig — popping corn, making flavors, drizzling chocolate.
Popcorn is their retirement plan. They opened the shop in Marine City in October 2016.
"Just with Ford, I've got 38 years," Jerry Salisbury said. "I've been at the current location for 16 years, including 15 years before LaFontaine bought the store. I started at a Ford dealer at 19. Worked on stuff with my dad out of the garage when I was a kid. Then went to St. Clair TEC when I was in high school, for automotive repair. From there, straight into dealerships. I work to keep cars going down the road."
He doesn't work directly for Ford Motor Co., as all dealerships are independent. He isn't part of a union. And he doesn't get a pension. His retirement, he said, is whatever he manages to put in his 401K plan. Popcorn sales help.
"It's profitable," Jerry Salisbury said three days before Christmas.
He said he appreciates the support from his employer and he often donates popcorn to its various events and causes. Ford owners who go to LaFontaine know their master tech sells popcorn, too, and they often stop by.
"We're a small town, and I've lived in this area my whole life," Jerry Salisbury said. "It's not often when I walk up to a (Ford) customer and don't see someone I know."
Christmas is crush time
The month of December is the busiest, when the popcorn store does 20% of its business, he said.
"You’re completely exhausted by the end of the night," Jerry Salisbury said. "We’re not afraid of hard work. That’s been ingrained in both us our whole life. Hard work is what you do. You want to get somewhere in life, you do hard work."
Online orders arrive from Montana, Nebraska, Florida and New York.
The shop is open seven days a week, making up to 60 flavors throughout the year, with seasonal specials. They'll pop 300 pounds of popcorn kernels the week before Christmas, Jerry Salisbury said.
Pickle popcorn is the biggest seller. But Jerry Salisbury likes the spicy bacon and chedder.
Caramel is a classic, as is the Chicago style with caramel corn, cheese corn and salted butter corn.
Brown sugar and cinnamon are popular in the fall-winter, Kathy Salisbury said. Red-hot cinnamon is big for Valentine's Day. Strawberry-lemonade popcorn is a featured summertime snack. And the most requested (and often sold out) is peanut butter popcorn, because it's so time consuming and difficult to make.
Can't resist dill pickle popcorn
Stephanie Snyder works at the shop on weekdays, when the owners are at their day jobs.
"I pretty much do it all. I cook, pop and work at the counter," Snyder said. "I started coming in here as a customer and I loved it so much ... I started working here after that. The flavor that brought me in through the door was Coast Guard Crunch, a sweet and salty with peanuts."
She looked up to see Daniel McCarville walking through the door, and she knew his order before he placed it.
"I don't really like popcorn myself, but I do it because other people like popcorn," McCarville, a high school teacher from Oxford, told the Free Press. "I drop in every three weeks or so for dill pickle."
Sending orders by spread sheet
One regular customer from Florida sent a spread sheet to Salisbury to fill 20 orders, all 3.5 gallon tins with Chicago-style plain, cheese and caramel corn for Christmas, Jerry Salisbury said.
"I've been popping non-stop. I've popped for six hours," he said after a recent weekend shift. "Everything arrives in the store in the form of a seed."
The large tin bins of popcorn range in cost from $30 to $42, depending on flavors. Medium plastic bags of flavored popcorn range in cost from $5 to $14, depending on whether it's savory, sweet or contains cookies or nuts.
About 70% of the business comes from customers outside Marine City, traveling from Royal Oak and St. Clair Shores and Grosse Pointe. An estimated 10% comes from out of state in the form of online orders.
While flavors include apple pie, banana split, blueberry, grape, Pina Colada, parmesan garlic, pizza, salt and vinegar, spicy hot barbecue, cookies and cream, the cinnamon roll popcorn is a "work of art," Kathy Sailsbury said.
Marine City Mayor Jennifer Vandenbossche told the Free Press she has a habit of ordering orange popcorn and vanilla popcorn and mixing them for a Creamsicle flavor.
'Here to satisfy your cravings'
Next door to Popcorn Paradise is The Sweet Tooth, an enormous candy shop that also sells ice cream.
"We share the same clientele. Everyone likes their sweets and treats. We're here to satisfy your cravings. I have cravings for popcorn every time I walk out the door because I smell it," Todd May, owner of The Sweet Tooth, told the Free Press Wednesday. "Our two places are a destination."
The owners of Popcorn Paradise credited May for his strong support when they prepared to open in 2016. He had been up and running since 2009 with an established clientele. He promoted their debut, they said.
Mid-life crisis decision
The first Popcorn Paradise the Salisbury family opened was in March 2016 in Grand Haven, on the west side of Michigan and 220 miles from their home and full-time jobs. That site, totally staffed by employees, closed a few years later after the building it was in was torn down, Kathy Salisbury said. "Best thing that could've happened to us, such a blessing. Then there was COVID, and we couldn't have managed that."
While they discovered Grand Haven through their son's pole vaulting competition schedule, they ended up spending hundreds and hundreds of dollars on popcorn, she said.
Jerry and Kathy Salisbury loved Grand Haven, having purchased the shop there on a whim in response to a "for sale" notice on Facebook. They had never discussed running a business together or investing in popcorn.
Jerry Salisbury laughed and said it was sort of a mid-life crisis decision.
Now their two sons are grown, working as an airline pilot and in law enforcement, with kids.
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For now, Popcorn Paradise in Marine City is focused on filling orders until 3 p.m. Christmas Eve.
And then Jerry and Kathy Salisbury plan to take a 48-hour break.
Jerry Salisbury said, "We don't know what to expect for Super Bowl Sunday."
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Contact Phoebe Wall Howard: 313-618-1034 or phoward@freepress.com. Follow her on X @phoebesaid.
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Popcorn Paradise in Marine City is side job for Jerry, Kathy Salisbury
