We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Jamie Kim. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Jamie below.
Jamie, appreciate you joining us today. Crazy stuff happening is almost as certain as death and taxes – it’s technically “unexpected” but something unexpected happening is to be expected and so can you share a crazy story with our readers
Yes! One of the biggest challenges in starting a food business is figuring out the manufacturing component. I went from making every single bag of granola myself, to scaling up production with a copacker. I quickly learned that there weren’t a lot of local copackers that were willing to make the granola in the way that I wanted—we use a lot of specialty ingredients and require a small batch, proprietary process that makes our granola unique.
In the middle of the pandemic in 2020, my first copacker hadn’t worked out, so I searched for a second one. After 2 months working together, I got a call from the owner telling me that he had just sold the business. Turns out, I had until the end of the month to move out all my stuff, with no promise that they could fulfill my customer orders of 1000+ lbs of granola.
My copacker said I could come in and use their facility, so with no time to lose, I made the 2-hour drive each day to whip up as much granola as possible. And because their employees stopped showing up to work, I even asked my mom to come help!
Over the next 6 months, I hired some help and made granola on the weekends at another granola company’s facility in Brooklyn. Between self-manufacturing, sourcing, managing a team, sales, finance, and marketing, you can probably imagine how busy that time was in the business. But it was also a great lesson that demonstrated the importance of persistence and grit, and that it’s okay to take a step back to move forward.
Today, I’m extremely grateful to work with the copacker that I have today. They do an incredible job making the product, and our 3 years of partnership have unlocked so many opportunities within the business!
Jamie, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
Absolutely! I got into the food industry when I was 16, working for a 3 Michelin star restaurant during my summers. I was so inspired by the hospitality and culinary creativity over there that I began cooking for my friends and family at home – but the one thing they kept asking for was my homemade granola, our favorite snack.
I ended up going to Cornell’s Hotel School to continue working in the restaurant industry, but once I was there, I realized a new opportunity: there weren’t any quality granola options that I wanted to buy in the grocery store.
So, I began baking granola out of my dorm kitchen, sourcing ingredients from nearby farmers and producers. My classmates loved it, and word spread. Today, we’re sold online and in major retailers like Whole Foods, FreshDirect, MOM’s, and Central Market. Community has always been at the heart of what we do, so we collaborate with local producers to introduce new and interesting flavors on our online store every season. One of our staple products, Chai Streusel with Honey, is made with upcycled chai spices from a local tea company, Dona.
At Jamie’s Farm, our mission is to redefine granola by crafting exceptional, flavorful blends that elevate the breakfast experience. We’re the first and only granola brand to bake with ghee, a clarified butter that’s nutritious and delicious. Our products are proudly Certified Plastic Neutral and made with mostly organic ingredients. To date, we’ve won 2 sofi Awards from the Specialty Food Association and were a Good Foods Awards Finalist.
Alright – let’s talk about marketing or sales – do you have any fun stories about a risk you’ve taken or something else exciting on the sales and marketing side?
When COVID hit in 2020 and we were all stuck in quarantine, I wanted to do something for our community. I started a flavor campaign where I asked customers and followers to submit their dream granola flavor and the inspiration/story behind it. We created a flavor bracket and hosted polls on our Instagram stories for people to vote. Each night, we’d announce the flavors that would make it to the next round!
We had such great community involvement and wildly inventive flavors: hot honey, raspberry chili, dill pickle, brown butter banana bread, sun-dried tomato, coconut chai & rose hip… in the end, Horchata took first prize (a blend of our buttery toasted oats, puffed rice, coconut caramel, and cinnamon)!
We created custom packaging, sharing the winner’s story and inspiration behind the flavor, and donated the flavor’s proceeds to medical workers who were on the frontlines of COVID. The response was very positive, and it felt very fulfilling to be able to give back to our community.
Can you talk to us about how your side-hustle turned into something more.
I had a genuine love for sharing granola with friends and classmates, so when they told me that I should sell it, it took me by surprise. I never really considered myself an “entrepreneur”, but more of an artist.
I started very organically selling granola across campus through pop-up events on Facebook. Slowly, I graduated to local markets and cafes. Back in 2017, there weren’t that many resources on the CPG industry on the internet, so I had to ask around. Through my entrepreneurship classes at Cornell, to an alum getting me a badge to Expo West (a natural products tradeshow), I grew my network and asked for tons of advice as a college student.
Before my senior year of college, I won a grant and a rotational internship at Vosges Haut-Chocolat, a luxury chocolate company in Chicago. I received mentorship from one of the most brilliant and creative people I know, Katrina Markoff. She taught me a lot about the industry and gave me the confidence to take my college passion project to a full-time job. While my classmates were getting recruited to full-time jobs that fall, I landed my first store with Whole Foods, my dream account!
Turning my side-hustle into something more was scary—but it was truly the support of the people that were around me that allowed it to become a reality.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.jamies-farm.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jamiesfarmnewyork/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jamiesfarmnewyork/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/jamiesfarmnewyork/
Image Credits
Jamie Kim