A business success, naturally

Tori Stuart, who started out selling granola from her car, drops in at Zoe's distributor in Franklin. (Bill Polo/Globe Staff)

Tori Stuart was destined to run her own business.

At the age of 5, she often played secretary and one day told her father: "You're fired." By 12 she was selling hand-painted barrettes in boutiques near her childhood home in Westchester County in New York. And while attending Brown University, Stuart and a friend started a plant-watering business for students who went home for winter break - and then hired someone to do the job while they too left town.

"We figured out how much it would cost to replace a plant that would have died and charged a little bit less than that," said Stuart.

Today Stuart runs Needham-based Zoe Foods, makers of granola cereal and bars filled with ground flaxseed, soy, omega-3, fiber, and protein. The privately held company produces three types of cereal and four types of bars and does about $3 million a year in retail sales.

The products are sold across the nation, but Stuart remembers the days in early 2000 when she and an employee would lug boxes of granola to mom-and-pop shops and hit them up for orders.

"We filled up the back of our cars and divided the state," said Stuart, 42. "We would call each other on our cellphones when we made a sale and say, 'I got one!'."

Within three months, Stuart's products were on sale regionally in Whole Foods stores.

In March 2000 Stuart attended Expo West, a food trade show in California, and picked up orders from stores across the country. But the road to Stuart’s success was not as smooth as it may appear.

Brinley Vickers, a longtime friend who worked for Stuart early on, recalls the days when she would wake up in the morning to find Stuart's experiments with granola mixes in her mailbox.

"Tori would walk early in the morning and leave little zip-lock bags for me to sample," said Vickers, who takes pride in her discriminating palate.

"I would taste them and tell her what I thought: too much granola, too many seeds, too much flax, or if the amount of cinnamon was right."

Vickers met Stuart in the late 1990s when they were hired as crewmembers for sailboats racing off Newport, R.I. On the water they were rivals; on land they spent their time building Stuart's business.

"It's a testament to friendship and Tori’s strong work ethic that we're still really good friends," said Vickers, who wound up pursuing other interests.

Stuart said every job she’s taken since college was done with the mindset that someday she’d start her own business. Her first stop was at City Sports magazine in New York City, selling classified advertisements over the telephone. Then she landed a job at Gray Advertising by talking her way into a junior management position.

"I'll never forget that interview," said Stuart. "I persuaded the human resources guy to see me. He then proceeded to tell me that I had no relevant experience, and offered me a job as a media planner."

Stuart told him she'd rather be an assistant account executive, insisting that she could handle it. She won.

Six years later Stuart was recruited to work for another major advertising firm, J. Walter Thompson, on new products for Ragu brands, but after four months she concluded that "I really didn't care what the lady in the commercial was wearing, or if she was a stay-at-home mom or a working mom." So Stuart quit and moved to Boston, confident she'd find work.

Within a month she landed a job with a company - then called Executive Perspectives - as a consultant, working with businesses to analyze their organization and implement new business strategies. For six years Stuart worked with powerhouses such as GTE, Pacific Gas and Electric, Microsoft, and Unilever. She attended business school at Boston University at night.

"No matter where I was working, I took the job home with me," said Stuart. "I was always thinking about my clients and solving their problems." She also knew that her dedication working for others was not going to help start her own gig. So in 1997, Stuart quit her job and moved to Antigua in the British West Indies to regroup and figure out what kind of business she would pursue for herself.

A seasoned sailor, Stuart walked the docks looking for work.

"My first boat was called Irene," said Stuart. "It was an old wooden merchant marine vessel out of the UK. If you liked to climb, and you were a little kid at heart, this was a playground."

After four months of sun and sail, Stuart returned to the United States and took a job aboard the Easterner, a 12-meter sailboat in Newport.

Stuart's debut in the food industry was the result of a family brunch, during which her mother pulled a small plastic bag of granola out of her purse at a restaurant table. She told Stuart that she was going through menopause and was uncomfortable with the hot flashes, a common side effect. Not wanting to take medication, Stuart’s mother researched what might alleviate her symptoms and explained that when she ate enough flaxseed and soy, the hot flashes were less frequent and less intense.

"If my mother was making granola and looking for a natural alternative because she couldn't find anything on the store shelves, I figured that there must be a need," said Stuart.

With debate over hormone replacement therapy going on and an estimated 23 million women in the United States experiencing menopausal symptoms at the time, Stuart said, "Wow! One percent of that market makes a business!"

Originally the box for Zoe’s products said, "Helps manage menopause naturally," but Stuart learned that targeting women of a certain age was too limiting, and that flaxseed and soy are good for everyone.

Stuart said the natural food category is a totally different business today than when she started, with broader markets snatching up small independent brands.

"Weetabix now owns Barbara's, Kellogg's owns Kashi, General Mills owns Cascadian Farm, Kraft owns Back to Nature," said Stuart. "The cost of competing now is very different."

On the flip side, many major supermarkets are carrying natural foods, so Stuart no longer needs to spread her distribution as wide to garner the same revenue.

"It's a tough business to be in but what keeps me going are those consumer e-mails. If they change one little thing in their diet and start to feel better, they begin to do other things that make them feel better."

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