Tenacity, loyalty prove to be right mix for granola maker

Becky Burns started selling her handmade granola in zip-top bags at Kauai Christmas fairs in 1986.

A customer who bought and enjoyed it happened to be Terry Sullivan, owner of Kilauea Farmers Market. Sullivan told Burns she would buy the granola for her store if she could find a commercial kitchen in which to produce it. She did.

At the start, Burns didn’t have a business plan and didn’t take out a loan. She would use money from one week’s granola sales and spend it on ingredients for her next batch, she said.

She started out making 10 pounds a week. By the second month she produced 15 pounds a week, and so on, and expanded the line from her original granola to additional flavors and corollary products.

Now with nine employees and minimal automation, Anahola Granola makes four tons of hand-mixed granola each week and 2,000 to 3,000 MacaMania bars. It is now based in Hanapepe.

In addition to the original granola, the company offers tropical and mango ginger flavors.

Tropical has macadamia nuts and dried chunks of unsweetened pineapple and papaya, while mango ginger has chunks of dried mango and crystallized ginger but no nuts.

The granolas come in 4-ounce bags, 4-ounce bowls, 12-ounce bags and 24-ounce bags, and prices and selection vary by retailer.

Burns’ 1.4-ounce, 190-calorie MacaMania granola bars are available in original, tropical, mango ginger and chocolate chip flavors. The bars’ base is granola, but they also incorporate crisped brown rice cereal, butter, brown sugar, some honey and macadamia nuts.

Trail mix also incorporates granola, dried coconut, raisins, cranberries, pineapple and papaya chunks and whole almonds.

She has never changed her recipe, because she knows her customers like it the way it is, though she did switch to a canola oil certified as non-GMO.

"I’ve been a health nut all my life, and I became concerned about the GMOissue,"she said.

Anahola Granola was one of the many businesses devastated during Hurricane Iniki in 1992 but which tenaciously bounced back.

She credits entrepreneurial stubbornness and perseverance, as well as gratitude to her customers.

Without electricity and no way to make product, she donned a business suit and went traveling to hotels where she met with executive chefs that "wanted Anahola Granola."

The outfit "became my lucky suit," and the chefs have become her friends, she said.

Once the power came back on and production resumed, her product started getting shipped to hotels around Hawaii, and that client list has grown.

In addition to hotel kitchens serving the granola, the 4-ounce bowls and other items are popular in hotel sundry stores and gift shops, she said.

In the early days she would pack up her young daughter and schlep product to prospective retailers around Kauai, but now with distributors on all islands, Anahola Granola products are in more than 100 stores around Hawaii.

It’s still a treat for her to meet customers at events such as the Made in Hawaii Festival, she said. They tell her the ways they enjoy her granola, from eating it out of the bag, with milk or yogurt or as an ice cream topping. People also eat it from a halved papaya or use the granola to make pie crusts, she said.

Customers who buy Anahola Granola from Costco, which carries 24-ounce bags of the original flavor, often are surprised to see the additional flavors and other products she brings to Made in Hawaii, she said.

Burns divides her time between Kauai and Washington state, where she grew up.

Her daughter Malia, who Burns raised singlehandedly on Kauai, grew up alongside the business, "which was like a sibling,"Burns said.

"It was right there with her every step of the way, so she’s very involved in packaging, marketing and social media," despite being thousands of miles away working as a dean of students at a Chicago charter school.

Burns in recent years married Stewart Hiester, whose banking background is invaluable to her business, she said.

While production has increased to four tons a week from 10 pounds, and "it sounds like a lot of granola, I never wanted to grow the company so big that I didn’t have my eyes on everything," she said. "I feel accountable for this. It’s a living thing for me."

"Buy Local" runs on Aloha Fridays. Reach Erika Engle at 529-4303, erika@staradvertiser.com or on Twitter as @erikaengle.