It Started With a Dumpling

KY Popplings began the way all highly sophisticated business ventures begin: on a completely normal Thursday afternoon in our kitchen.

There was no business plan, no market research and certainly no team of consultants sitting around a conference table analyzing the untapped potential of the cake-dumpling market. There was just a mom, two boys, some cake and one question: What if we made cake pops…but shaped them like little dumplings?

I don't know how many of you parents have been on the wild goose chase for the ever elusive rare dumplings that allegedly drop at Five Below at times only pre-teens are privvy to because of a stranger they saw announce it on YouTube, but IYKYK, and its entirely feasible and easy to trace how this idea manifested.

At the time, it seemed like a pretty simple idea. We'd make cake pops in the shape of dumplings, give them cute little faces, come up with a few flavors and call it a day. Easy.

Close-up view of a colorful assortment of Popplings treats

That lasted approximately five minutes.Because once the dumplings had faces, obviously they needed names. And if they had names, they needed personalities. And if they had personalities, naturally they needed backstories. Then came trading cards. This is how things tend to go in our house. One idea becomes three, three ideas become twelve, and suddenly everyone has an iPad out.

At some point, we realized we weren't just making cake pops anymore. I mean, they looked like dumplings, but biting into one revealed cake. Calling them cake pops didn't quite explain them, and calling them dumplings felt like a good way to seriously confuse someone expecting dinner.

They needed a name, or identity of their own.

So I did what we'd been doing all afternoon and mashed a couple of ideas together:

Cake POP + DumpLING = POPPLING.

It was simple, slightly ridiculous, and somehow exactly right. We had made a Poppling.The problem was, we couldn't just make one.

Then Things Really Started Popping.

Connor and Finn commandeered the kitchen counter, both deeply engaged in market research as we contintued to brainstorm what it meant to be a Poppling. We started with flavors: chocolate, vanilla, birthday cake, strawberry, red velvet and chocolate chip. Then we started talking about how the names need to be catchy.

I knew I wanted the Popplings to be funny. I didn't want them to just be Chocolate Poppling and Strawberry Poppling. If we were going to make tiny cake dumplings with faces, we might as well commit to the bit. So we started playing with pop culture.

The boys started searching musicians, actors and celebrities. We talked about references they knew and plenty they didn't. They learned pretty quickly that half the fun of a good pun is that the person hearing it has to recognize what you're referencing. There were a lot of, "Wait, who's that?" followed by, "You seriously don't know who that is?" And, for the record, those comments went in both generational directions.

They started taking stabs at their own puns. Some were surprisingly good. Some were...learning opportunities. We pulled inspiration from singers they loved, artists they'd heard in the car, people they recognized from TikTok and names I knew that earned completely blank stares from them. I was impressed with Crumb Solo...but sadly he didn't make the first cut.

But somewhere in all that Googling, laughing and increasingly questionable wordplay, something shifted. We weren't just deciding what flavors of cake to sell anymore. We were deciding who these little dumplings were.

Chocolate Fudge became Fudgie Smalls, our confident, chocolate-covered, self-appointed leader of the bunch. Classic Vanilla became Vanilla Nice, because every friend group needs somebody who keeps everyone else relatively under control, and my brother has rapped Ice, Ice Baby at Karaoke bars all across the world. Birthday Cake became Cake Bush, who has never encountered a situation she didn't think could be improved with a party. We joked about running up that cake and played around with some more Stranger Things references, but decided one reference from the show was good enough. Especially, when you had already hit an 11 out of 10.

Red Velvet became Velvet Elvis, our smooth-talking King of Pops. And while he is still hanging in as part of the top six (largely because I've been stubborn) he may not make the final cut. Connor is adamant he may not be a hit with the younger generation. Strawberry became Berry Styles, who is fashionable, fabulous and has never met a camera she didn't like. She is obviously related to Harry. And Chocolate Chip was officially knighted Sir Chips-a-Lot, complete with a mustache and absolutely no legitimate claim to any throne whatsoever. We did argue slightly over if he should just be basic chocolate chip, or mint. Basic won, then I was corrected that chocolate chip is "classic" not basic.

