Julie Mountain and Dana Noorily met at a kid’s birthday party 15 years ago. Now their concept is eight units strong with more growth on the horizon.
When Julie Mountain and Dana Noorily first met at a kid’s birthday party in 2010, starting a restaurant chain — or really, any business — was hardly in the cards. Each had left jobs in New York City to move to Westport, Conn., with their young families so they could live the suburban life.
But a chance encounter at that birthday party — their daughters happened to sit next to each other — led to a friendship, a friendship that led to starting a homemade granola business. And in 2013, the homemade granola business evolved into a fully fledged restaurant concept: The Granola Bar, a modern diner concept serving breakfast and lunch.
Today, The Granola Bar operates eight locations across Connecticut and New York, and the cofounders recently hired Richard Zoob — a veteran executive of brands like Sweetgreen, Black Tap, and Dinosaur BBQ — to serve as CEO and oversee additional growth.
Mountain and Noorily joined the latest episode of Take-Away with Sam Oches to share the lessons they’ve learned on their entrepreneurial journey and how they’ve fallen forward into a business that has financial partners and a new CEO who are helping to steer its slow-but-steady growth.
In this conversation, you’ll learn more about why:
The business you start is not always the business you will grow
Meet the hole in the market you’re serving, not what’s trending nationally
If you don’t lean on social media early on, then it’s just icing on the cake as you grow
With strategic hires, you can know what you don’t know
Sometimes real estate can dictate your entrepreneurial drive
It’s OK if your end goal is to stay small and keep it all
Contact Sam Oches at [email protected].
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