Daniel Goetz has spent many late nights as a university senior to cut and mix fresh fruit, and freeze them in icy lollipops to sell to descending customers near the University of Texas in Austin.
The advertising major fell in love with Mexican ice cream, called paletas, while visiting Mexico City with his college girlfriend. Inspired, Goetz began to make fun of potential brand names and scratching logos during a course in 2009. He landed on the name “Goodpop”.
Today, frozen desserts of the organic and icy popsicle based in Austin are sold in more than 10,000 locations in the United States, including Costco, Walmart and Whole Foods Market. Goodpop reported more than $ 63 million in raw sales in 2024, according to documents examined by CNBC Make IT. This has never taken external funding, explains Goetz.
Goodpop has been profitable almost every year since its launch, with 2024 as an exception. He will probably not be profitable in 2025 either, after the drop in an unpopular product range, but should return to profitability in 2026, explains a company spokesperson.
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Goetz, the CEO of the company, built Goodpop with extremely little experience or an expertise in the industry. He “did not know anything” on the supply chains or on the product market for consumers, he says, and spent years “driving a lot … running everywhere in Texas, making deliveries”.
He spent his first four years after obtaining his “without rent” sleep diploma on the sofas of friends around Austin so that he can save money while trying to build Goodpop, he said. He cut the fruits and frozen 80 iced lollipops per hour, by hand, in a local Paleter which allowed him to use his kitchen after hours.
“I just knew that we had this delicious pop with a lower sugar, real fruits, and there was nothing like it on the market,” explains Goetz, 38, adding: “Any opportunity that I could put these products in front of Austinites, to present them and to see if we were on something, I did it.”
An early “cold and sloppy” incident for Goodpop
Goetz’s family has history of entrepreneurship: its great-grandfather immigrated to the United States from Russia over a century ago and “sold ice recorded from a pushcart,” he said. This great-grandfather then founded a company of grocery supplies in Houston in 1923, which became an operation with Annual income of several billion dollars As the Goetz family sold its interest in 2014.
“I am lucky to grow up in a family of entrepreneurs. But, at the same time, I knew that I had to make my own brand in this world and do it by myself,” explains Goetz.
With Goodpop, he spent $ 3,500 – the money he had saved from a mass company of lawn he launched in college – on signaling, a pushcart and products to manufacture and sell his first pop -subjects.
He sold them for $ 2 each at local music festivals and farm markets, bought more ingredients with his profits and spent three weeks to make 18,000 frozen lollipops for sale at the Annual Music Festival of the city of Austin Limits in October 2009, he said.
Then rain transformed the festival into a “mud festival” ,, “ he said. “It was (was) a cold and sloppy waste … and on these 18,000 pops, we sold four. I thought it was going to launch (the company) and everything, and we ended up with 17,996 pops that I had to understand what to do and (almost) no money.”
Goetz precipitated the frozen lollipops in a cold storage installation, paid $ 50 per month to store them and returned to the “discouraged” school. A few months later, he reduced his losses and gave them free of charge to the Austin SXSW Annual Festival.
Long hours and total exhaustion to create a business
After obtaining his university degree, Goetz could not shake the idea of Goodpop, he said. But the only remaining element of the company was its website – Goetz therefore put its marketing skills at work, maximizing the optimization of the site search engine (SEO). Soon, “when you looked for organic iced pops or organic ice pacifiers, because none existed at that time, Goodpop was in fact the result n ° 1,” he said.
A week later, a marketing agency called Manifold asked Goodpop a quote for 50,000 organic icy lollipops with personalized packaging. Goetz made an offer and won it: Manifold paid him $ 80,000 for the position, giving it half the money to cover its production costs.
“I stamped by hand each pop stick,” explains Goetz.
The second half of the payment was a pure profit for Goetz, putting Goodpop back in business. Luck also gave Goodpop his first major retail partner: Goetz’s roommate played recreational football with an employee of all food, who put him in contact with a representative of the regional office in the southwest of the grocery chain.
Daniel Goetz poses next to a goodpop display in a whole food market in 2012.
Source: Goodpop
Goetz brought a few samples and obtained the representative’s approval to present buyers in individual Whole Foods stores. While winning the buyers – establishing relationships and shaking his hand, he said – he spent four years sleeping on the sofas of friends, staying late to make frozen lollipops and get up early to deliver them in Whole Foods and other smaller groceries at 6 am at 6 am
“I put 212,000 miles on my Toyota, running everywhere in Texas, making deliveries for years,” explains Goetz, adding that practical dedication often left it “completely exhausted”.
In 2014, Goodpop products sold fairly well for Whole Foods to take the distribution of the southwest regions and Rocky Mountain, which means that Goetz no longer had to make the deliveries itself. That year, Goodpop brought in $ 1.3 million in raw sales, according to the company.
In 2017, Whole Foods extended Goodpop to national distribution. The brand entered Walmart and Costco the following year.
“Double” in the middle of a large competition
The American popsicle market was worth more than $ 1.3 billion In 2024, according to an estimate of the cognitive market study. This makes goodpop a small player in a market dominated by the giants of packaged products: Unilever, the largest producer of ice cream in the world, brought more than $ 9.5 billion In 2024, the income from frozen dessert brands like Magnum, Ben & Jerry’s and the original popsicle.
Even among the frozen desserts based on plants based on plants, Goodpop competes with brands like Outshine, owned by a joint venture between Nestlé and the French Investment Capital Pai Partners, and Chloé, based in New York, which sells low sugar in sugar sugar Over 10,000 stores Nationwide, including Walmart and Wegman.
They are all faced with a difficult route to convince more Americans to buy lower sugar desserts. In January, Goodpop found a line of low sugar drinks – Who mixes fruit juice with sparkling water – After the customers said that their children did not think that drinks were sweet enough.
“We were not willing to compromise on an added sugar or additional sweeteners,” explains Goetz, adding: “We have difficult times to come, with regard to the reset of these taste buds. But this is a valid cause.”
In the end, the Goetz’s goal of the University remains about the same: obtaining Goodpop desserts in as many new hands as possible. In February, the company won a license agreement With the Walt Disney Company, adding “Star Wars” and Mickey Mouse theme to Goodpop’s offers – a new strategy for the company to attract the attention of buyers.
“The future is likely to double what makes our products wonderful,” says Goetz.
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