BETHLEHEM, Pa. – You\u2019ve probably seen the Granola Factory in your local supermarket. The company is truly made right here in Bethlehem.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt started in my parents’ bed and breakfast – I grew up there. My mother, Suzanne, made granola for guests since 1988,\u201d said\u00a0Calvin Virgilio, the company’s\u00a0director of operations.<\/p>\n
His parents began packing it for stores in 2005 and running a bakery. Eventually the company shifted to wholesale exclusively in 2011.<\/p>\n
And they do a lot more than granola these days, although it\u2019s still their best seller.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe original honey pecan is like – you could eat it every day for the rest of your life. It\u2019s my mom\u2019s original recipe,\u201d\u00a0Virgilio said.<\/p>\n
Now, you can find them in stores like Wegmans and Giant – not just here in the area, but all over.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re – I think – in about 500 stores now, along the Northeast into the Midwest. Whole Foods, we work with the mid-Atlantic region and then the Midwest region and then in the summer we\u2019re working with the Florida and south regions of Whole Foods,\u201d\u00a0Virgilio said.<\/p>\n
“We really are becoming a bigger brand, which is cool, so people know us,” said\u00a0Marketing Manager\u00a0Ellie Cubbison.<\/p>\n
Not bad for a team of only 15 full time-people doing most of the work by hand.<\/p>\n
\u201cHere we\u2019re very team oriented, we all work together. We all get the job done together,\u201d said\u00a0Operations Manager\u00a0Jordan Manzo.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou can\u2019t have one without the other, I think, when it comes to high-quality baked goods. You can use high-quality ingredients and have an artisanal process but if you don\u2019t have the people that are connected to doing it, it falls apart,\u201d\u00a0Virgilio said.<\/p>\n
That mentality appears to be working.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou grow where you can and, fortunately, we\u2019ve been able to grow in downtown Bethlehem,”\u00a0Virgilio said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"BETHLEHEM, Pa. – You\u2019ve probably seen the Granola Factory in your local supermarket. The company is truly made…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":14488,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[153,155,154,10983,28,10984],"class_list":{"0":"post-14487","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-bethlehem","8":"tag-bethlehem","9":"tag-bethlehem-headlines","10":"tag-bethlehem-news","11":"tag-granola-factory","12":"tag-pennsylvania","13":"tag-wegmans"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14487","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14487"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14487\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14488"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14487"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14487"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14487"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}