People · 2026-08-26

Mike Weaver

Joined the family popcorn mill in Van Buren, Indiana, in 1972 with a Northwestern MBA, into a house the International Directory of Company Histories sizes at $6 million, and took the presidency in 1980.
Added microwave popcorn manufacturing in the early 1980s, bought the assets of Consolidated Popcorn in 1988, and opened plants at Forest City, Illinois, and Rojas, Argentina, in 1995.
Bought optical scanners after a Japanese buyer refused a shipment in November 1985, then paid growers through a Preferred Supplier Program to hit tighter incoming specs.

Mike Weaver joined the family mill at Van Buren, Indiana, in 1972 and became president in 1980. Over that presidency the house grew from a regional grower-processor into the bulk popcorn supplier the trade still describes in superlatives, added microwave manufacturing in the early 1980s, and put optical scanners on a line that had been shipping corn against a spec nobody was enforcing.

The generations before him are already on this wall. Ira E. Weaver, his grandfather, built the supply house from a 1928 delivery route. Welcome Weaver, his father, is the chemist who joined in 1945 and professionalized harvest, storage, and the export grade. Essay 7, the hybrid and the belt, is the industrial map around them. This page is the third-generation file, and its subject is living. Huntington County Honors treats him that way, and so does this record.

A living citation, not a childhood

Huntington County Honors inducted him in the Class of 2023, Business and Professional. The citation is written about a living man: "In the more than 50 years since the end of his athletic career, the 6-foot-5 Weaver has stood equally tall in his life as a businessman and benefactor." The 21 October 2023 ceremony announcement names him among the newest class. No obituary attaches to this man in anything retrieved here. Find a Grave has no memorial for the Weaver Popcorn president. Two 2025 Michael Weaver death notices, one running from Clinton to Newport and one in Michigan City, name different parents and different towns.

There is no birth year to print. Honors prints none, Encyclopedia.com prints none, and Basketball-Reference gives Huntington, Indiana, with no day. A high-school senior year of 1964 and a 1968 draft do not add up to a birthday this record will assert.

The basketball is a fun fact, not a second career, and it is worth printing because the draft record scatters. Honors has him starring for Coach Bob Straight's 1964 Huntington Vikings, state runner-up, All-State, Indiana All-Star, and winner of the Arthur L. Trester Mental Attitude Award at the state finals. He started three years at Northwestern in double figures, with a junior line Sports-Reference confirms at 15.3 points and 10.4 rebounds across the 1965-66 through 1967-68 seasons. Then the conflict. Honors says he was "drafted by the Chicago Bulls as a third-round pick in the 1968 NBA Draft." Basketball-Reference and the 1968 draft record say Chicago Bulls, 10th round, third pick of that round, 123rd overall, and no NBA game played. Encyclopedia.com says only that he was drafted and "passed up that opportunity in order to earn a graduate degree in business." Print all three. He spent two years in the U.S. Army, took a Northwestern MBA in 1972, and went to the mill.

1972, six million, 1980

Huntington County Honors, Encyclopedia.com, and the Directory key-dates table all put the hire in 1972, with no retrieved disagreement. Encyclopedia.com says he joined "the then-$6 million family business." That figure is Directory reporting, not an audited ledger, and this record attributes it rather than adopting it.

The chair has a date. Encyclopedia.com: "After eight years with the company, Mike Weaver assumed the presidency of Weaver in 1980." Honors: "Mike Weaver assumed the presidency of the company in 1980." The key-dates table repeats 1980. Welcome's honors page titles him president without dating the office, and Encyclopedia.com dates Mike's presidency without dating Welcome's, so the year Welcome took the chair stays unprinted here.

A 1971 Tax Court extract, closed on the Welcome page, dated incorporation to 1 June 1955 and named the mid-century partnership. Encyclopedia.com's header still prints "Incorporated: 1928," which is the founding year rather than a charter. Use 1928 for the founding and let the 1955 charter sit beside it.

A mill that made bags

One of the first developments under the new president, on which Encyclopedia.com and Honors agree, was microwave popcorn in the early 1980s. That is a manufacturing date, not an invention date.

Essay 9, the bag that hissed, already closed the grocery bag. Pillsbury's Brandberg and Andreas patent is the expandable two-ply package. James Watkins put out a 1980 bag that still needed refrigeration. Hunt-Wesson claims the first shelf-stable Orville bag in 1983. Act II, with a susceptor bonded between plies, arrived publicly in October 1984. Golden Valley Microwave Foods later sued Weaver Popcorn Co. in the Northern District of Indiana, and Judge William C. Lee's 1992 findings treat Weaver as a manufacturer in that fight, not as the author of the bag. Weaver is the mill that packed bags and sold bulk.

Tom Peters, writing in 1987, already had the microwave niche as "the fastest-growing segment in the industry" and credited the mill's quality work with helping in that channel. That is a consultant writing about a house that had entered the category.

Japan, scanners, a spec that failed

The industrial hinge of this presidency is a rejected lot.

Encyclopedia.com, reprinting Carrie Rothburd's Directory entry and Joshua Hyatt's May 1990 Inc. feature, has Shintoa Koeki Kaissha Ltd. refusing a shipment worth about $70,000 after hand-sifting found too much foreign material. Peters, on the same recall in 1987, has the firm "shelling out a substantial $65,000." The Inc. search-index lead dates the rejection to November 1985 and sizes the lot at 280,000 pounds. The scatter is the record; no Japanese invoice was retrieved.

Mike brought the corn home. Encyclopedia.com: he shut production, called the employees together, assigned a crew to sift, and found dirt clods the house had not known were in its own product. He met his top advisers, "Welcome Weaver, among them," and they bought optical scanners. Honors later calls him a pioneer in using scanners to drop seed "not deemed suitable for sale."