Together, they became our Pop Pack. Maybe one day the OG's of the future Popplings that are to come. That was the moment I realized we'd stumbled onto the part of the idea I loved most. We weren't just making cake dumplings anymore. We were creating characters. We were building worlds. The project stopped being about the product and became an exercise in imagination. The arguing and defending ideas was actually part of the creative process. That might have been my favorite part to watch. Somewhere along the way, this silly little project had unlocked a level of imagination and creativity in both of them.

They weren't just making something anymore. They were imagining what it could become.

Our First Corporate Resignation

I would love to tell you that our first official KY Popplings brainstorming session was a beautiful display of entrepreneurship, collaboration and brotherly teamwork.

It was not.

Finn quit the company.

We had been in business for approximately one hour.The dispute involved a banana-flavored Poppling. Finn had proposed a bright yellow banana Poppling and was rather committed to the concept. Connor was...less enthusiastic. I don't remember every detail of the exchange, but I absolutely remember the comment that ended Finn's brief first tenure as Chief Flavor Officer.

Connor looked at the yellow banana concept and asked, "Do you think our customers are Minions?"

I laughed. I probably shouldn't have.Finn did not find it nearly as funny.

There was some arguing. There was some passionate defense of the banana. There was some equally passionate criticism of the banana. And then Finn announced that he was quitting the business. One hour in. I've worked for startups with longer runways, but not by much.

Once everyone recovered from the Great Banana Incident, though, it gave us our first surprisingly legitimate business lesson: there are no bad ideas during brainstorming. You throw everything at the wall and see what sticks.

Except food.

We do not throw food at the wall. Just ideas. The health department would probably prefer we make that distinction.

The banana Poppling didn't make our first Pop Pack, but Finn learned that someone not loving your idea doesn't mean you stop having ideas. Connor learned that sometimes you need to let an idea breathe for a minute before destroying it with a Minions joke. And I was reminded that if I really wanted this to become something the boys could learn from, I had to let them actually participate in building it. And take a beat to listen.

That meant letting them suggest things I wouldn't choose. It meant letting them disagree with me and with each other. It meant letting some ideas fail. Maybe even banana ones.

From Dumplings to Popplings

Once we had the first six names and basic feel for their personality, we couldn't stop. We started asking what each character would actually be like. What would Fudgie Smalls say? What would Cake Bush do at a party? How would these Popplings interact with each other? Would Sir Chips-a-Lot genuinely believe he was royalty? Obviously.

The boys started thinking about what each character would wear and how they would act. The designs became more elaborate. There were accessories, sunglasses, mustaches, crowns and increasingly specific opinions about tiny cake-dumpling personalities.

Then came the trading cards, because apparently creating six tiny cake celebrities wasn't enough. Each Poppling needed a collectible card with its personality, story and ridiculous stats. Opening a Poppling wouldn't just be about discovering which flavor you got. It became "Who'd You Pop?" It was then and there we decided that would become the catch phrase, or slogan for the KY Poppling experience. Which soon turned into a marketing call to action. Customers would pick it....pop it....and post it.

Then, naturally, we needed something rare. Enter the legendary Golden Poppling. I mean, this is what they had been searching for in stores. They believed it would help keep customers coming back. After that came ideas for seasonal characters, limited drops, special editions and an entire Poplingo interview series where, yes, we interview fictional cake dumplings.

At some point during all of this, I looked around and realized our little Thursday afternoon cake project had somehow developed its own universe.

And then Finn did the math.

What If We Actually Did This?

Somewhere between the puns, the iPads and the Great Banana Resignation, I started paying attention to what the boys were actually doing. They were researching. They were creating a product. They were thinking about an audience. They were learning why one idea might appeal to a customer while another might not. They were disagreeing, defending ideas, compromising and starting over.

That's when I started wondering what would happen if we didn't just make Popplings for fun. What if we actually built the business?

Connor has about six years before he applies to college. Finn has about eight. College is expensive, which isn't exactly breaking news. But instead of simply telling the boys that they needed to save money for college, what if we gave them a reason to understand what earning and saving money actually looks like?

What if they learned how much ingredients cost? How to price a product? What the difference is between revenue and profit? How packaging affects margins? What happens when you price something too low, or make something you're absolutely convinced everyone will love and then discover nobody wants it?

