Used for thousands of years in Ayurvedic and Chinese medicine, adaptogens offer a natural and holistic approach to nurturing the body and mind that can support us in many areas of our lives. From enhancing energy, boosting mood and improving focus, they offer a wholesome, 360 approach to wellness that is fundamentally different to many of the options offered by modern medicine.
Whether you’ve been using adaptogenic ingredients for some time or starting to look at them as a route to improved wellness, we break down the benefits of the adaptogens we use in our Nootropic granola so you can make an informed choice when it comes to purchasing them.
Our adaptogens and their functions:
This naturally occurring compound is made in the body and serves vital functions at cellular level such as energy production, protecting brain cells from free radical damage and improving memory.
Find it in Energize
An adaptogenic botanical that helps relieve stress and fatigue, whilst restoring energy and boosting concentration. As an adaptogen, it helps your entire body by normalizing blood sugar and boosting insulin sensitivity.
Find it in Calm
Used in partnership with L-Theanine, caffeine can help to relieve stress, improve cognition, boost mood and focus. The ideal support for a day of demanding tasks or challenging workouts!
Find it in Energize
Creatine is a chemical found naturally in the body. Made up of three core amino acids, it provides immediate fuel for muscles, helping to boost physical performance. Vegetarians and vegans typically have lower levels of creatine as it’s mostly found in foods like red meat and seafood.
Find it in Body & Soul
Ginkgo biloba (also known as maidenhair) is a tree native to China that has been grown for thousands of years and utilised in a variety of ways. As a nootropic, Ginkgo has been shown to be beneficial for heart health, brain function, and eye health, along with several other conditions.
Find it in Body & Soul
Panax Ginseng is a perennial plant that grows in the mountains of East Asia and has been used for centuries to support memory function, improve mood, lower anxiety levels and boost stamina and endurance.
Find it in Body & Soul, Energize and Absolute Vegan
These large white shaggy mushrooms grow in Asia, Europe and North America and contain bioactive substances that can bring multiple benefits to the brain, heart and gut. These include improved focus and attention, brain cell regeneration, support with depression and anxiety and managing neurological problems.
L-Theanine contains healthy bioactive compounds that work quickly to increase dopamine and serotonin, otherwise known as the ‘feel good’ chemicals in your brain. It’s also been shown to control & regulate cortisol, which can support with burning fat and help to prevent cardiovascular disease.
Maca is known for elevating mood, increasing energy and endurance, boosting learning and memory, as well as increasing libido!
Find it in Body & Soul
Working to calm and strengthen the nervous system, Oat Straw can help improve attention, cognition, concentration and focus, as well as optimising dopamine and testosterone levels. Other benefits include promoting quality sleep and reducing anxiety.
Find it in Calm
A note about our blends:
We formulate our recipes with ingredients at 20-50% of the recommended daily intake. Anyone with specific health conditions (pregnancy, diabetes and Alzheimer's) of those taking prescribed medication should always seek dietary advice when taking adaptogens.
]]>I guess after almost 7 years of trading we assumed we would ride these impacts out and hoped everything would calm down by Spring, so the agenda was to keep costs down but also to use the time available to build a better business base.
It has been a busy year. We were certainly right about uncertainty and raw material volatility. We did use the time available to invest £400,000 in equipment and site refurbishment, we now have a fully integrated building with improved facilities. This was thanks in no small measure to both increased shareholder investment and a grant from the Hertfordshire Growth Hub, our site is now accredited by BRC and the Soil Association.
This has given us a much needed springboard as international and UK sales grew through the year, in the UK market our customers expanded and sales grew, with a surge in sales as we come out of lockdown measures.
Branded sales benefited from direct sales to Iceland with our first order for a major Icelandic chain in December. In addition to the increase in our branded sales, our zero waste customers went from strength to strength and grew by 60% through the year.
We started to export organic granola to Denmark in May and shipping to Saudi Arabia in November. Further plans are in place to develop international sales though we also know we have to work hard with our team to make sure the wins experienced in 2021 continue to flourish, with new personnel and changes of responsibility, adding to our capability and resilience
As every small business, our focus is more on what we do next than what we have done in the past so we continue to have a full agenda and expect to further develop our branded sales next year and also can see strong opportunities in the expansion of our trail mix products that were launched in 2021.
