🔒Lucy Benjamin talks about the origin and growth of Lucy’s Granola

Lucy Benjamin opened her door to loud knocking one Saturday morning. The looks from the children staring up at her said it all: Where was her cake for the East Blue Hill Village Improvement Association's benefit bake sale? Her forgetfulness called for hasty action. She eyed the huge pickle jar filled with homemade granola she had made for her husband, quickly spooned some of it into Mason jars and handed them to the children.

“They sold within about 10 minutes, because everyone brought cakes, and everyone's bored of cakes,” she recalls. “So they asked me to bring it to the next bake sale, and then the next one, and then neighbors started knocking on the door and asking me to make it.”

Thus was born Lucy's Granola in 2009. She now has 10 part-time employees.

With some success in hand, she headed to the local farmers market, and spread out from there. She's now selling through L.L.Bean, Zingerman's catalog and around 140 stores on the East Coast. She is completing a contract with Whole Foods. About 90% of sales are wholesale and the rest are online and through farmers markets.

Speaking rapidly in what she calls a “non-Cockney” London accent, she explains how, as a former English chartered surveyor, she met her American husband in England 25 years ago. An architect, he eventually wanted to return to Maine and restore his cottage in East Blue Hill. “We said we'd come to Maine for a year,” says Lucy. “And we just stayed.”

Benjamin spoke to Mainebiz at her booth during the recent New England Made Giftware & Specialty Food Show in Portland, handing out samples of Extra Seedy and Naughty Chocolate Cherry granolas while musing about the challenges of growing her business. An edited transcript follows.

Mainebiz: Cold cereal sales have topped $9 billion, according to Nielsen, and GrandyOats and other Maine companies sell granola. How do you differentiate your product?

Lucy Benjamin: We didn't have granola in England, just disgusting muesli, which is raw grains and uncoated. In America I had my friend's granola, which was so sweet it was appalling, but it was so delicious. She stopped making it, so I had to start making my own.

It's just a basic granola recipe we adapted and adapted. Unlike others, my granola isn't flavored. It's flavored by its own ingredients. It's totally made by hand, in small batches in our commercial kitchen and is fresh. It's very low in sweetness and salt. When you chew it, there's lots of depth to the flavor. You can taste the coconut, you can taste the nuts. It's full of really healthy bran, wheat products and fiber.

MB: Doesn't granola have a reputation for being fattening?

LB: It is fattening. It's high in calories. But they're really good calories, from nuts and coconut. Not from sugar. We use maple syrup and honey in tiny amounts, much less than most granolas.

MB: You've achieved success with sales to L.L.Bean and other big names. What are your biggest challenges for growth?

LB: I'm not going to talk about sales figures, but we are profitable. We are really small, but we've grown really well from nothing to making a living. It's hard to get to this point, where you have shops that sell the product, boxes, packages and labels. It's an investment. The cost of materials and goods in Maine is a challenge. The cost of living is very high.

The big growth is so difficult. As you expand everything is a challenge. Everything is money. To get a booth at a show in New York, we would need to put down $3,500. We've just come through a Maine winter. Our sales in January and February are one-eighth of what they will be in August. We are so seasonally biased. I don't have enough storage or economies of scale to buy a pallet of nuts because I need a bigger storage facility. I know I can't take a big order yet. I'm really positioning myself for the upmarket, gourmet shops.