Sweet Babu's: Granola with Heart!
by Matt Mahoney
How can shoppers distinguish which foods are best for themselves and their families? They might check the ingredients list, or look for certain labels like fair trade or USDA organic. They could also ask themselves about the company behind the label: Where are they from? What are their practices? Understanding how something is made, what it is made with, and where it comes from are all good standards for determining whether a food is right for you. For us, we believe these measures are best defined through authenticity, simplicity, and locality. Sweet Babu’s local granola boldly checks all three of those boxes with their super tasty, small-batch-baked granola. It’s easy to see why they are growing so popular so quickly throughout the valley and beyond!
We love Sweet Babu’s because it is real food made with heart by real people with heart. The small group of bakers responsible for making this delicious granola each day express joy and passion at every step, from mixing and baking to breaking up the end result into its famous “chunks,” a quality getting some serious hype among co-op shoppers and for good reason! Sweet Babu’s chunkiness gives their granola a satisfying crunch and easy snackability. You can just as easily enjoy it right out of the bag as you would in your favorite meal or baked treat, or crumbled atop a salad or your favorite roasted vegetables! It also comes in a great variety of flavors like oatmeal raisin, maple pecan, cocoa crunch and more, as well as unique rotating seasonal flavors. Fun!
Sweet Babu’s is also rooted in owner Chelsea Beaudry’s Polish heritage and family traditions. She first learned to bake using her grandmother’s recipes, and even named the business as a tribute to her for their shared love of baking! We spoke to Chelsea at length about the positive impact Sweet Babu’s has had on the regional food system, and why their granola has become so beloved among our local communities. She shared her thoughts on sourcing locally, why the baking process matters, and where her granola goes from here!
Click play above to watch the Sweet Babu's bakery tour + interview!
Click the logo above to visit Sweet Babu's on their website!
(Image: Facebook/Sweet Babu's)
How did you get interested in baking, and how did it lead to starting your own business?
CB: I started teaching myself how to bake when I was around 19-years-old. My gramma got too old and couldn’t bake anymore for the family, so I took over the recipes. I really enjoyed it, so it evolved from there! I started baking for friends and neighbors, etc.
When I got pregnant with my son, I started really paying attention to what I was putting into my body. I wanted to make more things homemade, and granola happened to be one of them. I found it was one of those great things you could give as gifts—teacher gifts, holiday gifts, family gifts—so I used to put it in the mason jars to give away. The response was crazy! Everyone started asking where they could buy it, so I tweaked the recipe for about 10 years. Once my kids went to school, after the pandemic, I decided to do an event and see what would happen, and it sold!
(Image: Facebook/Sweet Babu's)
Wow, that's dedication! What was it like making it into the granola we know and love today?
CB: I started with the base recipe and grew from there until it was fully my own. I would add a little of this, a little of that… I started using things like brown rice crisps, and local ingredients like honey. It took a good bit, but eventually I got to a place where I thought, “Yeah! I can sell that!”
You mentioned local honey. Why is sourcing so important for your business?
CB: We love sourcing locally because it’s way more delicious. The local maple syrup and the local honey around here is top notch. But our main focus is really supporting local farmers. If we can’t get something locally, then we also like to support small, independent farmers across the United States. So, a majority of our ingredients come from small farms.
Can you tell us about some of the different granolas you have?
CB: We offer seven set flavors: apple crisp, cocoa crunch, cherry pie, honey nut, maple pecan, oatmeal raisin, toasted vanilla. Toasted vanilla is nut-free and vegan, so a lot of the cafés in the area pick it up. Schools, as well; we’re in Amherst College, which is really cool. We also rotate a seasonal one in. Right now, we have banana bread. For that, we mash up real organic banana and mash it in with the maple syrup. It’s really delicious.
What are some of the qualities that make your granola so extraordinary?
CB: To me, it’s just the most special granola since these are my recipes and they’ve become something people actually want to buy! Besides using local and farm-sourced ingredients, we use a unique baking process that gives you these really large golden chunks in the granola, which people love. You’re able to eat it as a snack or as breakfast, so it’s really nice and versatile. Another special thing about it is that moms love it, and kids love it too—they will beg for it!
I actually did some market research recently and asked people, “why our granola?” I’m trying to nail down our backstory and our tag line; that’s really important to me, and it’s also the hardest thing for me. Everyone said “the taste—the taste!” But it had me asking, “why the taste?” So a lot of it was the ingredients, local sourcing; the fact it’s gluten-free was huge for a lot of people. You do just have to taste it!
(Image: Facebook/Sweet Babu's)
What are some reasons for keeping your ingredients real and simple?
CB: To me, good recipes don’t need a lot in them. I think the most delicious recipes are just a handful of ingredients, and that’s what we’ve been able to do here. I’m the person in the grocery store who reads all the packages, so it means a lot to me that our customers care about that as well. On our package, you are going to recognize every single ingredient. The fewer the better, you know? Just having honey, oats, almonds, cinnamon, vanilla, a little bit of sea salt—you can taste all of the ingredients in our granolas.
How does local sourcing and supporting small farms build communities?
We value building communities in this way by paying farmers and supporting them with good incomes. That helps. I do think it also creates a community as far as our brand goes with our customers too, since they also care about the places around us and don’t want to see our farms disappear. So, that’s what we’re doing: we’re trying to keep them around. And so far, it seems like a lot of people appreciate that.
Our area is very special in Western Massachusetts where we all really focus on small farms, but I think it travels across the country as well; especially in this time we’re living in where farms are disappearing. We don’t want that. We all want a food system we can depend on. With everything going on with shipping things into the country, we don’t have to worry about that—we know our oats are going to keep coming from Colorado, and we know our honey is going to keep coming from Shelburne Falls, and we know our maple syrup is going to keep coming from Hadley. It’s dependable and sustainable!
(Image: Facebook/Sweet Babu's)
How do local businesses like Sweet Babu's contribute to a more sustainable food system?
CB: For us, to help build a better food system that’s more sustainable, we’re going to keep sourcing our ingredients where we do even though right now it’s getting more expensive. We’re facing challenges every day. Every time we order something is more expensive. I wanted our granola to have a purpose beyond just making money, and a big part of that is talking to those farmers we work with, letting them know how much we love their product, and sending them some of our granola with their product so they can try it and know where their hard work is going.
What's next for Sweet Babu's? Any notable plans for the future?
CB: We are just growing like crazy! We just had our first best quarter of the year ever. Our sales are more than doubling every single year. This year, we’re skyrocketing. We just signed on with a new distributor who will take us from Maine to Maryland and over to Ohio, which will be our biggest reach yet. We currently work with Marty’s Local, who we love. They do great things for us. We think of them like family, and that’s how I try to run my business too.
We just want to keep growing and selling and doing what we do. I’m going to stick to the ingredients we use, keep growing our team—we have the most amazing team! We’re just organically growing. People ask how we do it, but I don’t have a pitch. I’m just a real person and it’s working for us day-by-day.
Stop by either River Valley Co-op store and pick up one of Sweet Babu's delicious gluten-free chunky local granolas today!