Pittman’s Popcorn Shop has announced plans for a second location in downtown Springfield, in addition to the original location at 1500 Wabash Ave., which opened in 2016.
There will be no shortage of options for those with a sweet tooth, since Pittman’s new location at 221 S. Sixth is located on the same block as Del’s Popcorn Shop, as well as Cookie Dough Factory, which recently announced plans to open across the street).
However, Pittman says he is not concerned about being a few doors away from Del’s Popcorn. “I believe it creates synergy, whenever you see CVS there’s a Walgreens, or a McDonalds next to a Burger King. They’ve established themselves in the market; I don’t believe I’m going to hurt them. I think we can both co-exist in that space.”
Pittman said he looked at several different spaces downtown before settling on Milk & Honey Fresh Market’s former location, noting that the proximity to two other sweet shops is just a coincidence. “In terms of the spaces that were available downtown, the layout, and amount of work that would need to be done, it’s definitely the best location with the least amount of effort required.”
Ironically, Pittman’s original foray into popcorn began when he and his family became vegetarians a decade ago for health reasons. In an SBJ interview shortly after the opening of his first store, Pittman said, “Being vegetarians, we eat a lot of popcorn at our house, and I discovered that anything you can put on food, you can put it on popcorn. It is also high in fiber, so it does have some health benefits,” although he admitted that many of the ingredients his shop uses for flavoring might reduce the healthiness (“Making it Pop,” SBJ December 2016).
The 70 to 80 varieties of popcorn available at his store include popular flavors such as toffee almond, dark chocolate sea salt and Windy City, a mix of caramel and cheese.
Pittman is currently finishing up renovations to the space and hopes to have the downtown location open by next week.
