What a difference a year makes. Just ask Marie Dalkas-Banis who, along with her partner Jen Bielawski, met just a year ago at their children’s school in Lafayette, California. “She was new to the school,” said Dalkas-Banis about her soon-to-be business partner, “and we started talking.”

This was not a typical conversation as the two women compared their life challenges. Marie had been diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis in 2006 and Jen’s children had a vicious cycle of food intolerance. Bielawski’s two-year journey with her allergic son’s health and daughter’s possible depression had her baffled until her own diagnosis of ulcerative colitis helped her piece everything together and begin to help her children.

“By researching my own disease and symptoms, I was able to recognize some of the same in Kyle,” shares Bielawski. “I asked the allergist if reflux could be the cause of his chronic sinus infection and if it made sense to do an endoscopy. He agreed and we did and discovered that Kyle had something called Eosinophilic Gastritis, ulcers in his stomach caused by severe food allergies and could require an elemental formula diet and possibly a feeding tube.”

Her pediatrician eventually sent her down the path that would change their lives forever. A restricted diet eliminating all grain, starch, lactose and sucrose reduced the constant irritation to his system that his diet had caused. Subsequently, his stomach would have a chance to heal. As the journey continued and the success grew, her family eventually upgraded to the elimination of just gluten and dairy.

Dalkas-Banis’ MS diagnosis prompted her to also change her diet as well as adopt yoga into her lifestyle and clean eating for herself and her family. Since doing so, she has more energy and a positive attitude. “Clean eating – no preservatives!” she proclaimed. “I’m very strict about that. It’s truly mood alternating.”

The two women took their commitment to heart. “We both had the tenacity to do something about it,” said Marie. “She (Jen) was actually doing seminar lunches in the East Bay where she brought in doctors,” she added. “Together we have turned our love of cooking into our food product line where we hope others will benefit from our experience,” says Jen. Thoughtful Food, the brand, was officially born.

Like any good business women would, they started in their home fine tuning their gluten free granola. “The granola syrup has lots of cinnamon,” said Marie. “It was inspired from my mom’s baklava. It’s fabulous.”

Local grocer Diablo Foods was their first customer in December of 2010. Sales Manager Brian Bigelow saw the Food4Thought lecture series and approached them. Bigelow had been in the natural food industry and was a sales broker with several distributors. He was ready to go to work for them.

They quickly assembled a team of like-minded enthusiasts. Kathy Body is Director of Operations and Ed O’Dea is CFO while bakers include Folsom Chef Vinny Lazzarreto, his sister Frankie Lazarretto and bagger David Christian who prepare the product. Amy Dickinson takes the granola to Whole Foods stores and performs demos, educating and inviting new customers.

They enlisted the design talents of Nick Triantafyllos who established their Giddy Up & Go Granola packaging under their Thoughtful Food label and the rest, as they say, is history. They started distributing “big time” with UNFI out of Rocklin, CA, in June 2011 and since then have compiled an impressive list of clients including Peet’s Coffee & Teas, Lunardi’s, Whole Foods (Northern CA region), Mollie Stone’s, Nugget Markets, Berkeley Bowl, Diablo Foods, and Star Grocery, to name a few. They are also in over 200 retail stores and the cafeterias of such companies as Lucas Films, Academy of Science, Stanford Children’s Hospital, Safeway, UCSF, UC Berkeley and Genentech, among others. Bigelow is even working to get them into healthy vending machines.

“The fun of being an owner is everything is hands on,” said Marie. “You have to do everything.” When they had to find a commercial kitchen quickly, Marie’s husband Tom Banis of Banis Restaurant Design, was there to assist in finding a location in Folsom, CA, to manufacture. Not only did he design the kitchen but he found 20 rack commercial ovens which gave them the ability to handle the volume that was growing quickly. Twice a week the ladies drive the hour and a half to the facility where they’ve assembled a team of enthusiastic granola producers.