#MomCrush Monday: Meet Bridget Greaney & Nancy Becker, Founders of 2Betties 

1. You are an incredible mother-daughter duo, founders of 2Betties. Can you tell us how you came up with 2Betties? 

Bridget Greaney: 

As a busy college student, I found myself running from class, work, and sports eating protein and snack bars, thinking I was consuming something healthy when in reality, they were often no better than eating a candy bar, nutritionally speaking. Entering my senior year at the University of Wisconsin – Madison, I was convinced I could make something more nutritious with simple ingredients. I combined nuts, spices, maple syrup, and honey, and out of the oven came something genuinely delicious, satiating, and truly more nutritious. My friends and family became obsessed with the snack and kept asking for more. To the point that every time I was home senior year, I would spend hours in my parent’s kitchen baking batches to leave and bring back with me. Today, our Maple Cinnamon Rounds are pretty much the same recipe. From making snacks home on college breaks to launching 2Betties took coming together with my amazing Mom and now business partner, gathering as much customer feedback as possible and testing a million different ways to make the product better. 

Nancy Becker: 

Bridget’s grain-free and non-refined sugar snack that looked more like granola at the time was a big hit with my husband and son who at the time were less inclined to eat healthy. I shared some at wellness lunch at my then company and received emails afterward asking for the recipe. At that moment I realized she had a potential product and through conversations with Bridget we aligned on our frustrations as consumers with the lack of truly delicious and nutritious options. We both were fed up with the lack of good tasting truly healthy snacks and decided to take the product to market to share with other consumers who felt the same way. And, we wanted to disrupt the entrenched processed food companies who overuse sugar to provide taste.. 

2. At some point, you took your mother and daughter relationship to a whole other level and became business partners. Can you give our readers any tips on how to manage such a delicate relationship in business AND outside of business? 

BG: Communication, boundaries, and more communication! We focus on making sure there is no business talk with family members and carve out time for mother-daughter time where we don’t talk about work. I’d be lying if I said it’s been easy; communication is the hardest part of any relationship, and balancing two different types of communication adds an interesting element. Fortunately, our mother-daughter relationship has always been strong, with an innate ability to issue clear and a lack of grudge-holding. This backdrop, along with our shared energy around our mission, allowed us to quickly jump into a business relationship, knowing that as challenges present themselves, we’d be able to work together and not let interpersonal issues cloud our potential business success. 

NB: In any successful relationship there must be trust and respect. As mother/daughter and as business partners we’re fortunate to have a lot of both for each other. This foundation has allowed us to successfully divide and conquer because we trust one another’s ability to get things done that supports our shared end goal. When we see things differently and can’t agree to disagree we are intentional about meeting and respecting each other’s viewpoint. 

3. On your website, you state that you’re on a mission to raise awareness and reduce the amount of sugar and unnatural ingredients in our food. Tell us more about why this is so important to you both. 

BG: Long before making snacks for myself in college, I was a counselor at an outdoor summer day camp. One year my group of kids was aged 8-10. I had this adorable kid in my group one morning apologize to me for the possibility of her being misbehaved during the day because she hadn’t taken her ADHD medication. I was taken off guard by the comment as I had not known she was on medication and felt sad that her world was oriented around being good or bad on whether or not she had taken her medication at such a young age. Later that day, I was on a lunch watch duty and noticed she was eating a peanut butter and fluff sandwich on white bread, a banana, and a bag of chips. That was the first moment I remember feeling frustrated by our food industry. In reality, this child’s parents were likely just trying to make sure she ate lunch, yet the lunch she was eating would make anyone have ups and downs with their energy, let alone a young child. I had similar frustrations when I volunteered for a Head Start program and the Boys and Girls Club of America. Kids, often the kids in our communities who need the most support, would be given free, subsidized meals, but these meals were straight-refined sugar and refined carbohydrates. A breakfast of french toast sticks, pancake syrup, orange juice, and chocolate milk was not a nutritious start to the day for kids with potentially more going on in their home lives than some can even appreciate. At 2Betties, making a nutritious snack that is nutritious and delicious is not just about making something I want to eat but making something that might help bridge the gap between unhealthy and healthy foods, hence the shape and focus on taste. 

NB: Through Bridget, I began to learn about the importance of nutrition and the relationship between what we put in our bodies and how we feel. What shocked me the most was the impact of sugar on the body, and having had a brother who suffered and died from diabetes, I began to focus on reducing the amount of sugar in all the things that I eat and cook. It was important that with 2Betties, we be an agent of change and work to support educating consumers on what healthy means and how to read a Nutrition Facts Panel. Early on with 2Betties, we worked with a handful of health-focused outlets, including the National Kidney Foundation. It was incredibly eye-opening watching renal patients trying to avoid going on dialysis share how hard it is to find healthy snacks that fit their dietary needs and were enjoyable to eat. There’s a lot of overlap with diabetes and kidney disease, and knowing that for many 2Betties was the first snack they actually enjoyed and could eat without raising their blood glucose gives us and our team great satisfaction in how much we’re positively impacting the lives of so many. 

4. Being a woman-owned business, what advice do you have for other women thinking about going into business for themselves?

BG: My advice is to get in tune with your why and make sure you have a product that resonates. I also think we live in a world that slightly over glorifies the startup and entrepreneurial world. If you don’t have a product solving something for the consumer and you don’t have clarity on your “why,” it would be tough to have the patience and perseverance needed to make a viable business a reality. I also think it’s important to develop a strong relationship with yourself. There will be so many moments when you’ll be questioned sometimes in ways that might make it seem like what you’re doing is potentially the stupidest thing this person has ever seen. If you’re not strong-minded, those moments can be challenging. Even if you are, sometimes it can make you feel like tossing in the towel before the thing you’re trying to build even gets started. If you have these things, the first step should always be getting as much real consumer feedback on your product pre-launch as possible and having a system in place that is agile enough to pivot, test, pivot, and test again. For us, we took our early product recipes to real consumers outside of a mid-Atlantic chain grocery store. Without that feedback, we wouldn’t be here today. 

NB: I learned in my previous career that a product has to elicit a “wow” from the target customer, otherwise it’s not good enough. We tested different flavors and recipe iterations before getting a consistent “wow” from a cross section of consumers. It’s crucial not to simply rely on friends and family for feedback because as much as you trust and love them, they’re too close to you to give an unbiased response. It’s also important to partner with someone you trust and respect and who has strengths you don’t bring to the venture. 

5. What is your favorite song lyric? Why? 

BMG: Ain’t nobody messin’ with you, but you – Althea, The Grateful Dead 

First, I love this song and band, and I feel fortunate to have parents who introduced me to the Grateful Dead on tapes when I was little. Second, we often are the only ones in our way. If we put aside self-doubt, silence critical self-talk, learn to trust ourselves, and drop judgment, there’s no limit to possibilities we can achieve. I meditate daily, and learning not to be my own worst enemy, equal to building 2Betties, is some of the most challenging work I’ve done. 

NB: “You say you want a revolution…” – Revolution, The Beatles 

I heard “Revolution” on the radio one afternoon after Bridget and I had decided to explore taking her grain-free granola product to market. I was driving behind a Krispy Kreme donut truck, and it struck me that we needed to make our snacks in a donut shape because we were kicking off a revolution against the entrenched snack food industry. We’re fed up and sick of the unhealthy grab-n-go available options. We’re determined to make a difference for consumers and offer great taste with good nutrition. 2Betties is more than just another healthy snack, it’s the beginning of a journey towards creating a healthier food system.