Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Patricia Greer. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Patricia, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. What’s the backstory behind how you came up with the idea for your business?

I came from a family who lived through the Great Depression and WWII. We found a use for everything, bought things on sale, sewed, preserved foods, and cooked our meals. That being said, The Industrial Revolution happened during that period with the introduction of frozen dinners and the beginnings of fast fashion sending both parents into the workforce.

I loved being in the kitchen with my grandmother and aunts in East Texas and watching my dad create strange and wonderful bites and sauces in our kitchen. With both of my parents working when I got home from school, I would create different treats in the kitchen for my afternoon snack…I typically got in a bit of trouble for that.

Fast forward a number of decades to the 1990’s. A personal health challenge eventually took me to a plant-based raw food diet. My oldest daughter was pregnant with her first child and had a fabulous midwife who encouraged organic, wholefoods. My daughter also became involved with Permaculture. We decided to start a co-op on her front porch with a few of our friends so we could get not organic, local produce but also staples year-round like apples and onions. Those friends told their friends and so on and so on…the co-op, Central City Co-op still exists today. During that front porch time, we would have extra produce to donate a wonderful organization in Houston who would distribute to folks who had difficulty leaving their homes. One day, someone told me just “throw the greens in the dumpster because there were too many and people did not know what to do with them. I did not put them in the dumpster, I took them back to my home kitchen, looked at them and decided they needed to be krackers. That was the beginning of yaya’s Raw RAH and Pat Greer’s Kitchen. A lot of greens means a lot of krackers, too many for me and family to consume, so I packaged them in cellophane bags and sold them on the front porch. Several years and co-op moves later, someone bought one of the packages of krackers as a gift for her friend. The friend, Charlotte contacted me and asked if I wanted to take it to the next level. I said, sure with absolutely no clue what that meant.

We purchased an old house that was formerly a crack house in the Montrose area of Houston, converted the downstairs into a commercial kitchen with our own funds (that took almost a year and Charlotte weeping in an elevator to who turned out to be the director of permits in Houston), and it became the Kracker House. We sold wholesale to stores on the West Coast and eventually to Whole Foods in Texas. I didn’t really think about much the business of the business, I loved creating food with abundance of produce grown within 100 miles of Houston for almost 12 months out of the year. I also knew how I felt being on a plant-based/vegan diet and wanted everyone to experience vegan food that tasted great and had lots of nutrition, including our number 1 ingredient, love.

Patricia, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston has a division called The Place of Wellness. They have done a number of research projects including the effect of meditation and organic foods for folks with various forms of cancer. I taught classes on food prep there and catered events to spread awareness.

I also have taught classes for raw and cooked vegan food at our kitchen and in the community at wellness events, schools, and farms. Promoting local food is a main focus of everything we do.

We took care of all meals for the Houston Dynamo Soccer Team for 3 years. While their diet was not all plant-based, their consumption of vegetables and high quality animal proteins increased significantly.

Our large catered events were done with service ware (plates, cups, eating utensils) all came from thrift stores or donations. We used cloth napkins and tablecloths. 90 to 95% of the food was made from ingredients from within 200 miles of Houston.

Can you talk to us about manufacturing? How’d you figure it all out? We’d love to hear the story.

I spoke in the beginning of the interview about making krackers. A health challenge eventually took me to a raw, vegan diet in 1998. Naturally , this meant consuming LOTS of fruits and vegetables. I missed having salty chips and crackers so I started making flax seed crackers out of extra juice pulp. nuts, seeds, herbs’; basically what I had available on the counter and in the fridge. Some were a hit and some quickly found their way into the compost. I learned by trial and error and adapting recipes I had seen in newspapers and magazines. Researching raw food diets brought a wealth of information from folks who had embarked on a raw food journey long before me.

Meeting my business partner through a co-op customer who purchased a package of krackers for her friend, Charlotte took making a few krackers a week in a small 9-tray dehydrator to a larger scale wholesale operation. Charlotte is a real estate broker and as we looked for a kitchen to rent to make the krackers, she wisely thought purchasing a house would be less expensive in the long run than paying rent. We purchased an old two-story house in the Montrose area of Houston and after a long year of rehab, converted the downstairs into a commercial kitchen. A kitchen with no ovens or stoves, just dehydrators.

We sold our first four Kracker recipes mostly to stores on the west coast and at local farmers markets in Houston. In 2005, we won an award from the Gallo Family Vineyards for our Spicy Flax Krackers.

We still make our own krackers, kookies, and other treats. A friend who made raw chocolate truffles found a co-packer which sounded like heaven at the time…having someone else produce our products. We started looking into folks who could handle the scale and produce the quality we wanted. During that discovery process, we kept in touch with our chocolate friends and the woes they experienced and subsequent closing of their brand kept us in the manufacturing business.

Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?

My youngest daughter and husband moved to Colorado 7 years ago. Within a year of that move. she started having symptoms that sent her on a search to feel better which eventually led to a diagnosis of a genetic disease called Myotonic Dystrophy, Type 1. She and her husband moved back to Houston to be closer to family. Also during that same period, my partner and sweetie had a 2nd cancer diagnosis, heart issue, and gastro-intestinal problem that landed him frequently in the hospital. The kitchen was going at full speed with retail, wholesale, 3 – 4 weekly farmers markets, large catering events, and feeding the Houston Dynamo Soccer Team. My partner and I also had an environmental radio show on KPFT, a Pacifica Station. I still don’t know how we accomplished everything we did. I worked with and continue to work with remarkable people is the only thing I do know. The pivot to slowing down has been gradual and the pandemic helped slow things down even more.

We are still working on what’s next.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.patgreerskitchen.com
• Instagram: #patgreerskitchen
• Facebook: patgreerkitchen patgreerskitchen

Image Credits
Shawn Chippendale