A frozen treat finds room to grow: Crooked Stick Pops expands, plans for year-round production

EASTHAMPTON — Julie Tuman unveiled 84 strawberry watermelon fruit punch popsicles that were just frozen below -20 degrees on a recent weekday afternoon, with trademark crooked sticks jutting out from the bottoms.

“This is Little Guy, everything has a name here,” said Tuman, owner and pop master of Crooked Stick Pops, pointing to a machine that can freeze popsicles in about 25 minutes. “Little guy can do 84 pops at a time.”

Locals may have gotten a pop from Tuman at local farmers’ markets, at Cultural Chaos or even the now-closed Crooked Stick Pop shop that was previously located in the Eastworks building.

Crooked Stick Pops has been serving fresh popsicles made from local produce for a decade now, since opening in 2016. While coincidental on its 10-year anniversary, the business’ headquarters is taking a short but expansive relocation, moving from the second to the first floor of the Keystone Building to allow for more pop production for all of the Valley and beyond to enjoy.

“The name comes from me not being able to get the stick straight and just agonizing over it,” Tuman said, while sealing the popsicles in plastic bags. “But my husband, who’s a web designer, said there’s sort of a saying in the tech world of ‘make a bug a feature’ — if you can’t fix something, embrace it.”

That is just what Tuman did when choosing the name, and soon discovered that as a business owner, you need to embrace when things get a little “crooked.”

“I embraced it and it just became like a beautiful metaphor for all of these things,” Tuman said. “As a business owner, you can try to control it as much as you want but things are gonna happen.”

Tuman’s popsicle-making operations relocation is being helped by a $40,000 grant from the MassDevelopment’s Biz-M-Power Program.

The grant allowed Tuman to purchase a new walk-in freezer that will triple her storage capacity. She currently has one 10-by-10-foot freezer that will be in the new location, along with the new 10-by-20-foot freezer.

“For a lot of this it’s like, big deal what does that do?” Tuman said about the additional freezer. “Well, that means that I can actually be operational year-round because pops when they’re in these deep freezes, they stay good, hard stop.”

Tuman said the prime pop season is April through October when she is working seven days a week, along with about five seasonal employees, balancing going out to events selling, with making pops. During the out-of-season days, Tuman said she works on her own focusing on more business-oriented tasks like planning and client work. But she still takes days like on a recent Thursday to make hundreds of pops.

With the new freezer, Tuman said she will be able to employ someone during the winter to make pops for the summer months, creating a much more efficient and sustainable system.

“As a microbusiness, having one full-time, year-round, benefited position is just like, can you believe I get to do that?” Tuman said. “I’m just so lucky to get to do these things, so the freezer is huge. It also means that I can buy more local fruit and store it.”

Being able to produce more pops, Tuman said she will be able to expand wholesale retail distribution further while still maintaining local ties. Crooked Stick Pops can be found seasonally in singular packaging at smaller grocery stores, farm stands, restaurants and other places, ranging from the Boston area to New York and southern Vermont.

Tuman said she has considered selling pops by the box rather than singular packaging but that would come at a higher price for her clients. She is committed to using only locally sourced ingredients. As a customer of Marty’s Local, Tuman said the company has helped her grow her network and business.

“All the farms that have their own store where people already understand the importance of fresh local produce, they’re going to understand the importance of fresh local ice pops because our pops are made of fruit and fruit is not inexpensive,” Tuman said.

Besides the coffee flavors like the Vietnamese coffee and coconut iced coffee, Tuman said other popular flavors include fruity flavors like strawberry watermelon fruit punch. The pops range from 50 to 120 calories and 7 to 16 grams of sugar, depending on the flavor.

Journey to a decade

Originally from North Carolina, Tuman moved to western Massachusetts to attend graduate school at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, getting a degree in Chinese. Before opening Crooked Stick Pops, she worked in international education, helping set up international programs at schools and universities.

“A degree is like a pair of shoes,” Tuman said. “You buy a really good pair of shoes and maybe you outgrow them, maybe you just don’t want to wear them anymore and no one gets mad at you if you stop wearing your expensive shoes. How is this any different?”

Tuman said she was inspired by a popsicle shop in St. Augustine, Florida called The Hyppo, that she frequently visited while spending time vacationing there. Looking for a change in her career and with a push from her husband, Tuman opened Crooked Stick Pops.

“I loved it [The Hyppo] and then years went by, I went back to St. Augustine every summer. Eventually met my now husband, and to him, he loved it,” Tuman said about the idea of opening a pop shop. “And he was like, ‘you know, this area [western Massachusetts] needs a popsicle business.’”

Tuman would soon open a retail shop in the space across from the Easthampton Local Burger where she sold the popsicles. The COVID-19 pandemic forced her to shut down that physical location, but she was able to keep making popsicles at the Keystone location and selling them at events throughout the region.

Having multiple freezers, Tuman can have five employees selling pops at one time at different locations.

Tuman said she has always shown love and expressed herself through food, and Crooked Stick Pops was the perfect business to do that. “That is how I show you that I love you and so this kind of just became an extension of that. I love the kitchen, I love to cook and play and be creative.”

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