We are not taking anything for granted, the impact of the pandemic cannot be discounted nor the effect of inflation on products and services, on the positive side we believe our innovative approach, strong technical and manufacturing capability and investment in marketing to the widest possible audience drive us ahead and with a bigger stronger team in place, we plan to continue our expansion.
Thanks to all for their support and I hope everyone has a great 2022… Robin
We'd love to hear from you on what we’re doing well and not so well so please get in touch and let us know what you’d love to see from us.
]]>We have built our business by developing relationships with a wide range of customers. We have aimed to sell to people who value great food, whether that’s a farm-shop, café or consumers wanting a great breakfast. Building a brand with relationships has always been important and has been a big part of getting us to where we are now and will continue to help us grow in export, e-commerce, food service etc.
These are all key areas for us in the next 12 months and we are optimistic we are working with clients who are just as passionate as we are about good healthy food.
We are now starting to look further ahead and have a wealth of new ideas, all of which will need a good degree of time to work out what customers are likely to want in the next couple of years and the best combination of ingredients to get a good product that is likely to appeal.
As a small business, we are always balancing what we want to do with how much time we have available and the agenda through the next 2 years looks daunting. But as we have always seen innovation as one of our central themes, alongside quality and service, my aim is to get back to spending 1-2 days per week developing new and innovative products. This starts with new research across all areas to build a potential development pipeline.
We have recently launched two exciting new flavours – Keto Warrior and Almond & Pecan Crunch – and we are looking to further increase the range where time permits! I don’t expect anything else to launch soon but we do have new development ideas, but these have been coming through the pipeline for the last 18 months. Now we are understanding what the new normal is likely to look like coming out of Covid we will rekindle our plans and then find a way to kick start a new wave of innovation. We think this has been core to our growth and we believe the food industry is going to keep changing and we plan to have the capability to help us reach new customers and new demand areas while still doing things really well that have helped us to build a strong and robust business. 2022 looks like it is going to be busy.
We'd love to hear from you on what we’re doing well and not so well so please get in touch and let us know what you’d love to see from us.
]]>I guess everyone starts a business with a mission and a vision, a set of high ideals and a mark we want to make on the world around us, and we were no different.
The impetus for the business came from my partner telling me she did not mind eating healthy if the food tasted good.
The product was a granola made in Boston, USA, and it triggered a thought process that led to digging through the web to figure out good recipes to try, just like many other people who love home cooking.
I had the time to research the ingredients, find out a bit of its history and build a picture of what healthy choices could be built into a granola and the difference between granola and muesli (granola is baked, muesli is a dry mix, everything else is about ingredients).
I figured out the size of the market, the differences between products and what healthy choices there were - if any.
I found that apart from small scale businesses, most products were very similar in terms of taste. And very few brought the sort of benefits that could be achieved by including more nuts and seeds and less sugar and cereals that contain gluten.
What evolved was a picture of a food that could be nutritious, healthy and do people good but was generally full of sugar, fat, multiple cereals and ingredients that an everyday cook would not be able to buy.
So, like many start-ups, we decided we wanted to change the world. We wanted healthy ingredients, good taste, low or no added sugar and components that an everyday cook could buy.
We knew it was a long shot, but we wanted to give it a go. Amazingly we did find people willing to pay the price for better food. Bit by bit, we sold more granola and found places where we could sell more granola.
We knew it was a long shot, but we wanted to give it a go. Amazingly we did find people willing to pay the price for better food. Bit by bit, we sold more granola and found places where we could sell more granola.
We need to grow, make money and compete, but not at the expense of everything we hold dear.
Have we changed? Yes.
Have we made mistakes? Yes.
Do we learn and move forward? Yes.
We'd love to hear from you on what we’re doing well and not so well so please get in touch and let us know what you’d love to see from us.
