Pete Cooney

Pete's Pops

Letter from Pete Cooney, founder of Pete's Pops: Back in 2013, work was so busy that I wanted to make the most out of my free time. I developed a great interest in food – cooking it, eating it and learning about it. Soon enough, it became my creative outlet. That same year, I visited a farmers market in my hometown, St. Louis, and tried an avocado popsicle. (Shout out to Whisk Bakery!) I loved that pop so much that I wanted to re-create it. So, when I got back to Milwaukee, I bought popsicle molds and set to work trying to get it just right. Eventually, I was satisfied enough with my own avocado popsicle that I brought ten of them to my friend's 4th of July party. After some initial looks of skepticism, people tried the pops and loved them! And so, the idea for Pete's Pops was born. What followed that party was more experimenting, endless conversations with my friends about how serious I was about starting Pete's Pops, a second-place finish in a food contest (I got robbed!), and a lot of fun. My need for that creative outlet and no good reason not to spend my summer walking through the streets of Milwaukee selling handmade, interesting, and fresh fruit popsicles out of a push cart led me to launch Pete's Pops in 2014. I made a few different pop flavors that first summer and found that people loved them. A few years later, I'm still going, and the list of flavors keeps growing. And so do my popsicle stick orders. But what hasn't changed is the whole point of Pete's Pops: to have fun coming up with delicious, creative, fresh fruit popsicles that people enjoy eating just as much as I enjoyed my first-ever avocado pop.