Discover Josie’s Best Gluten Free Story, where passion meets quality in creating delicious gluten-free products for everyone to enjoy.
Discovering Deliciousness: The Journey Behind Josie’s Best Gluten-Free Products
Josie’s Best Gluten Free began in a kitchen, driven by a family’s desire to enjoy beloved breakfast foods without the worry of food allergies. This initiative has blossomed into a community of customers rediscovering their favorite breakfast items, now free of the ingredients they cannot consume. With a focus on bringing breakfast back to those with dietary restrictions, the brand emphasizes the joy of shared moments—whether it’s a family pancake stack on a Sunday morning or a fun breakfast-for-dinner night that everyone looks forward to.
Josie’s journey into creating gluten-free products started when she was diagnosed with food allergies in her 20s. Unable to find a suitable pancake mix, she dedicated herself to experimenting in the kitchen until she perfected her recipe. This led to the introduction of various delightful breakfast options, including waffles, muffins, and crepes. Today, Josie’s Best Gluten Free caters to breakfast enthusiasts, home bakers, and restaurants alike, ensuring that everyone can enjoy delicious meals without compromising on taste or quality.
Crafting Delicious Dreams: The Journey of Josie’s Best Gluten-Free Delights
What it is what it do cyber world welcome to the ash said it show I am your host ash brown I appreciate each and every one of you guys for all of your love and support we are well over 1,800 episodes insane I never in a million years thought that I would say those words I didn’t know that those could Escape me and yeah 1,800 plus.
Episodes over half a million streams and growing all this is in really onto account of you guys all your love all your support it’s made the show possible and I thank you all very very much for that now today I have a guest that has been very difficult for me to track down you guys she has been moving and shaking everywhere and just making a big noise.
In a good way in a really good way keeping families together and I don’t know just making sure that we have some really good treats and good snacks around I am talking about founder and CEO of Josie’s best gluten-free Josie herself hey Josie hey there how are you I am very well thank you awesome thank you so Josie where are you today where.
In the world are you because I know that you’re a little bit everywhere yeah I’m in Sisters Oregon which is a small town in Central Oregon we’re close to bend which would be kind of the most wellknown town there but very quaint little ski town here although we have not an ounce of snow at the moment so okay I think it’s it’s it’s still kind.
Of early I’m in Georgia and so temperatures have dropped down to like the 30s this week we like H ha how does the story for josy’s best GL and- free start where did it come from well it really starts out of my own needs I grew up in a very foodie family my dad is a chef and a restaurant tour and so cooking was a big deal always in my.
Family and especially big breakfast on the weekends with family yeah and so in my late teens um I was in college and I had I’ve always had bad asthma but I just had more and more um tummy troubles and I had migraines and just a bunch of stuff and think especially you know eating dorm food and being at school exasperated a lot of that and I came.
Home from a vacation and my mom was like you look terrible and I think you should go see this homeopathic doctor so I went and did that and immediately he said I think you have food allergies and so they put me on an Elimination Diet which was really strict yeah and within two weeks I had no migraines I felt better my skin was better I felt like myself.
Again and I really never looked back from there so that was really the Catalyst for me um but unfortunately at that time I didn’t get to enjoy so many of the foods that were a delicious and B a big part of family life for us you know I went on my own journey of trying to learn how to make some of those Foods nothing serious you know I ended up in a.
Different career than I am now and at a certain point I met my husband and we moved in together and I would make these breakfasts for us as was our family tradition but I would make him something and then I would make myself something it was real labor intensive and um one day he said you know this is so silly like you should just make something we.
Can both enjoy and I thought yeah that sounds cool so then I bought a million little bags of flowers and I made our pancake mix and he loved it but it was such a pain because I literally use all these little bags of things and every time I had to put it together and it was just you know hard to do um and so then at another point he said why don’t you.
Just make more of it like can we order a bunch of this stuff and just like make a big bin which for us at the time was about five pounds so I did that and we just thought that was super cool and we gave it to some friends and family that maybe had some similar allergen needs and we came up with our waffle mix and this was literally just for my own needs.
And for our family and at this point we had two kiddos and my dad the restaurant tour said hey can I bring this to a restaurant to see if they’d like it and I said I guess so and so he did that they said hey when can you get this to us I said I have no idea I don’t do this so fast forward a couple years I mean we literally Let It Go for a couple.
Years and I was pregnant with our third kiddo and I went into the same restaurant and said hey I don’t know if you remember me but you know I had this pancake mix you tried and he said yes I remember you I still want this okay well would you let me use your kitchens and I’ll figure out how to get licensed and just you know I mean we were totally off.
The cuff just figuring this out and he said yeah absolutely so I would come in super early in the morning before my other job and I would make them pancake and waffle mix and then our crep mix just for their restaurants oh wow and that’s really how it all started okay so you’re you’re in this career you’re married you got the three kiddos going.
At it you’re you know you’re dealing with with career stuff you’re dealing with family stuff and you’re like you know you know what maybe I want to turn this into a business maybe this is something that I could do like for real like for life exactly what was the first major challenge that you remember when you were really starting out with josies.
I think the first thing that was just really a base need was when someone asked if they could buy it outside the restaurant and we didn’t want to say no um because we were trying to build it but we just had no idea what to do right so I mean lit Lally it was as simple as sitting down and Googling like what do I have to do to do this do I need a label.
What are the restrictions how do I get a label you know all of the above um it was figuring out serving sizes by going to the right website and researching it um and we didn’t have any special skills for that other than a computer and just wanting to figure it out oh wow yeah so as time has gone on and you you have learned so much in this.
