About Us

Gatherer's began as a family recipe. The flavor that would later become Chipmunk's Choice became a favorite among my friends at college. 

One summer day in 2010, I introduced the granola at the Delmar Farmers Market near my home in upstate New York. It was purely on a whim, but it ended up catching on. Before I knew it, I had a customer base that expected me to continue baking for them. I was baking at night, using the kitchen at a local cafe where I was the manager during the day. At the same time, I was developing another web-based start-up company. 

The farmers market customers demanded more granola with every passing week, and some began to ask the obvious question, "why don't you sell this anywhere else?" 

It was an interesting notion, though I had no ambitions of baking granola for a living. Nevertheless, I decided to spend an afternoon trying my hand at wholesaling to local stores. By the end of that day, my granola was available on shelves at five local retailers. 

Turning a hobby into a business

Two months later I decided to drop everything else I was doing and pursue the granola idea. I incorporated, though I still didn't know what to call the company. The name Gatherer's had yet to be thought up. 

At that point, I had one flavor built around peanut butter, almonds and maple syrup that I had jokingly named Chipmunk's Choice. The name was an attempt to poke fun at the way big cereal companies used animal mascots to attract the attention of children. The granola was only available in glass jars with homemade labels of a chipmunk eating an almond. There was a lot to do before anyone would confuse what I was doing with a brand. 

By the New Year, things were different. Squirrel Bait had been invented and we had an incredible graphic designer developing logos. Gatherer's Gourmet Granola became the brand with a unifying theme of fuzzy forest animals preparing for winter. 

Gatherer's grows up