Delicious, healthy fuel to keep you energized all winter
Keeping it in the family: Coral Cutting, Liv Eck, and Peter and Virginia Vogel oversee all aspects of their delicious enterprise. Photo courtesy Back Roads Granola.
Study a handful of Back Roads Granola, and you realize you’re in for a real sensory experience. First off, you see organic, whole ingredients: lightly toasted coconut shards, large nuts, chunks of spicy crystallized ginger, pumpkin and sunflower seeds, plump cranberries, hearty rolled oats.
But it’s also what’s not there: no soy, no salt, no refined sugar or bad oils, and those oats are glyphosate-free.
And then you taste: that coconut and ginger add a touch of sweetness; the nuts and seeds are crunchy yet light, the cranberries tender. Most styles are baked with pure Vermont maple syrup, and if chocolate is your thing, some varieties contain dark chocolate chips.
A FAMILY AFFAIR
When Peter Vogel started making his special granola 50 years ago, he knew that the highestquality ingredients would yield the best-tasting granola. He made batches in his home kitchen for family and friends and, later, for guests at the bed and breakfast he and his wife, Virginia, ran on Spirit Hill Farm in Halifax, near the southern border of Vermont. Guests started asking to take bags of the granola home with them, thus inspiring a successful business that launched in 2010. Peter and Virginia operate Back Roads Granola with their two daughters, Coral Cutting and Liv Eck, who joined the enterprise in 2013 and 2017.
“Dad never dreamed he’d be running a granola company when he first started making it in the 1970s,” his daughter Liv recounts. “He would make bins of granola, and he and our mom would drive it down to Mexico and share or barter it on the beach! They’ve come a long way since then, and they’re so proud of how the company has evolved.” Back Roads is Certified Women-Owned—“plus Dad,” she says with a smile.
Coral shares her perspective. “Running Back Roads feels like the best full circle moment of my life. I brought my business degree and more than 15 years of marketing work in Boston back home to Vermont, and it has been a gift to use those skills to grow something rooted in my own community. What started as a family business has become a way to support our families, help our parents build a secure future, and create steady, meaningful work for an amazing group of employees.”
The family moved production in 2013 from their Halifax farm to a large commercial bakery facility located in Brattleboro’s Cotton Mill. “Dad is in charge of recipe development and operations; Mom and I focus on sales and marketing; and Coral’s the numbers person,” Liv explains. “We have a fantastic team of about 12 employees who are like family to us.”
Katie McAllister oversees procurement of ethically sourced ingredients from trusted, sustainable farms, a big responsibility considering Back Roads sources from around the globe. She rattles off the provenance of key elements: “Oats and cranberries come from the United States and Canada. Almonds, pecans, raisins, sunflower oil, and maple syrup are from the United States. Coconut from Sri Lanka and the Philippines; ginger from Fiji; chia seeds from Paraguay; quinoa from Bolivia; pumpkin seeds from China; cashews from Guatemala; and Brazil nuts from, well, Brazil. And dark chocolate chips are imported from Italy.”
The production team bakes daily to ensure each batch is fresh. “We bake about 10,000 pounds a week on average,” Liv says. (That’s five tons!) “People are paying good money for this beautiful granola so we want it to taste as fresh as when it came out of our ovens.” Granola is baked, cooled, dried, tumbled, and packaged on the same day it’s made. Orders are shipped within 24 hours.
13 FLAVORS, ALL GLUTEN-FREE
Back Roads transitioned their entire line to gluten-free in 2016, the same year they introduced their popular paleo/grain-free versions. The company now makes 13 flavors, headed by top-selling Original, Coconut Crunch, Dark Chocolate Pecan, and unsweetened Ancient Grains.
Paleo versions include Maple Pecan, Coconut Ginger, Maple Spice, and Almond Crunch, which contains no sweetener or fruit. They’ve also introduced a basics line of Cinnamon Toasted Granola and Maple Toasted Granola that contain oats, maple, oil, and cinnamon. “Sometimes people want just the basics, with no fruit or nuts, so these are good entry-level products we can offer at a lower price,” Liv explains.
Back Roads Granola is easy to find in co-ops across the country as well as in some specialty food shops, general stores, and farm stands. They’re also in many Whole Foods Markets around New England. “Bulk sales in co-ops is still a major focus of our company,” Liv adds. “That’s a great way for people to get introduced to our products.” You can order granola directly from the Back Roads website and choose from several sizes: 10 ounce (single bags or boxes of 6 or 12) or 2.45-pound family-size bags.
Great things happen on the back roads of Vermont, as the Vogels like to say. And now we can fuel those adventures with healthy, organic, crunchy granola made with love by a dedicated family and team in Brattleboro!
