From Home Kitchen to Whole Foods

BusinessWeek chats with two young entrepreneurs who aim to 'Feed' the masses quality organic granola

Models turned business partners Jason Wright (on left) and Jason Osborn turned the granola that they made as a snack in their New York City apartment into a three-flavor organic line they named Feed Granola.

How many times have you come up with an idea that causes your friends to say: "Hey, that could be a business!" How many times have you agreed with them? But how many times have you actually gone out and transformed that idea into a real business? Well, that's exactly what former models turned business partners Jason Osborn and Jason Wright ended up doing. In 2005, the pair turned the granola that they made as a snack in their New York City apartment into a three-flavor organic line they named Feed Granola.

Now sold in eight states at stores including Whole Foods Market (WFMI) and Wegmans Food Markets, Feed Granola earned $110,000 in sales in 2006, and is projected to make $2 million over the next 12 months, according to Osborn and Wright.

Recently, BusinessWeek.com's Stacy Perman spoke with Osborn and Wright about making the leap from a home kitchen hobby to a full-time company. Edited excerpts of the conversation follow.

How did you come to turn a homemade snack into a business?
Osborn: In 2003, our modeling agency put us together and we were living as roommates in the West Village. We started making granola as a healthy snack for ourselves. We would pass it out to friends, and it kind of caught on in the neighborhood. We gave it to a local restaurant to sample, and they ended up putting it on their menu. We realized that we had something special at that point, and we talked about making it into a serious product. So we took the granola to a dietician and gave her the formula. She said we had a really healthy product here and that there was a real need in the marketplace. So we put our heads together to make it a business in 2004.

Wright: And we formed a business corporation in December of 2005.

Did either of you have any prior business experience?
Osborn: After I moved to New York, I worked for an ad agency for three years. And in college I majored in business management and advertising.

Wright: I went to the University of South Carolina and majored in hotel, restaurant, and tourism management, and minored in business. But in college they don't teach you to be an entrepreneur. When I graduated I had no idea that I would have a granola company one day. But I did want to own my own business and to work for myself. I didn't know what I wanted to do, and I got into modeling because it got me to travel. I was managing an Abercrombie & Fitch (ANF) store and that led me to modeling, which led me to New York.

How did you initially finance Feed?
Osborn: In the beginning we financed it ourselves.

Wright: We spent about $10,000 between us from 2004 to January of 2006.

Were you still making the granola in your kitchen?
Osborn: Yes, at first we were making it in our sixth floor walk-up. And we'd go around the neighborhood offering it as samples at gyms to get feedback from people who weren't our friends. That's how we hooked up with a local natural-foods store that put us on their shelves. But at that point we'd gotten too big for our kitchen, so we partnered with a meal delivery service in the city and bartered (BusinessWeek, 7/18/07) to use their kitchen space. We'd bake our granola during the night when they weren't using it and we paid for the usage in granola. That's how we paid rent on our first facility.

Wright: We did that for a year until the end of 2005, and then we outgrew that facility and moved to a cooking company in the Bronx. We trained their staff and worked with them until August of 2006.