PORT ANGELES —
After popping more than 1 million bags of popcorn over 25 years, the famous popcorn-popping machine at Swain’s General Store was all popped-out.
“Our guy here, Rick [Umbarger], [who] does all our repair work, worked on it many, many times,” said Swain’s merchandise manager Mike Mudd of the store’s recently retired popcorn machine.
“Angeles Electric, they worked on it.
“And finally it just got to the point that it was past the point of fixing.
“Obviously we can’t go without Swain’s popcorn.
“We’d probably have a revolt.”
The decision was made to buy a replacement.
The new machine — a stainless-steel Gold Medal-brand “Cornado” model — was installed three weeks ago.
The old popcorn machine could pop enough popcorn at a time to fill eight bags.
The new model pops enough to fill 14 bags and features automatic heat controls.
“It’s still great-tasting popcorn that customers love,” Mudd said.
Swain’s charges 25 cents a bag for its popcorn.
Store management estimates that the old machine, purchased in 1986, had popped a total of 196,425 pounds of popcorn and used 7,500 gallons of oil to fill 1.1 million bags of popcorn.
That works out to an annual average of 7,857 pounds of popcorn kernels and 300 gallons of oil.
“We were surprised. We knew it was a lot,” Mudd said.
