A Grounded Granola History
Michele, the creator of Michele’s Granola, drew inspiration for her recipe from the delicious local bakery granola bars she ate while working in New England for a summer. Upon returning to her hometown, she worked to create a food similar to the bars she craved. Out of this effort came a light and crispy granola that Michele gifted to her friends and later started selling at a farmers market just outside of Washington DC.
From there her market started to grow. Local stores became interested in her granola and she gained more buyers from promoting her granola at Green Fest, a Maryland festival aimed at celebrating Earth Day and sustanilbility.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Michele’s Granola experienced huge growth. Stores ordered more of the granola to meet high demand and customers ordered more online to eat at home. Their sales remained high despite expectations for a return to pre-COVID numbers. As her granola grew in popularity, Michele started to expand her business by hiring more employees and renting out bigger facilities.
Michele’s Granola T–oat–day
From its humble beginnings, Michele’s Granola is now in Whole Foods Market nationwide. Despite having to deal with issues such as oat and vanilla supply chain shortages, the company continues to grow. Michele’s Granola prides itself on making its own product by hand even with its big expansion. While a number of brands have their goods cooked and packaged by outside companies called contract packagers or co-packers, Michele’s Granola makes their own product themselves. Each tray of granola is patted by employees, creating a light and crispy granola that no machine could achieve.
Today granola is largely popular. It is a great breakfast food, whether that be as cereal, overnight oats, or parfait and smoothie bowl topping. Granola is great as a grab and go snack for hiking outdoors or to munch on throughout a busy day of classes. Granola can even be used as a salad topping for a more savory option, Lauren Shafer, Michele’s Granola representative, suggests. Thanks to this versatility and Michele’s Granola’s outstandingly delicious product, the company has been able to grow increasingly popular.
The Delicious Future
As Michele’s Granola expands, the brand will maintain their handmade, small batch roots while also sticking true to their traditional recipe. The company gives 1% of its profits back to sustainable food nonprofits. As the company has grown this number has grown as well.
Michele’s Granola attributes its success to being authentic to its original brand and having the flexibility to evolve and grow. The company has introduced muesli – a light loose cereal, similar to granola – and granola butter to their available products.
Thank You!
Thank you to Michele’s Granola for meeting with us. We greatly enjoyed getting an inside look at the company. Granola is a perfectly versatile and satisfying snack or breakfast, especially for a busy college student. With granola and muesli flavors such as pumpkin spice, apple cinnamon, cherry chocolate, salted maple pecan, and more, we definitely recommend giving Michele’s Granola a try.