The machines exposed the spec. There was no uniform minimum kernel size, and moisture was being accepted as high as 23 percent against a 17 percent spec. "With the [scanners] there, everybody began to see that it takes so much more than machines." The Directory attaches that quotation to an "Inc. 2004 article" while its own further-reading list points to Hyatt in May 1990. Print the year error as a Directory error.

Scanner cost scatters as well. Peters gives a "$500,000, uniquely advanced optical inspection system" in 1985. The Inc. lead gives "a total price tag of more than $1 million."

What followed is process, not a second biography: a Preferred Supplier Program that paid growers for tighter incoming specs, team leaders after the plant manager resigned, peer evaluation, and a bonus pool the workers divided. Peters used the episode as a Silicon Valley sermon. The motto Ira put on the house is the same test. A customer who is not satisfied is a grade that failed.

The Preferred Supplier Program is the part that reached the field. The mill stopped treating incoming corn as a commodity it could clean later and started paying growers to deliver corn that met the grade at the scale. Ira had built a route that bought and resold. Welcome had written the harvest and storage practice behind the export grade. The scanners made both of those into an enforced number, because a machine that rejects a kernel does not negotiate with a supplier.

Forest City, Rojas, Consolidated

In 1988 the company purchased the assets of Consolidated Popcorn, "once the nation's largest popcorn manufacturer," in Encyclopedia.com's phrase. The key-dates table repeats 1988. No purchase price and no surviving Consolidated ledger turned up here, so treat it as Directory chronology.

In 1995 the mill added a processing plant at Forest City, Illinois, "in the midst of an area that produced 10 to 15 percent of the nation's popping corn," and a plant at Rojas, Argentina, after an Argentine exporter came asking for help with Brazil. Encyclopedia.com dates both to 1995 and says that by 2003 about 40 percent of product was leaving Rojas for Europe and elsewhere.

Export share is Directory arithmetic, and it belongs in dated form. About 1990: 60 percent of the Japanese market. By 1999: 70 percent of Japan, 37 percent of a 1.4-billion-pound world market, exports more than doubled as a share of the business to 25 percent, six of every ten movie theaters worldwide, and the largest movie-house supplier in the nation from 1990 onward. The mid-2000s Directory header prints nearly 30 percent of the world's popcorn, $31.5 million in 2005 sales, and 375 employees.

A dated crown

Largest is a trade claim, so date each one.

Huntington County Honors, in the 2023 citation: "During his tenure, Weaver Popcorn became the largest bulk-producing company in the world." Peters, in 1987, already called the then-59-year-old firm "the biggest popcorn producer in the world." Hoosier Ag Today, interviewing Jason Kashman on 10 July 2025, still says "the largest bulk popcorn producer in the world." The Manufacturing about page, retrieved in 2026, claims "the world's largest microwave popcorn manufacturing facility." AUA's January 2024 release calls the manufacturing house "the largest independent manufacturer of popcorn products in the United States."

Those are four different medals from four different years. Attribute each rather than stacking them into one crown.

2007, a mixing room

Welcome died on 3 June 2003, so the 2007 reformulation belongs to Mike.

Food Ingredients First on 30 August 2007, Occupational Health and Safety on 29 August, and EHS Today on 31 August all carried the same claim: Pop Weaver first among microwave brands to eliminate diacetyl from its flavoring. Mike Weaver, still titled president, is the named speaker. "We follow strict safety guidelines in manufacturing our products, so we've had no incidents among our associates related to diacetyl exposure." Consumers were "becoming increasingly concerned," so the house took it out. EHS Today names Otten Flavors of Philadelphia as the substitute partner.

Essay 10, cheddar, skinny, and the snack aisle, already closed the disease as occupational. NIOSH and Kreiss recorded bronchiolitis obliterans in mixing rooms, not living rooms. The company said there was no evidence that eating the bag put consumers at risk. The consumer scare was media overreach; the industry reformulation was still real, and the first-brand claim belongs to the 2007 releases rather than to this record.

The house splits, then sells a piece

Weaver Hybrids lists four names on its story page: Ira, Welcome, Mike, and Will. Will Weaver is the fourth-generation name that page prints, and the AUA release quotes him as "shareholder and fourth-generation owner." This record does not build a biography out of a first name.

The same Hybrids page says the operation now runs "three independent operating companies, including Weaver Hybrids, Weaver Popcorn, and Weaver Popcorn Manufacturing." Huntington County Honors gives the trio slightly different names: Weaver Popcorn Hybrids, Weaver Popcorn Bulk, and Weaver Popcorn Manufacturing. Either way, seed, bulk kernels, and manufacturing are no longer one door.

Jason Kashman has been chief executive of Weaver Popcorn Manufacturing since April 2020 and is still in the chair in the July 2025 Hoosier Ag Today interview. In January 2024 AUA Private Equity Partners acquired Weaver Holdings, LLC, the manufacturing parent, on undisclosed terms; AUA's own copy of the 4 January 2024 release and Inside INdiana Business of 16 January 2024 carry the same parties, the 1928 Ira sentence, and Van Buren as headquarters.

Civic color sits on the Honors citation and needs no chapter of its own: Trail's End, the scouting fundraiser, since 1980, with more than three billion dollars on that page; the Bob Straight Scholarship, founded 1995 and managed twenty-five years; a lead gift with his wife, Becky, to Marian University in 2016; three children, ten grandchildren, one great-grandchild; homeowners' associations in Indiana and Florida; charter-school support.

The Weaver Popcorn Manufacturing about page, retrieved in 2026, dates the company's partnership with AUA Private Equity Partners to 2024 and still opens the story in 1928.