Local business prepares for more people to do their holiday shopping online

CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa (KCRG) - More people are expected to do their holiday shopping online this year.

Deal Aid surveyed more than 1,000 Americans, nearly 81% of them said they will do more online shopping because of COVID-19.

Almost Famous Popcorn out of Cedar Rapids has seen a huge increase in online orders since the pandemic. They did four times the number of orders in April 2020 than they did in all of 2019. Last holiday season, their online sales went up nearly 8x.

This year, they’re projecting an additional 50% increase in online orders.

”What I think happened was it just accelerated a trend of people wanted to shop online but they really had never done it, or they hadn’t done it that much. And with the pandemic, everybody got more comfortable with it and we’ve seen a huge rise in our online business,” Bill Rieckhoff, the general manager and family owner of Almost Famous Popcorn, said.

The company is installing new equipment that will pop double the rate of popcorn to be ready for the holidays.

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