Photo: Members of the Small Batch Organics team pictured beside the company truck. Courtesy photo.
by C.B. Hall, Vermont Business Magazine While granola-making in Vermont may have its origins in the funky kitchens of the back-to-the-land era, there's nothing funky about Small Batch Organics, which makes this now-established legacy of the New Age's early days in a gleaming production facility on the outskirts of Manchester. Stainless-steel equipment that all but breathes efficiency stretch across the 5,000-square-foot production hall, while workers busy about their tasks in white smocks and hairnets.
To all appearances the five-year-old enterprise is booming.
Co-owner Lindsay Martin declined to share last year's gross sales figure, but said, "In 2015, our first year of sales, we made $50,000. For the past three years, our sales have been seven figures. Our increase in sales from 2018 to 2019 was one million dollars."
Photo: Co-owner Lindsay Martin in her home kitchen, where she creates many of Small Batch Organics' recipes. Courtesy photo.
Small Batch maintains a payroll of about 20, both part-time and full-time, while the entire plant occupies some 13,000 square feet. Last year, the company turned out 1.15 million pounds of product.
Small Batch produces five all-organic granolas. The original-recipe version offers distinctiveness with corn flakes and sprouted quinoa in addition to the usual rolled oats and maple syrup.
From that matrix, the company has developed cranberry maple crunch, blueberry lemon crystallized ginger, cherry vanilla bean, and toasted coconut ginger granolas.
Small Batch also makes a variant on granola known as granola bark, which Martin described as "a sheet of granola covered in pure 60 percent dark chocolate." She termed it "a healthier-for-you snacking option" – again, all-organic.
The granola bark selection comes in seven flavors: coconut toffee, cherry, cranberry maple crunch, coffee bean, strawberry and, seasonally, peppermint and pumpkin spice.
As well as being organic, all of the company's products are kosher, non-GMO and gluten-free,
The cherry vanilla bean and toasted coconut ginger granolas have won awards from the Specialty Food Association, a New York-based trade group, and from the California-based Good Food Foundation, which works "to humanize and reform the American food culture," in its website's words.
Small Batch has also received accolades from the federal Small Business Administration, which named the enterprise the 2019 Vermont exporter of the year. That's right – in addition to placing its granola and bark in more than 1200 US stores, Small Batch exports its offerings to Hong Kong, Taiwan, China and Canada.
She said there had been no complaints from East Asian recipients of Small Batch products, which come in sealed plastic stand-up pouches and have a shelf-life of nine months.
On the related subject of trade policy, she said, "We have not seen any negative effect from the trade war as far as ingredient cost is concerned."
She added that the policy environment had in fact boosted sales volume: "We received a 40,000 unit/annual volume commitment from a US-based company who had to stop sourcing from an international company."
"Our international sales were brought on by introductions at trade shows in the US," she noted. "We have not done any international marketing."
Martin's résumé includes a 1997 diploma from the Culinary Institute of America and a stint as a private chef in Boston.
After relocating to Vermont, she opened a farm stand in Peru, just up the road from Manchester, in 2006. She sold her first granola there.
"The farm stand was in a very small sugar shack. It was a steppingstone to something a little bit bigger. When the opportunity to open a café and bakery came along, I left the farm stand behind."
She launched that enterprise, Dorset's Essex Green Bakery and Café, in 2008 with Jack DeSario, whom she had met when he walked into the farm stand as a customer.
In 2009, she continued, "We closed Essex Green when another group wanted to take it over. We had established a great business, but we were happy to move on to another project."
That was the Bromley Market, back across the Batten Kill Valley in Peru.
They began renovating the former convenience store in 2012. The following year, she said, "an unsolicited buyer made an offer to buy the place. We were intrigued by the idea of seeing where we could take the granola and bark."
That interest culminated in the launch of Small Batch Organics in 2015, with her as majority and DeSario as minority partner.
Asked what was on the horizon for her company, she said, "We are excited to be in a position where we can focus on marketing. To date, we have not been able to devote very much attention to the sales and marketing side of the business. We have spent the past few years building the manufacturing side. We are so proud of how we have grown on a very organic level, without a marketing and sales team."
That organic carries a double meaning – alluding both to the naturally evolving course Small Batch has taken and to the organic standard met by all its products.
All of whose labels also bear the legend "happily made in Vermont."
C.B. Hall is a freelance writer from Southern Vermont.