Meet Eliza Hucks

We recently connected with Eliza Hucks and have shared our conversation below.

Eliza , thank you so much for taking the time to share your lessons learned with us and we’re sure your wisdom will help many. So, one question that comes up often and that we’re hoping you can shed some light on is keeping creativity alive over long stretches – how do you keep your creativity alive?

Nancy and I continually try to create new gift ideas for our customers in order to hit as many price points as well can so that all our customers can give the gift of popcorn! We also like to incorporate our downtown Hickory small businesses in our Holiday Gift Giving so that we continue to support other small local businesses like ourselves!

Thanks for sharing that. So, before we get any further into our conversation, can you tell our readers a bit about yourself and what you’re working on?

My sister, Nancy, and I are native to Hickory, NC and we wanted to bring a unique, fun, delicious, sweet experience to downtown Hickory! We found Tastebuds Popcorn in Belmont, NC and we fell in love with all the flavors of the hand crafted, gourmet popcorn especially the chocolate peanut butter and we decided right then that we had to share the delicious popcorn to Downtown Hickory so that others could enjoy! Then, we also wanted to create a fun, bright space to sell the popcorn and an experience where you can try the popcorn before you buy it so that our customers go home happy! We also added other local products and delicious hand made chocolates !

There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?

Teamwork is essential! My sister, Nancy, and I have divided all the different ‘jobs’ that are needed to run a small business and we trust each other to do our parts! Therefore, the business runs smoothly. Second, we are both very organized and thus we can multitask and manage our time! Third, we prioritize! Family comes first and foremost! We do not let our small businesses come between our relationship or our families: communication is key here!

All the wisdom you’ve shared today is sincerely appreciated. Before we go, can you tell us about the main challenge you are currently facing?

We have definitely felt a slow down in the last year. In order to maintain our business, Nancy and I have kept our costs down by doing things like this for advertising and not spending a lot of dollars on advertising. We have also picked festivals and events where we will be successful after learning from the past years and we limit the number of those a year because of the costs associated with attending the events.

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