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].
