“Granola huh? Is that like a granola bar?”

Mark Twain once wrote that, “I want to be in Kentucky when the end of the world comes, because they are always 20 years behind.” While I don’t agree with Mr. Twain entirely, I think it’s fair to say that some trends take their time to propagate in the South. When I’m demoing at a retailer or chatting up customers at the farmer’s market it is not uncommon to be asked, “Granola huh? Is that like a granola bar?”

So if you’ve always been curious, here’s my official bare minimum definition:
Granola consists of rolled oats, nuts & seeds combined with a sweetener such as honey (or in our case sorghum!) and then baked, to be eaten with milk, yogurt, dry, or combined in other recipes. 

Of course, Sweetgrass Granola has got a lot more going on than the basics, with wild seedling pecans, ancient ocean sea salt, and a totally unique flavor from our southern grown ingredients. “Granola” can be very different things, but “Southern Granola” is something very different. Try it out at www.sweetgrassgranola.com !

The goals and inspirations for our newest product line are very different from Sweetgrass Granola. That’s why we created a new brand, EllieFinn’s, to encompass our health-minded fruit & veggie snack lines.

The name is, of course, a reference to our children: Finn & Ellie, who were particularly inspiring whenever they tried to avoid eating their veggies for dinner, through many creative arguments. Or when they sometimes pleaded for sugary “treats” instead of a healthy snack, no doubt emboldened by a recent trip to Oma & Opa’s. The lightbulb was bright when deciding to rearrange their names to make a homophone of one of their favorite animals, the elephant!

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We’re so excited to finally show off our new Sweetgrass Granola packaging and branding refresh!

Read on to learn about the exciting changes coming to your favorite Kentucky Proud breakfast and how we got there:

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Our new EllieFinn’s Go Snacks have just begun to be available for sale on our new website (www.elliefinns.com) and retailers like Good Foods Coop in Lexington, Ky. And they are making waves with customers all over!

Recently Carolyn and I talked with the Lane Report about Sweetgrass Foods, which is now our parent company encompassing both Sweetgrass Granola and EllieFinn’s Go Snacks. We chatted about our mission for EllieFinn’s Go Snacks and shared some of the challenges of pursuing a family business, especially with two young ones running around the house!

You can read the entire article at:

http://www.lanereport.com/69071/2016/10/berea-couples-children-inspire-newest-snack-food-business/

We are ecstatic to reveal the finalized EllieFinn’s packaging design! A lot of consideration went into choosing the right elements, style, and attitude to best express what we’re trying to accomplish with EllieFinn’s Veggie-Infused Snacks.

Here’s a little about how this sweet design was created!
The process was a lot of fun and we tried to include everyone in the decision making! We chose a preliminary design from a wonderful designer on 99designs.com with the help of our backers and supporters. Your feedback was invaluable!

We appreciated this design because it was clean but playful. Since over 90% of All Americans aren’t eating enough vegetables, EllieFinn’s Go Snacks needs to appeal to kids and adults alike. With the limited space of a on-the-go pouch, we really had to pack in all the benefits of a veggie superfood snack bite.

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Here at Sweetgrass we’ve been busy the past 3 months preparing our Kickstarter campaign for the newest addition to our family of all natural foods. They are called EllieFinn’s Veggie-Infused Snacks and they’re delicious coconut butter truffle snacks made with organic vegetables! Pretty much everybody in America needs help getting their Recommended Daily Amount (RDA) of veggies, and these little snacks do just that.

Check out our Kickstarter campaign which ends June 20th here: http://kck.st/1svnC1N

Pre-order and help us launch Snackable Veggies with a bang!

Recently, Carolyn participated in a news conference in our state’s capitol annex building in Frankfort, Ky. I was proud to watch her speak eloquently about our relationship with health care as small business owners and farmers.

From KyForward.com

Carolyn Gahn said that she and her husband Jacob were a typical young couple that didn’t worry about not having health insurance in their 20s, but in 2012 Jacob was diagnosed with a health condition and “our world was turned upside down.” They are farmers in Garrard County.

“We were grateful when the ACA was enacted and Jacob was now able to get full coverage regardless of his pre-existing condition,” she said.

They have since added two children to their family and she noted how easy Kynect was to update the changes in both income and family size over the years. Her family has been on both subsidized policies and Medicaid.

“With this security we have been able to focus on building our business full time,” she said. “Without the support for our health coverage, we would not be financially able to run our own business.”

The third recipe cooked up by Sweetgrass Granola-baking enthusiast Mandy is a decadent Bourbon-laced Cherry Black Forest Cake with a crust composed of our handmade Germantown Chocolate granola.  This take on the traditional Black Forest Cake is a big winner for fans of chocolate and, to mix it up, bourbon!

Our wheat-free Germantown Chocolate granola gives a nice crunch with flavorful wild seedling pecans and the natural sweeteners add depth and richness. There are no gluten ingredients in this recipe and so is very close to gluten-free! And of course, our granola is non-gmo and chemical-free with only all-natural ingredients. Mix up and dig in!

Find a Sweetgrass Granola retailer or order Germantown Chocolate online here: sweetgrassgranola.com

A slice of cherry-chocolate heaven.

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