Town Haul Rewind: Hannah Barnstable, Founder of Seven Sundays

The most important meal of the day got a muesli makeover when Hannah Barnstable brought the super grain to the states from a trip to New Zealand.

In this Town Haul Rewind, host Amy Koonin Taylor sits down with Seven Sundays founder Hannah Barnstable to discuss not only the health benefits of her products but how this Minnesota-bred B Corp is championing some serious social and environmental change.

On what inspired Seven Sundays’ unique brand name:

HANNAH BARNSTABLE: “We all learned at an early age [that] breakfast is the most important meal of the day. But if you saw, if you really took a look at what people were eating or doing and their routines in the morning, it didn’t look like we were setting ourselves up for success… so, I felt that the one day where people did eat and live more intentionally, just talking with friends, was Sunday. Sunday was your planning day. Sunday was the day that you took that extra time to enjoy a meal instead of racing through it. And so when the idea was sparked to create a different sort of breakfast product, I wanted there to be that experience element, that intentional element that we feel on Sundays, a lot of us, but carried throughout the week.”

On how Seven Sundays is utilizing food streams for inspiration:

HANNAH BARNSTABLE: “We know that there was a food stream, there was food waste with this high protein sunflower meal. If you think about it, there’s sunflower fields growing around the Midwest, they have super deep roots, they’re great for the soil, but the output is a sunflower seed or sunflower oil and sunflower oil has taken off [in recent years]. So, when people do sunflower oil, there’s this high protein, high fiber meal leftover. We are the first cereal to come out and we worked with the processor, various people around Minnesota to develop a cereal made with that meal so that we’re able to remove that from the waste stream, but also increase the demand for the sunflower meal. We find out what these farmers need to grow and how we can incorporate more of these types of things into the foods that we’re making.”

On how the global pandemic shifted consumer habits:

HANNAH BARNSTABLE: “The way that you grocery shop is a little bit different for most of us than how it was pre-pandemic. The places that people are buying it and the way that we promote our product or create awareness are different. We have had to adjust to that. We put a lot more effort into our website and subscriptions and things like that where people can have food delivered. We work with Instacart on creating awareness of our products. We do more digital ads. So we’ve put some more resources toward that. So those channels are all really, really growing for us. And then sort of traditional retail, I think it’s back to where it was, but it feels like there’s more consumer emphasis on still getting groceries in new ways, through different platforms.”

On where Hannah sees Seven Sundays in five years:

HANNAH BARNSTABLE: “I see us as a cupboard staple. So, more and more people are familiar with what we’re doing and where we’re headed.”

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Amy Koonin Taylor is Marketing Content and Media Manager at Rubicon. To stay ahead of Rubicon’s announcements of new partnerships and collaborations around the world, be sure to follow us on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter, or contact us today.