Owner of small business It's Nola (formerly Brooklyn Granola) discusses getting her first barcode, launching her business and provides advice for others starting their own business. ow.ly/7f3C30qiqlF
I’m Margaret Barrow and I’m the owner of Brooklyn Granola. I’m the only vegan in the family and I wanted to create a snack for my family initially. I wanted to make something that was different. So I decided to dig in to my creative, child-self. I wanted to make sure I was doing this naturally, and I wanted to be very conscientious about the people in my family and their dietary challenges. I wanted to create unique flavors. So I started thinking about cranberry, and coconut, and when I put those two together, the smell that came out of the oven, I just knew that this was it. When I first made this ball, it was pretty big! And then I started making them small and smaller. I handed them out and had people taste them. From there I asked my students and they would say to me, “these are good.” One of my students came to me and said, “Do you think maybe you should start a business?” and I said “Nope.” Some of my mentees said, “We’re going to do surveys.” and they came and dumped all these surveys on my desk and said, “look, people like them,” And I said, okay let me seriously think about any I would do it. So my passion is mentoring. Is there any way for me to take some of that money and donate it to support community college mentoring programs. If I can do that, then I’ll do this. As I looked through all of this information, I realized I don’t know anything about food. What do I need in terms of packaging? These are serious things that I hadn’t thought about. I was thinking about ingredients and the recipe. I started reading more and all of a sudden I see GS1 pop up all over the place, and i said what is GS1? Without it I wouldn’t have understood how to get my product from a commercial kitchen where we make it into a store. When I first saw my product, it was beautiful, but one of the most important things to me, wasn’t just the brand. It was turning that package around and on the back seeing the barcode. It kind of is like a gateway, right? It gives you entry into these stores that you would not have any access to. Having that code on it made it legitimate. The best advice I can give anyone who is going into business, is to sit down and think about why. You need to know why you’re starting a business. If it’s just to make money, you’re going to fail. The dream for Brooklyn granola is to make it a viable company. I really want us to be a competitive vegan snack company. Being a woman of color, there aren’t many of us in the industry and I want to be one of the role models. When they think about Brooklyn Granola, they will understand that they’re eating something from people who care about what they put into their bodies. That to me is a success.
21 авг 2024