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I often get asked how we make granola or how we come up with our recipes at Rollagranola. In terms of making granola, the combination of good ingredients, gentle handling and good machinery makes a difference.
Many people want to have clusters - the main thing for these is do not turn the product over too much while it is warm, let the moisture out but don’t knock it about, so be gentle. A good mixer helps, this will help moisturise absorption into the oats without bashing them around, add as much liquid as you like but this adds to the baking time so it’s better to keep it below 10%. When baking, use perforated trays – this helps the drying and underbake.
At Rollagranola we only use jumbo oats, it is easier to use porridge oats or quick oats, but I feel they make a bit of a mush and so generally prefer to avoid them unless there is a clear need.
Because we don’t use refined sugars and like to have a lot of ingredients getting clusters is trickier and can be unpredictable, more ingredients give more points for fracture so each product may need a little tweak and I guess that is part of our expertise. After eight years of making granola, we have learned a lot but continue to be amazed as new ideas emerge.
In terms of our flavours and recipe development, it starts with customers and consumers, we may get an interesting comment or be asked for something specific or we may research new ingredients, new eating styles and new dietary habits. All of these create a picture of emerging trends and build ideas, considering what goes with what we may just experiment and play with ideas. Nothing is off-limits until it has been reviewed.
If we look at the development process scientifically:
Phases can overlap and be repeated where product developments are not progressed in such a step-wise fashion unless every other part of the day job gets dropped. But each phase must be completed to get a finished product, though often ideas morph and combine with others. This always feels like a lovely surprise.
Research and inquisitiveness are fundamental - asking why is the big win. We have always got a dozen or so ideas bubbling away in the background, but I try not to force these, often we will make a series of new product ideas none of which hit the spot but all of which help to build a picture of what is possible and what does not work, if we can figure out why something does not work then probably we have progress.
We are always on the lookout for new food ingredients, more to look at how they may help a broader agenda than to just incorporate. Our granola usually has a delicate flavour - the mix of ingredients and flavours can be overwhelmed by a strong flavour, so we always experiment and figure things out step by step, rarely do we get a solution in the first 5-6 attempts. We may have a long-term ambition to make a product with specific characteristics. This may take years to emerge as maybe there is a part of the puzzle that does not drop into place. It always does, it just takes time.
Aside
For those less of a purist - to make a product that sticks together, the quick way is to use sugar and oil. This is the basis of toffee. So if you want a sweet and clumpy granola, like flapjack but broken up, use sugar and oil in abundance. Just bake at a low temperature, say 100 deg C to avoid burning.
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Recently we’ve expanded our factory so we can keep the homemade nature at the heart of what we do. We now have more space but are filling it quickly.
We know that striking the balance between selling more and keeping the product quality is a difficult job, we just aim to try harder every day. For us, this means expanding and investing in the right kit.Luckily this doesn’t mean fancy machines but bigger versions of our current ones, unluckily this means we will never see the same economy of scale as some of the bigger brands who churn out tonnes of granola/hour but I guess we are OK with that really.
So, to expand we’ve hired two fantastic new employees and are searching for another one as we speak - know anyone who might be interested let us know!
We’ve bought another oven which will double the throughput in the factory and allow us to bring more nutty, natural granola to your breakfast tables.
And we’ve doubled our floorspace by taking two new units adjacent to our current/old unit.
We see organic as an important area to start moving into, we launched our Organic & Nutty Granola last year to show people that great, nutty organic granola doesn’t have to cost more and people love it, so we’ll be developing our own organic capacity alongside a range we are now producing for Danish Coffee Chain, GRØD – check them out here: https://www.groed.com/en/about-groed
We support a bunch of great zero waste entrepreneurs who have invested in shops without packaging, this is developing fast and we now deliver to 80 shops that are committed to reducing their food packaging waste while still serving up great food.
Later this year we will launch a new product which will focus on low sugar (of course we won’t be sacrificing on taste) and have lots of new lines trickling down our development pipeline so watch out for new launches. Unfortunately, this will mean saying goodbye to some family favourites, we’ll let you know about these ahead of time so you can stock up while you still can.
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