What if they learned how to serve a customer at a Poppling Pop up stand, market an idea, recover from a mistake and solve problems when things inevitably go sideways? What if they learned how to earn money and, perhaps most importantly, how not to immediately spend all of it? Those seemed like pretty worthwhile lessons.

So we started doing the math. We chose an intentionally enormous college-savings target of roughly $100,000 per kid, giving us a combined goal of $200,000.

Then we worked backward. If we could eventually average around $4 in profit from every Poppling toward their college savings, we would need to sell approximately 50,000 Popplings.

Fifty thousand tiny cake dumplings.

There are moments in parenting when you have the opportunity to be the responsible adult in the room. This was probably one of them.

Instead, I said, "Okay. Let's do it."

We stared at that number for a minute. 50,000 sounds completely ridiculous. But there's an old saying about how you eat an elephant: one bite at a time.

First of all, we're not eating an elephant. We have cake.

Second, when you break 50,000 down over eight years, it's about 120 Popplings a week. Still ambitious, but considerably less we-have-lost-our-minds.

So maybe that's our version of the saying:

How do you get to 50,000 Popplings? One Pop at a time.

And thankfully, they taste a lot better than elephant.

The Cakes to College Quest

And that's how our Cakes to College Quest was baked into existence.

Do I actually know whether three people standing in a Kentucky kitchen can make and sell 50,000 Popplings before these boys head off to college? Absolutely not. That's exactly why we're calling it a Quest. Every good quest has a destination, but the destination is rarely where the important stuff happens. It's everything you encounter along the way that changes you.

There will be side quests. Lots of them.

But we're going to keep count and celebrate the milestones along the way. We're going to share the things that work and the things that spectacularly don't. There will probably be ugly Popplings. There will be flavors that sounded much better on an iPad than they taste in real life. There will be business decisions that seem brilliant on Thursday and completely ridiculous three weeks later. There will undoubtedly be more arguments, and there may even be additional resignations. I'm hoping everyone gives at least two weeks' notice from now on.

But there will also be lessons the boys couldn't get from me simply handing them a book about entrepreneurship.

They'll learn that revenue isn't profit. They'll learn that ingredients cost money before you've sold a single thing. They'll learn that customers don't magically appear because you made something cute. They'll learn that creativity is work, and they'll learn that sometimes your brother hates your idea.

Hopefully, they'll also learn that you can be mad about that, walk away for a minute, come back and have another idea.

The College Money Isn't Really the Whole Point

Don't get me wrong. If these tiny dumplings actually help pay for college, I will happily shout it from the rooftops.

But the more we build KY Popplings, the more I realize that the $200,000 isn't actually the most valuable thing we're chasing.

The real return may happen long before either boy ever fills out a college application. It's Connor beginning to understand why a customer chooses one product over another. It's Finn sitting with a calculator figuring out what happens to our profit if the price of chocolate goes up. It's both of them discovering that an idea doesn't have to be perfect before you start working on it.

It's learning to create, work, earn, save, fail, fix things, deal with people, advocate for an idea and sometimes let one go. It's learning that criticism of your idea isn't criticism of you. It's learning that building something requires imagination, but it also requires math, patience, compromise and a willingness to keep showing up.

And sometimes it's learning to admit that perhaps the world isn't ready for your yellow banana Poppling.

Someday, I hope Connor and Finn look back and realize their education didn't begin when someone handed them a college syllabus. Part of it started right here in our kitchen, with two iPads, some cake, a ridiculous number of sprinkles, one rejected banana and a question:

What if we actually tried?

So Here We Go

Maybe we'll sell 50,000 Popplings. Maybe someday we'll package Poppling number 50,000, stare at each other across the kitchen and wonder how on earth that ridiculous Thursday-afternoon idea actually worked.

Or maybe we won't get anywhere close. Maybe at the end of 8 years we will have PTSD when we hear the world "dumpling."

We may, admittedly, be suffering from a mild case of delusions of cake grandeur.

But the lessons tucked inside this little business are simply too good to leave the idea half-baked. So we're going to make the cake, build the characters, learn the business, keep count and see just how far a tiny dumpling can take us. And as my Mimi always says, "Take it one day at a time."

In every hero's journey, the person who arrives at the destination is different from the person who started it. That's what I want for Connor and Finn.

Because 50,000 Popplings was never really the point.

It's who they become on the way there that matters.

— The Pop Makers