Luna Pops

NC-based LunaPops to go into 180 Harris Teeter stores

As of May 1, 2014, 180 Harris Teeter supermarkets in eight states and the District of Columbia will carry LunaPops in their frozen foods sections. LunaPops are made and based in Hillsborough, NC. Harris Teeter, headquartered in Matthews, NC, is a company known for supporting local suppliers

LunaPops are known for their great flavor combinations, derived from all natural ingredients. Harris Teeter will be showcasing four LunaPops flavors including its signature Sea Salt Caramel, Cookies & Cream, Raspberry Chocolate Chip and Rhubarb Lime.

LunaPops focuses on minimal and artisinal ingredients and small batch production. For example, instead of buying caramel flavoring for its Sea Salt Caramel pops, LunaPops brings in a local candy maker to make caramel by hand out of evaporated cane juice (organic unrefined sugar).

This kind of authentic sourcing is possible—even as its business grows—because, in November 2011, LunaPops moved its operations from the back of its Wilmington, NC retail business to become the anchor tenant for the newly-opened Piedmont Food and Agricultural Processing Center (PFAP) in Hillsborough. PFAP is a food manufacturing incubator initiated through a collaborative effort of Orange, Chatham, Durham and Alamance counties in NC. Moving to PFAP allowed LunaPops access to state-of-the-art facilities and support services, including commercial freezer and refrigeration space, and easy access to an abundant indigenous supply chain.

Six years ago when LunaPops started, it was making pops in the back of its store and selling them in the front.  LunaPops still makes its pops by hand and in small batches of just 28 at a time.  But now, instead of individual customers selecting their favorite flavors from a cooler, boxes of four pops each are loaded by pallet onto large trailers backed up to the door of PFAP for supermarket distribution.

“Enabling the kind of growth that LunaPops has achieved, with its ‘multiplier-effect’ benefit on the local economy in Hillsborough, is exactly what we envisioned when we opened the incubator a little more than two years ago,” says Matt Roybal, Executive Director of PFAP.

For information about:

LunaPops:  Jonathan Mills, 919-942-6008 jon@lunapops.com

PFAP: Matthew Roybal, 919-245-2336 matthew@pfapnc.org

Category: Press Releases