A year ago, Free Day Popcorn in Byron received a Business Builder Grant award through the Nebraska Regional Food Systems Initiative — part of the University of Nebraska–Lincoln’s Rural Prosperity Nebraska. This week, owners Nate and Stacey Freitag held the grand opening for their new storefront.
While the celebration included speeches, a ribbon cutting and a crowd from Byron and throughout Thayer County, it also marked the culmination of years of planning that finally came to fruition thanks to the grant.
The Freitags started Free Day in 2015 with only 1.5 acres, storing popcorn in their basement. Today, they farm more than 200 acres, have a warehouse on site with an automated packing machine and now own a store.
“I’ve had this picture in my mind for, honestly, three to five years,” Stacey said. “I was like, ‘It would be great if we could have this little farm store.’ This grant helped make it happen.”
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The Business Builder Grant was a program offered through the Heartland Regional Food Business Coalition, a program affiliated with the Nebraska Regional Food Systems Initiative, in 2024. In 2025, $3.7 million was awarded to food-centered businesses throughout the Midwest, and Free Day was one of 15 Nebraska-based businesses to receive the grant.
Free Day’s plan for the funds was always the storefront. What was once a nondescript building off Highway 8 that shipped popcorn on pallets is now a comfortable place where customers can visit. The outside is adorned with an awning and signage with their company logo. Inside, the space includes a new checkout area, shelving, tables and a theater-style popper so customers can sample fresh popcorn.
“It was so exciting the day that they came to put up the signage and the awning,” Stacey said. “It’s been really exciting to go from just this idea in my head to something that we can actually invite people to come and see.”
Stacey said the grant helped speed things along.
“We’d be waiting a long time still without this grant program,” she said. “We wouldn’t have had the bandwidth to be able to invest in this right now. This grant program has allowed us to do something a lot sooner than we would have otherwise.”
Free Day is the most recent business to celebrate its success from the Business Builder Grant, but not the only one to benefit in the past year. Katie Jantzen, owner of West End Farm in Plymouth, used to store her produce in a small walk-in freezer on the farm. The grant allowed her to buy a refrigerated trailer to help store and transport produce to nearby farmers markets.
“I have been very, very happy to have (the trailer),” she said. “It’s been amazing with the extra space and with better temperature management. It would have been nearly impossible to keep functioning without the grant.”
Rulon Taylor, a graduate research assistant at Nebraska who works with locally owned businesses across the state, spoke at Free Day’s open house. Free Day and other businesses awarded the grant, he said, prove that a little time and investment go a long way in helping Nebraska’s entrepreneurship communities thrive.
“This ribbon cutting shows that the system works,” he said. “There are people, programs and organizations that are ready and willing to help out. It shows that a family can make their dreams a reality with a lot of hard work and a bit of help.”
Nate affirmed that sentiment as he spoke about how they owed a lot of their success to the Byron community in which they live.
“The other day I was asked, ‘What was the biggest break you have gotten with your business?’” he said. “I thought about it, and it was just being born where I am. Being born to my parents, being born in this community — this community is fantastic.”
While the grand opening marked a major milestone for Free Day, Stacey said they are not taking time to rest — they have other goals they would like to achieve. Eventually, they want to be a self-contained operation that grows, processes, packages and ships product all from the farm.
But for now, they are focused on doing their best with a product they love.
“We’ve always said that popcorn brings people together,” she said. “We’re not really pretending to be anything that we’re not. We’re just farmers who grow great-tasting popcorn, and we really want to share that with folks, and we’re just incredibly grateful for the opportunities that this grant program had to propel us to the next step forward.”
Free Day Popcorn is located at 155 NE-85A Spur in Byron. For more information and store hours, visit the business’s Facebook page.
