How did Elizabeth Stein grow Purely Elizabeth for 17 years and still own most of it when she sold?

Situation

I have been buying Purely Elizabeth granola for years. For a long time, the only place I could find it was Whole Foods. Now it seems to be in every grocery store I walk into.

It started in 2009 in Elizabeth Stein's apartment on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, with her hallway doubling as the office, and it did not start as granola. Stein was a holistic nutrition counselor. She put $5,000 of her savings into ingredients and a website and began selling muffin mix made with quinoa, chia seeds, and coconut sugar.

Then, in 2011, her mom came to visit. Stein had been experimenting with a granola recipe, even though, by her own admission, she had never eaten granola in her life. Her mom tasted a batch fresh out of the oven and told her, “This needs to be your next product.” Then her mom picked up the phone, called the buyers one by one, and got Purely Elizabeth into about 40 Whole Foods stores in the Mid-Atlantic region. “My mom, I will say, was the best salesperson,” Stein has said. Revenue that year was about $200,000.

Two years later, Stein was on the subway when an email came in from Whole Foods. They were losing money, they told her, by not having her in every region, and they were taking her national. By 2013, sales had passed $1 million.

She did not take a dollar of outside money for eight years. When she finally did, in 2017, it was $3 million, with General Mills' venture arm among the backers. By then the business was doing just over $12 million a year in sales and sat in more than 10,000 stores. “We have been self-funded since inception,” she said at the time, “and I think that I always felt like I had to get to ‘X’ milestone and at that point would take on outside funding.”

Her second and last raise came in January 2022, $50 million led by SEMCAP Food & Nutrition, with Fresh Del Monte joining. That brought her total outside funding to about $53 million across 17 years. Revenue reached roughly $150 million by the end of 2024, and Forbes reports the company is on track to top $300 million this year.

On August 14, 2026, Ferrero, the family-owned company behind Nutella, announced it will buy Purely Elizabeth. Stein stays on as CEO. Neither company disclosed the price. Forbes estimates Ferrero is paying more than $850 million, that Stein still owned about two-thirds of the company, and that she will take home roughly $400 million after taxes. Those are estimates, not confirmed numbers.

When Forbes asked how she got there, her answer was short. “I never put pressure on myself to raise money early on. I kept my head down,” she said. “I wanted to bootstrap. I didn't have a need to grow quickly.”

Insight

There is a lot of talk right now about raising money. Angel investors, venture capital, the pitch deck, the round. It can start to sound like the only serious way to build a business. In a service business, the same conversation shows up as a partner who wants to buy in, a friend or family member offering to invest, or the bank offering a bigger line of credit. Stein spent eight years letting the business fund itself before she chose another option.

Money for growth is never free. When a partner or investor puts money into your business, you pay for it with a piece of the business, and you only get to give that piece away once. The earlier you take the money, the bigger the piece, because the business has not proven much yet. A partner who buys in for $100,000 when the whole business is valued at $500,000 owns a fifth of it. Wait until the business is valued at $5 million, and the same $100,000 buys 2 percent. A loan costs you no ownership. You pay for it with interest every month, even when the growth it was meant to fund arrives late.

Stein waited until the business had proven a lot. By the time she took her first outside dollar, she had eight years of sales, more than $12 million a year in revenue, and a national relationship with Whole Foods. Investors were buying into a business that had already proven itself, so she could raise more money for less of the company. That is how she could raise $53 million over 17 years and still own about two-thirds when she sold.

The other piece was pace. “I didn't have a need to grow quickly” means the business paid for its own growth. The profit from each bag of granola funded the next store, the next flavor, the next region. That sets a natural speed limit. And nobody outside the business was setting the timeline.

Owning the majority meant the biggest decision stayed hers, too. When it came time to sell, she chose who to sell to. She picked a family-owned company because, in her words, “They aren't looking at quarters. Ferrero is looking at generations.”

You will probably never raise a round, and you do not need to. A partner's stake, a friend's investment, and a bank loan are all ways to pay for growth before the business can pay for it itself. Whatever growth looks like in your business, this is a calculation worth running against your own numbers.

Application

Before you spend on growth, ask where the money is coming from. Every dollar you use to grow comes from one of three places: money the business has already earned, money you borrow, or money from someone who wants a piece of the business in return. Each one costs you something different. Earned money costs you patience. Borrowed money costs you interest every month, even before the growth shows up. Money from a partner or investor costs you a share of everything you build after that. Think about the last big thing you spent on to grow—a hire, a new service, a bigger space. Which one paid for it?

Let the business show you what it can afford. Before your next hire, ask a simple question: how much new work does this person need to bring in before she pays for herself? It is almost always more than her salary, because the work she brings in has its own costs too. Get a rough answer from your numbers, or ask your bookkeeper to help you find it. If that work is already on the calendar or close to signing, your business can carry the hire. If it is not there yet, you have found your own speed limit, and you can plan around it instead of hoping.

Be careful with promises of ownership. You will probably never sell stock to an investor, but a piece of the business can still get promised in quieter ways: a partner who wants a stake, a key employee offered a share of the profits, a handshake deal over lunch. In the moment, those promises can feel generous and small. They grow every year your business grows, and they come with you to the day you sell. Before you offer anyone a piece, understand what that piece is worth now, and what it could become worth.

A note especially for women founders. There is a quiet pressure to look bigger, faster, and some of that pressure right now sounds like raising money. To hire ahead of the revenue, to say yes to the investor or partner who wants in, to prove you are serious by spending like you are. Stein kept her head down and let the business earn its growth. There is nothing unserious about building that way.

Takeaway

Purely Elizabeth did take outside money. Stein took it late, after the business had proven itself, and in between she let the profit from each sale pay for the next step.

For your business, the money for growth comes from what the business earns, a loan, a partner, or your own cash. The question is the same one she answered for 17 years: what is this dollar going to cost me, and is now the right time to take it?

“The most expensive dollar you will ever take is the one you take before your business has proven what it is worth.”

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