When the mother-and-daughter team of Nancy Becker, 60, and Bridget Greaney, 26, launched 2Betties in 2018, the Baltimore-based snack company exclusively sold its nutritious doughnut-shaped “rounds” online. Fans of the rounds—which don’t contain grains, peanuts, dairy or added sugars—can now find them in local supermarkets, such as Eddie’s and Graul’s Market, and Becker and Greaney don’t plan on stopping there to bring healthier snacks to the market.
Following approximately 1 1/2 years of consistent growth in sales, 2Betties was asked to pitch its product to a mid-Atlantic Whole Foods in Gaithersburg earlier this year. Unfortunately, COVID-19 paused any progress made as supermarkets and communities began to prepare for shutdown orders in March.
Grocers were more concerned with keeping staples stocked rather than introducing a new brand or product line to their consumers, Becker explains. “It slowed down our growth. We’ll survive, but we won’t thrive the way we were set up to initially because we’re still a new brand,” she says.
Greaney adds that their loyal online customers allowed 2Betties to weather a storm like COVID-19. “We were lucky to have launched originally in 2018 online so that the consumer channel that we had established made situations like this easier,” says Greaney.
Although 2Betties has been able to maintain some semblance of business as usual, many other areas of their Baltimore community had trouble sustaining themselves.
Greaney and Becker felt for the families who relied on free or reduced school lunches and hospital workers who were working overtime to care for the community. Greaney expressed her conviction to help when she saw how people were abandoned and left to figure out ways to combat the unexpected boundary created by the pandemic. “At the beginning of COVID, we were giving back to the community and doing everything we could to show our support,” says Greaney.
The mother-daughter duo initially donated their snack rounds to Baltimore and Washington’s YMCAs to aid in providing children with lunches every day and transitioned their focus to providing snacks for the medical workers at Mercy Hospital. “Despite being small, it takes everyone’s help,” says Greaney. Since the start of COVID-19, the pair has donated more than 1,000 of their snacks to Baltimore initiatives.
2Betties has made giving back to the community a priority even in the toughest of times, and both Greaney and Becker want to continue to give back and help others in whatever ways they can. “It’s the right thing to do and has been something we’ve done since we launched 2Betties in 2018,” says Becker.
Both Becker and Greaney hope to refocus their attention toward expanding wholesale distribution in the coming year when the pandemic hopefully subsides. They anticipate reaching more communities that don’t want to sacrifice taste or nutrition when looking for a snack. Until then, they will both be concentrating on developing new flavors and strengthening their relationships with customers and their communities in Baltimore City and Locust Point.
