Although we didn’t officially start this crunchy new venture until less than three weeks before Chinese New Year, our journey with granola stretches back much further – but it’s only now that we’ve launched our new website that it feels like we’re truly getting started.

With “Balik Kampung” in mind, we thought it was a good idea to introduce our granola during a season for gifting at a time when everyone is competing to outshine each other by putting out the best local cookies, cakes, snacks and other sumptuous dishes for their friends and family.

But where to start …?

We needed our first blend – but the only mix we had was the original one that dated back to the middle ages, handed down by countless nanas over generations of perfection. And as fate would signify its importance; the recipe just so happened to include nine ingredients.

In Chinese, the number 9 (九) represents longevity …

With that, Nana Gnome’s Ye Old Unoriginal Blend was formed.

It contains cocoa coated oats, almonds, pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds, raisins, cranberries, puffed rice, chocolate chunks and mini cornflakes. With such a huge variety of ingredients, each bite is a delight as you never know what you’re going to get.

How did it end …?

Launching a product three weeks before Chinese New Year and then our website three weeks after has been an amazing adventure, which also allowed us to return home to Sarawak during the festive season and reconnect with friends and family. On this journey we took with us 15kg’s worth of granola that was produced specifically for our first batch of hand-delivered orders.

In doing so, we learned a lot and received some awesome feedback. Most notable was the disappointment that some customers had from missing a few grams of weight that can be lost when not using digital scales. Rookies and their cookies huh? Our initial round of labels and express printing didn’t help either when some customers failed to find our social links.

Nonetheless, we did manage to showcase our customisation options!

Pick your own gnome, set the sky and mix the blend. We will handle the rest …

All in all, we are truly grateful for the tremendous support everyone has shown towards Granola Gnomes, who are now busy grinding new ideas through positive feedback and open communication. We hope that this continuing story will help to provide some insights behind our journey and look forward to bringing you more variations of fun, crunchy and most importantly, healthy granola for both daily consumption and executive and (or) seasonal gifting options.

Thank you once again from the bottom of our hearts!

Mr and Mrs Gnome