Grammies Crackers: Made with love, like everything should be.
For the 262nd feature of our "Together Talks" campaign, we collaborated with Grammies Crackers and Co-Founder, Alec Everts. Grammies homemade, wholesome graham crackers are one of the best things you’ll ever taste and nothing like the tasteless, cardboard-like variety you’d expect to buy at the grocery store.
Grammies Crackers bakes small-batch homemade, wholesome, and utterly delicious graham crackers in the in a variety of flavors, including Classics and Limited Edition favorites.
Grammies Crackers…spreading love, one graham cracker at a time.
"Together Talks" feature 262: Grammies Crackers presented by KLS - Your Trusted Shipping Solutions In The USA
What have you learned since becoming an entrepreneur? What aspect of entrepreneurship do you appreciate the most? Share a decision that you made that was detrimental? What is your why?
Story of how it was created?
It all started when we found out we were going to be grandparents for the first time. My wife, Kellee, went into full-on grandmother mode: “How am I going to spoil these little guys?” She knew ever since she had kids that she was going to spoil her grandchildren, because that's just what grandmothers do.
Kellee had always loved graham crackers. They were tied to these really warm, comforting memories from her childhood—her mom and grandmother giving them to her and her sister, having them at naptime at school, things like that. So when we found out we were going to have grandkids, she wanted to share some of those same memories with them.
The problem was, when she went to the store and started trying the graham crackers that were on the shelves, they tasted nothing like what she remembered. That delicious, comforting graham cracker from her childhood just wasn't there anymore. What she found tasted more like cardboard, and when she started looking at the ingredient lists, they were filled with ingredients she couldn't even pronounce. She thought, “This isn't what I remember. I can make something better.” And ultimately, that's exactly what she did.
One day, I came home and Kellee said, "Guess what I made?" and the “OG” Grammie was born. That's kind of how it started. It was just a family thing for her to spoil the little grandkids. Every time they came over, they knew where they were going to get Grammie’s crackers.
What have been the biggest challenges?
I'd say the single biggest challenge for us at this point is packaging. We have entered the world of packaging, and we had no idea how many parts and pieces were involved. There are a lot of details.
I actually just got off the phone this morning about some more packaging issues we're having. Part of it is the product we make. It's not a sauce, juice or other liquid. You can’t put it in a jar or tube. As you can see just from walking down the aisles, there are a lot of ways to package a cracker.
The big challenge is maintaining the quality of the cracker as it moves through various distribution channels while keeping the familiar ingredients people have come to know us for. At the same time, the packaging has to protect the product so it doesn't break in transit.
Goals for upcoming year + Next phase of the company?
Our next phase is really about expanding our retail distribution. We've built a national footprint through independent and specialty retailers across the country, where we're currently able to direct ship our products. Now we're working toward broader distribution and larger retail opportunities that require us to move product through national distribution channels.
Packaging and shelf life are a big part of making that possible. As we move into more complex distribution channels, we need packaging that protects the quality of the cracker, helps prevent breakage, and gives us the shelf life necessary to successfully reach retailers and their customers.
What were your concerns to transition to starting your own business?
My previous background is technology. Tech operations, messaging, storage, cybersecurity and some other stuff. Kellee’s experience is branding, customer experience, creating customer journey maps, and things like that. But neither of us had ever done food and beverage.
When this opportunity came up, really what it came down to was somebody had suggested that we take what the kids loved and take it out to a market. So, we literally did that. We went to a farmers' market, came up with a couple of bags, and said, "Let's just see."
After we sold out that first day, that's when we looked at each other and had that conversation you're talking about: Do we want to come back next week?
We kept coming back, and we kept selling out. We kept making more, and we kept selling out. We thought, "Okay, well, there's definitely something here."
We started in October 2022, so at the end of that calendar year, we were like, "All right, the next year is coming. Are we really going to do this?" That's when we had the real conversation about whether we wanted to put in the effort to try and make this work.
