Tucker&Co. Granola

Did you know your favorite Date Lady products are found in delicious snacks all across the US? That's right! Our date products are used to create many different kinds of healthy and delicious goodies! We strongly believe living a healthy lifestyle doesn't have to taste bland and unexciting. Dates offer many nutritional benefits and can be used to enhance flavor in baking, adding to your coffee and much more. Our customers are proof of that with their ingenuity and creativity when developing new recipes! We recently chatted with Heidi from Tucker&Co Granola to learn more about how they use date syrup to make some of their amazon granola!

We are located in Dillsburg, Pennsylvania. My small hometown, where my husband and I chose to stay and raise our kids. You can buy our granola on our website, www.tuckercogranola.com, and at our local retail partners in south central Pennsylvania. 

Before starting Tucker&Co. Bakery, of which Tucker&Co. Granola is just one part of, I worked as store manager for a local frozen yogurt shop, and before that I was a restaurant server, event venue coordinator, and catering crew member. Since the end of high school I knew I wanted to own my own company someday, though I don't think I knew what exactly it would be at that point. My own personal health journey is what specifically inspired me to launch Tucker&Co. Granola and create our unique paleo line of granola. I needed to be on a grain-free, dairy-free, starch-free, and refined-sugar-free nutrition plan for a few years and I found it hard to find delicious and filling snacks that met all these requirements. So I started testing and created our Tucker&Co. paleo granola, the Adventure Granola is the first flavor I ever came up with.

We are still making all our granola in small batches by hand. The oat granola is stirred up in large bowls and toasted to perfection. The paleo granola involves a food processor, some flattening and leveling out by hand, a longer slower oven time, and then gets broken up into snack-able chunks before being bagged.

To develop the flavors I thought about some classic flavor combinations, then considered the different types of ingredients I could source. Of the paleo granola varieties, Adventure is my favorite! It's the original flavor I developed and is made with dried apples from an orchard very local to our bakery. Of the oat granola varieties, I actually prefer the Nuts & Seed one the most I think! It was created due to a special request from my mother-in-law. She wanted one that didn't have any dried fruit in it, so that she could add her own fresh fruit, and I think I like it best this way too!

I believe that the kind of ingredients I choose to use really does matter. I like to use "whole foods" ingredients, that contain as little preservatives as possible. I never use any ingredients containing anything artificial. Also when possible I like to source my ingredients as local to our bakery as I can. I look to source from companies who seem to share the same values as me, and are being good stewards of their people and our planet. 

I first discovered Date Lady on Amazon and then quickly moved to start working with the company directly. 

I've got big dreams and audacious goals for Tucker&Co. I want to create a high demand for our granola so I can scale our impact on my hometown and region. Sourcing more ingredients grown locally and sustainably, employing more people, and spending our profits to create even more opportunities for our community and solve problems I care deeply about. 

Being a small business owner can often be a lot of hard work for very little reward (for years) but it is encouraging to see other small businesses out there trying to make a difference and serve their customers well. It gives me hope to keep pushing ahead even when it gets hard and weird out there in the world because I know what we are building with Tucker&Co. can make a positive impact in the lives of our customers and neighbors. Let's move mountains. Let's make waves. 

Thank you for taking the time for an interview, Heidi! We wish you and your company great success!