Merced resident and owner of gourmet popcorn business opens kiosk in mall

Merced resident Dominique Pruitt, 36, quit her day job and in 2021 founded her business Dom’s Bomb Gourmet Popcorn, driven by her passion to provide the best popcorn in unique flavors.

After serving customers throughout the Central Valley and select locations in the Bay Area, Pruitt has now opened her own kiosk location in the Marketplace at Merced, the city’s local mall.

The business offers unique popcorn flavors such as banana pudding, birthday cake, cookies and cream, muddy buddy, churro, bubble gum, chile limon, strawberries and cream, cheesy jalapeño and bomb butter.

Pruitt said the inspiration for the popcorn came after her father brought home a cotton candy and a popcorn machine. She then began making popcorn and experimenting with various flavors—leading her to the creation of her first flavor, strawberries and cream.

A small ceremony was held Thursday to celebrate the opening of Pruitt’s kiosk in the mall. Surrounded by family and friends, Pruitt cut a ribbon signifying the opening of the kiosk before selling to her popcorn to roughly two dozen customers.

Pruitt said her family and friends encouraged her in her pursuit of starting her own business after tasting her popcorn.

“So I just tried to be creative with flavors,” said Pruitt. “Go down the baking aisle and see what I could grab. And I think, to me, the love of this is the creativity. Thinking of flavors to help people think outside the box of popcorn, so that we have your favorite food on popcorn and it still tastes as good.”

After earning her master’s degree from Fresno Pacific University, Pruitt said she worked for the County Health and Human Services Agency before starting her business. With the encouragement from her parents, Pruitt said she got a business license and when participating in a farmer’s market at the Tarmac in Atwater, she sold out in less than two hours.

“I was like, Okay, I think I got something here,” she said. “So after a couple months, I started making my monthly salary.”

With her master’s degree to fall back on, Pruitt moved forward with her business.

“This is what I want to do,” she said. “I prayed on it, and I just took the risk and walked on faith, and I’m here now, four years later.”

Pruitt said her Master’s Degree in organizational leadership has helped her in running her business. Specifically in the areas of leadership and organizational discipline. While she doesn’t yet have employees, she applies her skills to leading herself and staying disciplined while effectively managing her business.

She said she gets inspiration for her popcorn flavors by following current trends and seasonal offerings by other companies. She said she figures out what is trending and popular, then puts her own spin on it. Such as her pumpkin spice flavor popcorn. Pruitt said she gets a lot of surprised reactions from customers when they try samples of her various flavored popcorn.

“I think the fact I have something different, and a lot of people love popcorn, and I try to steer people away from the caramel, the kettle corn, the butter and like, do something different that you can’t really find in stores,” she said. “That’s my main thing. I want to separate myself.”

Local zookeeper Ashley Fazzari, 27, was one of several patrons who purchased popcorn from the kiosk on Thursday.

Fazzari said she purchased the garlic parmesan, cookies and cream, caramel and banana pudding flavor popcorn.

“I had their smores flavor before and it was really good,” said Fazzari. “I feel like it’s nice to see another local business here in the mall, because, I mean, we have a lot of, like, the like, hot topic and things like that, but it’s always nice to get a local kiosk like that.”

Pruitt said some of her more popular flavors are the Banana Pudding, Lemon Pepper, Caramel and for those who like spicy flavors the Cheesy Jalepeño.

“If you like savory, it’s between the the nacho and the garlic,” Pruitt said. “I try to do all type of flavors, because everybody’s different. Everybody has different taste buds.”

Pruitt said she got emotional recently after posting on social media and receiving feedback from the community.

“It just made me feel good to be able to have the community support me,” Pruitt said. “You know, Merced is very small, and I think bringing my popcorn here and having a permanent location will help everybody bring some bring some laughter and joy to the community, and give something that we don’t really have here in Merced.”

Pruitt said she is still working to establish the kiosk’s hours . For now, it will be open noon- 8 p.m. Monday, Thursday and Friday and 10 a.m.- 8 p.m. on Saturday and 11 a.m. -6 p.m. on Sunday.

Pruitt said she is working on adding gluten free and more vegan flavors to her current popcorn offerings as well as possibly offering healthier combinations like popcorn and granola. She said she is even working on trying to reinvent the pink popcorn bar.

“I want to turn the tables on popcorn,” she said. “That’s my main mission.”

This story was originally published May 2, 2025 at 12:00 PM.