Taste Radio

Organic snacks are commonplace these days, but that wasn’t the case just a few years ago. Nicole Dawes is one of a handful of entrepreneurs who helped who helped usher in the current golden era for organic products, having launched Late July, a brand of organic tortilla chips and crackers, in 2003. During an interview included in this episode, Dawes explained that the company was born of necessity and a heritage of entrepreneurship: at the time, there were no organic crackers, one of Dawes’ favorite foods and her father was the founder of Cape Cod Potato Chips, while her mother had once owned a natural food store. Over the past 15 years, Late July has grown to become a staple in the snack aisles of grocery stores across the U.S. and today pulls in over $100 million in annual revenue. Steady growth attracted the attention of snack giant Snyder’s Lance, which had been an early investor in Late July and in 2014 acquired a majority stake in the brand. Snyder’s Lance was acquired by The Campbell Soup Co. last year