The largest empty space on the shelves of
health-food stores these days is probably where the Crunchy Granola is
stocked. What is Crunchy Granola? It is a dry cereal about the texture
of uncooked oatmeal that consists of rolled oats, wheat germ, sesame
seeds, unsweetened coconut, soy oil, sea salt and brown sugar, give or
take a few things. Because of all that natural goodness, plus a not
unpleasant sweetish taste, it is the rage right now with a generation
that is rebelling against the likes of Sugar Smacks and other products
that it considers overpackaged and undernourishing. One of the
producers of the cereal estimates that its sales double every four
months. Which may explain the reported interest of such sizable
companies as Norton Simon Inc., Bristol-Myers and International
Multifoods Corp. in getting a few flakes of the action. As well as why
that chronicler of capitalism, the Wall Street Journal, recently
considered Crunchy Granola worthy of front-page treatment. There is some dispute about who invented Crunchy Granola;* at least
three claimants have appeared. But everybody agrees that it was
popularized by affable, fiftyish Layton Gentry, who has spent the last
seven years being a kind of Johnny Granola-seed. In 1965, after
experimenting with various recipes for granola as a “freelance baker,”
Gentry developed a formula that he liked and sold it for $3,000 to
Sovex Inc. of Collegedale, Tenn. It caught on not only as a breakfast
cereal served with milk and fruit, but also as a snack food eaten by
itself and as a base for cookies. Since then, Sovex has enlarged its
granola operation from a single pizza oven to a 20,000-sq.-ft. bakery
plant with a capacity of 1,000,000 Ibs. a month. Sales in 1971: more
than $1 million. Bad Word. Gentry, meanwhile, moved to California and bought back from
Sovex for $1,500 the granola rights for states west of the Rockies.
Then he sold the California territory for $18,000 to Lassen Foods of
Chico, Calif. At last count, Lassen's annual sales of granola were $3
million and the company has installed a bank of specially built ovens
to bake the stuff. Gentry also took off for Australia, western Canada
and Hawaii planting granola seeds, in the form of royalty arrangements
with local health-food manufacturers, as he went. His latest deal was
with Breads for Life of Springfield, Mo., which is producing a granola
fruit square. Gentry is now back in California operating a small store in Hollister
that sells three varieties of Crunchy Granola plus cookies and candies. He hopes that the
granola business stays spread out, the way he planted it. “I really
think if the big companies got their hands on it that it may become a
bad word,” he says. “Even now, there's a lot being made that doesn't do
justice to granola. I felt to do things right there should be small
plants in several different places manufacturing it.” *The first health food called granola, made with entirely
different ingredients from those used in the current product, was
developed in the 1870s by Dr. John Harvey Kellogg. His brother William
K. Kellogg founded the well-known Battle Creek breakfast food company.
