Sister Lucia Anne Le of the Benedictine Monastery of Tucson got a new job last week.
She traded in her sewing needles - after 15 years of making custom vestments at the monastery - for a greasy, noisy popcorn machine.
"This is fun for me," said the 51-year-old Vietnamese-born nun, gently turning over piles of white popcorn as it spit out of the steaming, industrial-sized popper tucked in the back of a small shop on North Wilmot Road. "I have a new challenge."
Sister Lucia is the primary popper in the monastery's new business venture: Prayerfully Popped - Corn From the Cloister.
The nuns, members of the Benedictine Sisters of Perpetual Adoration, are launching the gourmet popcorn business this week, selling flavored gourmet popcorn online and, on a limited basis, in a retail store that will be staffed partly by University of Arizona Eller College of Management students.
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"This will be a multi-million-dollar business along with some other products we will introduce," says Sarah Caniglia, the Phoenix-based consultant who developed the idea with her business partner and brought it to the monastery in April.
"Monastic products are recession proof," she adds, noting that people will buy the popcorn - almost a dozen varieties from savory, spicy cheeses to sweet cinnamon and sugar or caramel with sea salt - because they know the money will help the nuns. The popcorn will be sold in containers ranging from one gallon ($13.95 to $15.95) to 3 1/2 gallons ($40 to $50).
The congregation could use the money, says Sister Ramona Varela, the prioress of the Tucson monastery.
"We were looking for new work since the 1970s," she says. "But we had never been able to find work that fit us."
Making ends meet for the future
The Benedictine Sisters for the past 100 years have made their living by selling altar breads.
They also sell handmade soaps, crafted at the monastery in Wyoming, and vestments custom-made in Tucson.
But their income in today's tough economy is not enough to keep up with expenses, including maintaining aging facilities. Sister Ramona says the vestments business brings in about $40,000 a year.
The monastery dates to the 1930s. Last year, the sisters raised nearly $500,000 in donations to make capital improvements that included fixing the roof and installing a new air conditioner.
They are now faced with repairing or replacing their well, which Sister Ramona says is "going to be a big expense."
The Mother House in Missouri recently underwent a downsizing. The monastery, which once had a school, was far too big for its current uses and far too expensive to continue operating.
"We had to take out three huge wings. We called it deconstruction instead of construction," Sister Ramona says.
"We recycled everything we could, and we gave it to Habitat For Humanity and we're reusing some of it."
Income from Prayerfully Popped also will help the Benedictine Sisters sustain the congregation, she says.
"Looking to the future, we weren't going to be able to sustain ourselves without new income," Sister Ramona says.
"A touch of providence"
Last spring, the Benedictine Sisters approached the UA business school. They asked if students could take on the monastery as a class project, help the nuns develop a business that would fit in with their contemplative-prayer lifestyle while still generating income for the congregation.
The students' instructor approached Caniglia and her 5K9 Consulting Inc. partner Cindy Griffith for advice. Caniglia had worked with monastic communities in the past, including helping monks in Wisconsin launch an online business to sell discount ink and toner cartridges.
A couple of months earlier, Caniglia and Griffith had developed a business plan for a monastic gourmet popcorn company, including creating a logo.
They pitched the plan to the congregation, which was holding its annual organizational committee meeting in Tucson.
Representatives from all the monasteries were in town along with Prioress General Sister Patricia Nyquist, who oversees all three monasteries.
Sister Patricia says the timing might have been "a touch of providence, just a touch."
"We never really have considered going into the popcorn business," she says. "We are contemplative so our ministries have been in-house. … But the more we heard, we thought, this could be fun, and it certainly opens up a whole new venue of outreach for us."
Sister Patricia says the congregation loaned $200,000 to cover the start-up expenses, money they anticipate getting back within the first year.
"What really made it exciting for us is that Sarah and the students did all the startup legwork," Sister Ramona says. "We've just been handed this new work."
"Popcorn is easy to produce, easy to package and low-cost," Caniglia says. "I think the idea with any monastic business is to allow the sisters to keep their monastic life in the community but still make the business work."
Someone has to taste test
On a counter in the monastery dining room is a bin half-filled with cheese-flavored popcorn and a large plastic bag with an equal amount of caramel and sea salt popcorn.
"We've been tasting," Sister Ramona says, then giggles like a child let loose in a candy store. "That's one of the best parts. We have the cheddar chipotle, which is excellent if you like spicy. Then there's some kind of a ranch. I haven't tasted them all but I have tasted a few."
At the sisters' narrow storefront on Wilmot Road last Thursday afternoon, Sister Ramona and Sisters Kathleen Gorman and Joan Ridley stood shoulder-to-shoulder behind the cramped counter. They carefully taped labels onto heavy plastic bags and started filling them from 10-gallon bags of freshly popped corn. This will be their job in the venture, working a few hours a week in between prayer services.
Eventually, they hope to move the production to a vacant building at the monastery, which will make it easier for the sisters.
"It's probably one of the most unusual (business ventures) because it's not overtly religious," Sister Joan says. "But it does have the name 'Prayerfully Popped.'"
"Everything we do we try to do prayerfully," adds Sister Ramona, explaining that working prayerfully means that you are singularly focused on the task at hand, much as you are when you pray.
"Christ is in our hearts so no matter what we do it's all centered on a life of adoration and worship," she says.
As she cleans the popper, still hot after two batches of popcorn, Sister Lucia confesses she has a weakness for the spicy varieties.
"I never had a lot of popcorn before," she says. "I really like the cheddar and jalapeño."
Did you know?
The Benedictine Sisters of Perpetual Adoration produce the only Vatican-approved low-gluten altar bread safe for celiacs in America. The breads contain 0.01 percent gluten, the lowest limit of detection possible, according to a 2004 report in the Catholic Review.
The Tucson Monastery, which is home to 22 of the congregation's members, baked the altar bread until the early 1990s. The operation was consolidated at the Mother House in Clyde, Mo., when the equipment in Tucson became too hard to keep up. Nuns in Clyde bake 2 million breads a week.
About the Benedictine Sisters of Perpetual Adoration: The congregation, originally from Switzerland, settled in the United States in the late 1870s in Clyde, Mo. There are 91 nuns living in the congregation's three monasteries - Clyde, Tucson and Dayton, Wyo.
The Benedictine Monastery of Tucson was started in 1935. Today, the 22 sisters who live at the monastery range in age from 50 to 91.
Prayerfully Popped
• Where: 1525 N. Wilmot Road, near East Pima Street; 1-800-939-8323.
• When: Open today. Grand opening celebration 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Sept. 24.
• What: Gourmet popcorn in a dozen or so varieties including seasonal flavors like pumpkin pie and candy cane; and specialty popcorn including rocky road made with dark chocolate and real marshmallows, and chocolate and peanut butter.
• Prices: Start at $13.95 and run as high as $50.
• Order online at: www.prayerfullypopped.com
Note: The popcorn is being sold online or at the store only. No sales being handled at the Benedictine Monastery of Tucson. Store hours have not been set.
Contact reporter Cathalena E. Burch at cburch@azstarnet.com or 573-4642.