We were both working either full-time or part-time at the time, so this was a nights-and-weekends business. Now, in October, we'll start our fifth year in business, and 2026 was the first time we've both been full-time, just doing this exclusively.
What have you learned since becoming an entrepreneur?
One of the biggest things we've learned is just how much goes into producing food commercially beyond actually making the product. We've had to learn commercial kitchens, food safety, traceability, inventory control and recall preparedness. When you're working with ingredients that have different shelf lives and lot information, you have to know exactly what came in, what went into each production run and where the finished product went. That's an entirely different discipline from simply knowing how to bake a great cracker.
What aspect of entrepreneurship do you appreciate the most?
The part I appreciate the most is approvals. Kellee and I don't have to go anywhere for approvals beyond each other, and since ‘her name is on the door’ I defer to her judgment more often than not.
We just had an opportunity to go to Kansas City earlier this year for a business thing, and we basically looked at each other and said, "Do we want to be in Kansas City?" We said yes, and so there we went. There's a conference that's coming up here in Texas. It's the first annual Texas CPG conference, and it just popped up. So, again, we looked at each other. I'm like, "We didn't plan on this. We didn't budget for this. Do we want to be in that room?" And we both said yes, so we're going.
That aspect of it, I really like about being self-employed.
Share a decision that you made that was detrimental?
One that's coming to mind goes back to packaging. We had a misprint on one of our packages. So, the question became, "Do we reprint it?" It sounds like a very easy question, but we would have to reprint over 4,000 of them at once. In addition to the unexpected expense, where would we store 4,000+ boxes?
We ended up figuring out that we could fix it with a sticker. We had to buy stickers, but it was much cheaper than whole boxes. So, we were able to, thankfully, solve it quickly.
As we've needed new boxes, we've been able to incorporate that into the design. It involved the ingredient statement on the package, so it had to be fixed. You can't mess with ingredients on food.
What is your why?
I look at this not just as something that started for the kids as kind of a hobby that accidentally turned into a business, but we're actively working to build this for them.
For us, the why is to build something meaningful and valuable enough that, when the grandkids come of age, there's a foundation here for them. Maybe they come into the business and learn from it. Maybe it gives them the opportunity to go do something completely different. Either way, we want to create a springboard for them that we didn't necessarily have ourselves growing up.
The way I look at it, we have nine years to have something in place and ready to go. They can take it and do what they want with it—or not. We don't want it to be a burden they have to shoulder; we want it to be an opportunity they can choose to take advantage of. We're not after the quick exit.
Do you have a moment that brings you the most joy?
One of them for us is that we actually had a mother, a new mother, who had found us at one of the farmers' markets and had become a regular customer.
We got an email letting us know that they were no longer in the area and could we ship to them. Of course we can! We ship all over the country. Then we learned that her husband was serving in the military and had been stationed in Japan, so the family had moved overseas. We quickly learned that, yes, we can ship domestically through the U.S. Postal Service to any military base in the world.
Long story short, we came to find out that after being stationed overseas her little boy wanted something from back home. The thing from back home that he wanted was Grammies Crackers, of all things.
That was really where I first learned that we were actually connecting with people and touching people beyond just providing them with a snack.
So, a handful of times now, we've shipped crackers around the world to service members.
That’s pretty cool.
Piece of Advice
We have been asked the advice question now a couple of times, and really the one thing—and this is for business in general, but CPG specifically—is just get started.
If you wait to figure out how you're going to do it, you're never going to start. Just get started and just go.
If you have a vision, if you have a need that you see is not being met in the marketplace, so many people have the self-doubt of, "Well, if it was that good, someone else would have come up with it," right? Not true.
If you've got a thing that you have found either in your experience, your life, or your travels through the world, and there's a gap in the marketplace, just jump in there and just do it.
Promo Code
Purchase from their site, Grammies Crackers, and use promo code below:
TOGETHERTALKS -> 20% off!
Community Callout
In Closing
KLS wants to thank Grammies Crackers and Co-Founder, Alec Everts, for today's "Together Talks" feature. Follow along for their journey with their social handles below!
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