When Rodolfo Goncalves and Sara Schonour met while competing on (and eventually winning) the Netflix show Baking Impossible, they never imagined they’d co-found a cannabis edibles company. Their creative partnership sparked on set, where they crafted light fixtures from chocolate and created a lifesize car made primarily of popcorn.
What started as playful food experimentation eventually became something more: a new kind of edible experience both were eager to explore.
Four years after taking the Baking Impossible trophy, Goncalves and Schonour celebrated another win when the brand that sprang from an on-set partnership, SpacePoppers!, was recognized with a 2025 NECANN Cup award for Best Baked Goods & Snacks.
But the journey from TV to THC hasn’t been exactly linear. Schonour, a lighting engineer, was a cannabis enthusiast when the pair met, while cake designer Goncalves was new to the space. Neither possessed any experience with infusion or working in a highly regulated, gray-area industry. Together, they approached cannabis edibles the same way they approached reality-TV baking challenges: with curiosity, hustle, and joy.
A bond born on reality TV
On Baking Impossible, the pair bonded over wild ideas and culinary extremes.
“While I was on the show, I was trying to get all of the other bakers to go in on a new idea with edibles,” Schonour said. “No one was saying yes, and then one day Rodolfo was like, ‘Why aren’t you asking me?’
“He wasn’t a cannabis guy, but he said, ‘Maybe I can be,’” she continued. “We started thinking about chocolates, because we had actually made some light fixtures out of chocolate on the show. But [chocolate] has its limitations: the heat element, the cost, the weight… Then, as we were testing, Rodolfo was like, ‘Let’s do popcorn. You love popcorn.’
“From there, we talked about infusing butter in caramel to create a seal around the popcorn, and then use that shell as the infusion vehicle,” Schonour said. “We’re not from [the edibles] world, so we had to do our homework. Eventually, we landed on tinctures instead of butter, and found a flavor profile we thought really worked.”
Throughout the research-and-development process, Schonour and Goncalves gave away samples, seeking input from friends.
“We went to a party where we brought [the product] with us, and people who didn’t know us started offering to pay for it,” Goncalves said. “So, we eventually started looking into doing this for real. People were encouraging us along the way.”
Learning on the fly
Out of necessity, the team learned everything on the fly, but that’s exactly how they succeeded on Baking Impossible: by remaining curious and flexible, and adapting to unforeseen challenges.
“There’s a lot of overlap between this world and the Netflix show. Just like on the show, we faced a lot of time constraints and a lot of moving parts,” Schonour said. “We play to each other’s strengths, though. My wife is our logistics [manager], and she helps us with bookkeeping and coordination with dispensaries and brand partners. Rodolfo is all about marketing, making new partnerships, and sharing who we are.”
While Goncalves talks up the brand, Schonour works to form strategic partnerships, making sure all the business angles are covered.
But no matter how serious the endeavor has become, “the main idea is we’re having fun,” Schonour said. “If it’s not fun, we’re not going to do it. It was the same way on the show: The teams who did the best also had the most fun.”
SpacePoppers! may be whimsical, yet the partners are not unaware the industry sprang from somber roots.
“It’s something we don’t talk about enough, but a lot of early movement came from AIDS activists fighting for access,” Schonour said. “There’s a real lineage of resilience and advocacy here, and we’re glad to be part of it.”
That’s part of the reason they’re determined to address a range of consumer demographics.
“Sara is high-dosage, and I am very low-dosage,” Goncalves said. “That’s why we’ve found that popcorn is good to share. For her, she can eat the whole package, while I open mine, eat a bit, share the rest, or close it and go back for more later.”
As microdosing continues to trend, that shareable, resealable format seems well aligned with where the market is heading.
A fresh take on edibles
In a market saturated with gummies and chocolates, SpacePoppers! offers something different: a shareable, snackable edible that’s as fun to look at as it is to eat. At the core, the product is about friendship, creativity, and not being afraid to do things a little differently, Goncalves said.
“People use cannabis as medicine, and I hope this brings them exactly what they’re looking for, along with a high dose of joy,” Schonour said. “We want everyone to feel like they’re part of a club — a cool-kids’ club where they can try something new and be the first to know about the fun.”
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