CHAPTER 17Chilling Out
Donna Tortorice, Pop Craft
On the October day in 2009 that Donna Tortorice debuted her pushcart at the St. Petersburg Farmers Market, she sold 500 popsicles in the first two hours. She was flabbergasted.
Now, the 69-year-old founder of Sarasota, Florida–based Pop Craft (popcraftpops.com) peddles around 30,000 pops each month, and that figure is rising.
“Before I went to the farmers market that day I didn’t know what to expect,” Tortorice says. “I had been sampling them out to my friends and family. They all, of course, said they were great, probably because they were related to me, or wanted to encourage me.”
The former catering executive spent an estimated $25,000 to launch her business, including $4,500 for her pushcart. Other costs included machinery to make the product and ingredients. And all of that was self-funded from her personal savings, not retirement accounts.
And she also got lean and mean by downsizing from a 4,000-square-foot home to one that’s 1,200 square feet. She cut back on spending and put the brakes on travel. “I knew I didn’t want to be in debt,” she says. “It’s so hard to start a business from scratch anyway, and then if you go into debt, it makes it so much more difficult. I bought things as I could afford them, and I’ve grown my business from the very beginning in that manner. Today, the business is debt free.”
The pops, which ...
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