Grandbar Snacks are so excited to be able to bring you our best ever cakes. In 2017 my father lost his appetite in his eighties. His preference was suddenly for sweet things so I started experimenting in my own kitchen to come up with something that would tempt him back – but also meet some of his nutritional needs. After lots of research and many, many trials Grandbars were born. Micky had been a scientist and the whole process, the nutrition research and experimental nature of the early days intrigued him. He became involved in the tastings (thankfully) and his strength and health improved.
Over the next few years, I hired a church hall one Sunday a month and batch made my cake bars that were made with oats, almond butter, honey, crushed nuts and seeds and dried fruit, (the ingredients that pretty much still make up the cakes today!) I then sold them at small fetes…..marvelling when I sold £80 worth!
Sadly my father passed away from a sudden heart attack, but thanks to his legacy I carried on. In 2021 the manufacturing journey continued. With no food industry background I tracked down a factory that would make small batches on my behalf and a laboratory that would conduct all the necessary tests and substantiate any claims I made. These two firms gave incredible support and put me in touch with a designer and packaging company. What a steep learning curve!
At this point Grandbars were being sold online and at bigger fairs like food festivals and fairs. In 2021 and 2022 I came second in a few awards including Great British Food Awards, Women’s Business Club Founder of the Year, So Glos’s New Business and their Entrepreneur of 2022. In 2023 I won Gloucestershire Foodie Start Up of the Year.
This is when the business changed and took off. Thanks to an old friend (and former Sales Exec at Kraft) who spread the word about what I was doing to his ‘connections’, I gained an incredibly experienced Board of Directors. The ‘I’ became a ‘we’ and we found a new, wonderful, artisan bakery with capacity to scale up with us. We spent 2024 creating a perfect, additive free and gluten free product with them; redesigning the packaging to make it more environmentally friendly with a packaging firm and getting scientists to complete nutrition and real-time shelf life testing.
March 2025 heralds the arrival of Grandbars on a bigger scale than ever before. We still love selling online to the general public, but as we launch, we are already talking to care homes, care agencies and suppliers!
It’s great to be back….!
