Kentucky granola company finds new home, plans to open Lexington store in the fall

Kyle and Samantha Ayres have always been driven by a passion for food and its origins.

“The closer that you can source your own food, the better it is for you, the better it is for your community,” Samantha said.

The couple has incorporated that passion into their local company Sweetgrass Granola. A passion that is about to include a new Lexington store.

The business sells handmade granola sweetened with sorghum while supporting local farming and sourcing as many ingredients as possible from the Commonwealth. Sweetgrass Granola also works with other food entrepreneurs IntegriTEA, Greenbelly and Urthmeal to make and co-pack products.

Sorghum, a plant in the grass family, is an alternative to liquid sweeteners like corn syrup and cane syrup and is recognized by the USDA as an incredibly dense source of iron, calcium, potassium and other micronutrients. It is the main sweetener in Sweetgrass Granola.

“The head of the stock is a grain and the inside of that stock has a juice in it that gets pressed out and then it gets cooked down one time so it retains most of its nutrients,” Samantha Ayres said. “It’s really high in iron, vitamin C, magnesium, potassium and lots of antioxidants.”

How Sweetgrass came to be

Sweetgrass Granola was started in 2011 by Jacob and Carolyn Gahn, who perfected the recipe in their Berea kitchen, about 40 miles south of Lexington. The vision was to make nutrient-dense food and support local farmers in the process.

Kyle Ayres started working for the Gahns as a team member shortly after the brand’s inception. He worked for them on and off as the company grew from being a farmer’s market regular to being available in places around Lexington like Good Foods Co-Op, Cup of Commonwealth, Ruth Hunt Candy Company and Manchester Coffee.

“It started as a little fun side project and then turned into a full-fledged brand,” Samantha Ayres said.

After employing Kyle for seven years off and on, the Gahns proposed that he take over ownership of Sweetgrass Granola in 2023 so they could step away to focus on other projects.

“Kyle was kind of already managing everything because (the Gahns) don’t live in Lexington, so it was a pretty natural transition for us to take over,” she said.

A new place to help Sweetgrass grow

After seven years of sharing kitchen space with the Pasta Garage, a restaurant on Delaware Avenue that shared its kitchen with other companies, Sweetgrass is moving into the space once occupied by Case Emporio. While the Pasta Garage space was larger, Kyle said it could sometimes be a little bit cramped having to share with other groups.

“A lot of the businesses they’ve had in (the Pasta Garage) have started out really small and have been able to grow,” Samantha Ayres said. “It’s just been a good stepping stone into having (your) own space.”

She said Pasta Garage was rich in culinary collaboration, something they will miss by moving out.

“Really the only reason we left was just because we kind of outgrew the space, we just needed to have our own place to keep growing,” she said.

While Sweetgrass will mainly use the new space to produce its granola and other products, Samantha said there are plans to open a small retail space to sell things like granola, the ingredients they source for it and a few of the products from other companies they co-pack for.

Sweetgrass uses local Kentucky products like pure cane sorghum syrup from Townsend Sorghum Mill in Jeffersonville, shelled hemp seeds from Victory Hemp Foods in Carrollton, chia seeds from Heartland Chia in Franklin, and southern pecans from Kentucky Nut Corporation in Hickman. It also uses Appalachian sea salt from J.Q. Dickinson Appalachian Mercantile in Malden, West Virginia.

“We want to have those for sale individually and then other local products from other businesses around town,” Samantha Ayres said. “I think it’ll be fun for people to get to come in and see (and) buy granola in the place where it’s made.”

The space, which Samantha said should open in fall 2024, is at 808 N. Limestone, near Greyline Station. It will be open a few days a week but the specifics have not yet been decided.

This story was originally published August 22, 2024 at 4:59 AM.