Submitted by June Eding on | 0 Comments
The road to success has been an incredible adventure for the team at Nutty Steph’s, from (delicious) accidents in the kitchen to buying a chocolate factory! Fate must have a sweet tooth for the amazing granola sweetened with Vermont maple syrup and chocolate deliciousness created by founder Jaquelyn Rieke, an entrepreneur since the age of seven. Inspired to launch Nutty Steph’s in the heart of Vermont’s green mountains by fresh, sweet maple syrup there, her customers soon grew from local Vermonters to fans around the country, making her more popular than many national brands, and it’s been “full-tilt boogie” busy for her and her team ever since. There’s no story sweeter than one with twists and turns, not to mention Magic Chunks (granola/chocolate delights), a Pink Easter bunny, Candied Dark Chocolate Ginger, and a Pretzel Piece Milk Chocolate Bar along the way!
What inspired you to get started?
When I moved to Vermont in 2003 and had such ready access to fresh maple syrup, I was inspired to build a business around this delicious granola recipe I knew of, which featured maple syrup as the only sweetener. The maple syrup seemed to offer the granola a certain perfect crunch with a superior taste that was at once not too sweet. I was new to Vermont - I took to the road with my product very quickly and relished the process of driving in and out of every gorgeous billboard-less road of the green mountains, scouring every town and person for who wanted to eat my granola, and this was a wonderful platform in my early 20's for building community, and beginning to carve out my own road in the world.
What was your background? Was it in what you are doing now?
I’ve been an entrepreneur since about the age of seven, devising and delivering businesses to my community ever since. I of course ran 
lemonade stands, and then created goods for church craft shows, (alongside only octogenarian woman vendors!) Later I got involved in a wholesale jewelry endeavor in middle school with local stores, wreath making and chocolate chip cookie delivery, summer childcare services leading into two-week summer camps by mid-high school, and then a fresh bread business to pay my rent in college, and…so on! My educational background is in mathematics, and as I round off my tenth year of operating Nutty Steph's, I see that math is perhaps the unifying factor between my enterprising seven year-old self, and the nine-year-old business. As a child entrepreneur I started learning to track income and expenses on early computer spreadsheet programs. Now as I develop into my womanhood and the increasingly community-minded person that I am becoming, the mathematics of what the business is comprised of and what becomes of it, including who uses their time in what ways, are the problems I work on to figure out how it all adds up and contributes to a sacred earth and humanity.
What challenge have you had to face that led to a big growth for your company?
For our first four years in business, I sold only one product in one flavor, the original Vermont Granola with almonds, walnuts, hazelnuts and sweetened with maple syrup. One day, an accident of kitchen conditions led me to finally invite a new product into our line, which was the chocolate covered granola Magic Chunks. We developed a marketing plan in summer of 2007 for the holiday season, including a website overhaul, a large national mailing and new product packaging---all for the effort of sharing this fantastic new taste of the Magic Chunks. We were marketing and selling the chunks, but a man named Allan Sirotkin was making them to our 
specifications, using our granola, in his chocolate factory, Green River Chocolates. In November of that year, chemotherapy treatments had debilitated Allan to the extent that he could not produce our Magic Chunks, and it was suddenly, at the critical moment, all at a Magic Chunks standstill. I faced the challenge of gathering, begging, pleading and creating with the people in my inner circle, and our collective resources, to make it possible for us to very quickly support Allan's healing---and our newfound Magic Chunk craze---by purchasing his chocolate factory. We launched very quickly in business No. 2, so to speak, just as the original granola business was about to near financial security, and essentially began the process of growth all over again...my second child, I would say.
What do you have going on in your business right now that you're excited about?
We’ve made the commitment to be entirely GMO-free by the end of this year, as well as convert from using our single source Ecuadorian chocolate in just some of our bars, to *all* of our chocolate bars. We are researching all of our ingredient sources to be sure they are in fact free of GMOs, and replacing anything that may be questionable.
Where would you love to see your business in 5 years?
Our continuing mission is to nurture our customers so emphatically that their life is significantly improved by their relationship with our food and company. We would like to primarily sell directly to consumers in our shop and website, limiting middle-man distribution and stores from our growth planning, so as to never compromise our deliciously high cost of ingredients. We'd like to build our sales to 1 million/year and cap it there, allowing us to generate surplus resources for the continuation of our community involvement and the personal quality of the lives on our team.
