BETHLEHEM, Pa. – You’ve probably seen the Granola Factory in your local supermarket. The company is truly made right here in Bethlehem.
“It started in my parents’ bed and breakfast – I grew up there. My mother, Suzanne, made granola for guests since 1988,” said Calvin Virgilio, the company’s director of operations.
His parents began packing it for stores in 2005 and running a bakery. Eventually the company shifted to wholesale exclusively in 2011.
And they do a lot more than granola these days, although it’s still their best seller.
“The original honey pecan is like – you could eat it every day for the rest of your life. It’s my mom’s original recipe,” Virgilio said.
Now, you can find them in stores like Wegmans and Giant – not just here in the area, but all over.
“We’re – 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’re working with the Florida and south regions of Whole Foods,” Virgilio said.
“We really are becoming a bigger brand, which is cool, so people know us,” said Marketing Manager Ellie Cubbison.
Not bad for a team of only 15 full time-people doing most of the work by hand.
“Here we’re very team oriented, we all work together. We all get the job done together,” said Operations Manager Jordan Manzo.
“You can’t 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’t have the people that are connected to doing it, it falls apart,” Virgilio said.
That mentality appears to be working.
“You grow where you can and, fortunately, we’ve been able to grow in downtown Bethlehem,” Virgilio said.
