Granola, For Starters
Israel Rivera’s cherry pistachio granola is winning over farmers market shoppers, but his vision for Cousins Food Company goes far beyond breakfast.
Written by Lena Anderson | Photographed by Joe Worthem
If you happen upon a farmers market where Israel Rivera is selling his signature Cousins Granola, here’s a bit of advice: don’t buy just one container. For those with weaker willpower, it doesn’t take long to blow through this highly addictive snack.
Rivera hears this all the time from customers. “They always want more,” he said, laughing.
The granola began with a Christmas gift last year. Rivera thought it was the best granola he had ever tasted, so he tracked down the recipe. But no matter how many times he made it, he couldn’t recreate what he had tasted.
With years of experience in professional kitchens, Rivera suspected he was missing something.
So he started experimenting.
The missing piece turned out to be an ingredient from his earlier restaurant days in New York: a praline wedge made for a decadent whiskey cake. These praline pieces were kept in the pantry, where kitchen staff would often sneak bites whenever they passed by.
Rivera wondered what would happen if he incorporated those elements into granola.
Eventually, he found the flavor he had been chasing. That experiment became the foundation for Cousins’ signature cherry pistachio granola.
Soon, Rivera’s taste testers were asking the inevitable question: Where are you selling this?
Turning something made for fun in his kitchen into an actual business venture was intimidating. Rivera said he had to overcome a tendency to undervalue his own work. But the local food community helped convince him that his product was worth it.
Cousins Granola is intentionally versatile.
Rivera thinks of it less as a breakfast food and more as a flavor and texture component that can move between sweet and savory dishes. He is particularly focused on texture, and granola provides the crunch that can make a dish work.
That attention to detail carries through the process. The ingredients are straightforward, but Rivera is selective about what goes into the recipe. Everything is toasted by hand, then baked and cooled in a particular way. Rivera's daughter, Eviana, is often by his side, helping out in the kitchen.
Rivera describes Cousins Food Company as a family operation built around the idea that everyone has something they do especially well. Entrepreneurship runs through his family, he said, going back to his great-grandmothers.
When Rivera launched the company, he deliberately framed it as something belonging to the whole family.
“This isn’t mine, it’s ours,” he said.
Rivera has been cooking since he was 17, when he started as a dishwasher at Pierce’s 1894, a four-diamond restaurant in Elmira, New York. His uncle, Chef George Edward Hill, an executive chef and pastry chef, was a major influence and helped instill in Rivera a serious appreciation for food.
During the pandemic, Rivera found himself cooking more and experimenting again. He reconnected with people from that first restaurant and began working with some of its old recipes. Their encouragement helped reignite the idea that food could become something more than a hobby.
Now, demand has outgrown Rivera’s home kitchen. He has secured a dedicated commercial kitchen in Water Valley, where most of the equipment is already in place. Once he gets the final details and receives health department approval, Cousins can move into wholesale and retail. Rivera already has purchase orders and commitments from supermarkets, restaurants and other businesses waiting for him to supply them.
But selling granola is only the beginning.
Rivera envisions Cousins eventually encompassing restaurants, food trucks, grocery products and manufacturing. More importantly, he wants the commercial kitchen to become a platform for other people who have big ideas but lack the money or infrastructure to bring them to life.
“How can we help you bring something to the table?” he said. “How can we help you get this thing out of your mind and into the real world?”
It is an ambitious vision, and Rivera acknowledges that some of it is admittedly utopian. But for him, the point of building a business is not simply to sell more food. It is to create opportunities for people to pursue the things they are good at.
That philosophy starts at home, with his family and the people who work alongside him. Rivera believes taking care of the people inside the company first will naturally shape how
Cousins treats its customers and the broader community.
For now, it starts with a container of granola at the farmers market. But Rivera is already thinking about everything else that might eventually come to the table.
Comments