Industry and the UPS the Downs inet what can you recall as your proudest moment with the brand you know I think our proudest moment goodness there’s there’s probably a lot yeah I get very proud when I hear my children pitching to people that they should try our products their their friends parents and all these things and they say hey they went.
Out and bought it a a very personal proud thing for me because I love that but I think that when we get reviews from people who say you know I have a son who was recently diagnosed with Celiac we haven’t found anything that he loved and like just literally brought tears to my eyes that he said he was eating pancakes like he.
Remembered those are really special moments and really proud moments because I get that you know I was that person I get that everyone wants yummy food to eat but so many of the products that we’ve created surround these memories with family and family time and that’s really near and dear uh to all of our hearts here earlier in.
2021 in January uh we did Good Morning America Steals and Deals yeah and that was a gigantic undertaking for our little business and it required a wild amount of hustle and all the things and you know we pulled it off and it went really well and I’m was so incredibly proud of that yes that’s a huge accomplishment because like you said.
With everything going on with the pandemic and small business is just booming everywhere from all different aspects for you guys to have that opportunity to get you know connected with Good Morning America that’s huge that’s it’s very very big huge you know and it felt like um it felt like an opportunity we couldn’t pass up but it.
Also was something that we had no idea to put how to put it together at that scale yeah so again you know we just sat down and said okay we’re gonna do this we’re gonna figure it out and off we go and it’s really what we did I love it I love it now I was introduced to you guys last year when they did the gluten-free festival and they were doing everything.
Virtually so people were getting shipments and stuff to our house and yeah so I got introduced to you guys by that and I want to say about the the mix um I love it it’s just it’s you can you can kind of just like tailor it the way that you like it and make it nice and fluffy it doesn’t take much it just it’s you know you can’t tell like okay this.
Is gluten-free like I was like well what’s the difference cuz awesome good I love it that’s the we one they’re always just really light and fluffy so I want to talk about some of the different products that you guys offer in addition to the waffle and the pancake mixes sure yeah so we also have our CRP.
Mix and that’s very specific to what it is uh we have a CRP 101 video now that we filmed this year and a little bit of guidance because sometimes if people aren’t familiar with crates it feels maybe a little tricky but you really don’t need any need special equipment to make our Crepes and um like I said we offer a lot of guidance on that so.
That’s the yellow bag the pancake is the red bag the waffle is the blue bag and then our green bag which is we call the muffin and more is really a on toone flour blend so there’s no sugar salt or leavening in there so we created it to be a mix for muffins hence the name but then we got to working with it and I was.
Making pie crust and bread and all kinds of things with it and so we realized we really needed to Market it as you know this allpurpose blend that you can do so much with so we have lots and lots of recipes on the website um using that and just all kinds of things and more getting at it all the time yes yes I I absolutely love that and it just the the.
Product itself speaks for itself in all honesty now I want to talk a little bit about some of those recipes now the holidays are coming up you know people are going to have their their holiday gatherings in a few weeks and pancakes of course that has to be on the that that right there is on the the list of things I mean how can you have holidays.
Without pancakes but in addition to that in addition to that what are some some really fun holiday treats that people can create with your product yeah so I mean we try to create recipes with all of them but obviously we do the most with that muffin and more because we use it like flour so some really popular recipes around there.
Would be our rollout cookies just a classic Christmas cookie that you can decorate any way you like we have a really delicious um roll that uh has yeast in it so it’s risen it’s light and fluffy that is also vegan so it works for vegan diets but also egg and dairy and gluten allergies and you know all of our products are produced in a totally.
Vegan facility it’s 100% egg free dairy free nutree lots of freeze in there so those rolls work for so many people and they’re really really delicious my kiss asks for them very much on the regular and then also the pie crust the pie crust is something that we um have Bakers and bakeries use and people at home it works so beautifully and it’s.
Flaky and yummy and not um hard like a lot of pie crust can get like physically hard to chew um it’s tender and nice so those are great and then really popular recipe that we see um on the website during the holidays are our Le waffles you ever had those no what are Le waffles Le waffles are yeast risen waffle so you have to make it ahead of.
Time it does rise and it also has pearl sugar in it which are like little chunks of sugar so when it Cooks makes these little pockets of caramelized sugar within the waffle that’s a little thicker a little yeasty because of the rising it is so delicious oh my gosh Josie I’m coming by for Saturday breakfast I put that on my.
List all about it I am here for it that sounds amazing yeah good oh my goodness so Josie what is up next for you guys what what can we talk about that maybe on the horizon yeah so we just launched a new website in October um so we have all kinds of new information on there it’s aesthetically really beautiful we worked.
Really hard on the you experience just being really easy to navigate and a big thing we did was uh recipe filtering so now you can filter by allergen by type of recipe by mix so that’s really exciting that’s there now we have some fun holiday deals there right now as well and in the New Year we have a breakfast club coming which is like a.
Subscription plan and that’s sort of a little bit of a secret still but that will be coming soon um you know so people can just Place their orders and then um place the inals that they wanted and it will be coming to your house okay sounds like a plan you guys got it figured out Josie I like that I’m not sure we have’t figured out we have a lot.
Of big ideas and we work hard on it yes yes and you’re definitely moving in the right direction Josie thank you so much for joining us today we appreciate you my pleasure thank you not a problem and let everyone know again what’s the best way for them to get more information and how to follow you guys on social media on social media we are jsgs and you can.
Find us online at josb gs.com I love it I appreciate each and every one of you guys thank you so much for all of your love and support keeping in mind anyone to tell you that you can’t do what you want to do you look them Square in the face you tell them don’t believe me just watch watch what I do watch me make it happen Watch Me Make History that’s what.
We’re doing this for the history books social media is nice but real life is so much better until next time you guys
