Our Company

Our administrative offices and our production facility are now located in Gridley, California-in northern California's agricultural valley. We are housed in a beautiful 54,000 square foot building that is dedicated gluten-free, certified organic and kosher. Mary's Gone Crackers has assembled a terrific team of people committed to getting our fabulous crackers onto store shelves and into your kitchens!

Please contact us with your comments or suggestions.

Mary's Story

In 1994, I discovered that my lifelong battle with digestive pain and fatigue had been caused by an inability to digest gluten--a protein found in wheat, barley, rye and most oats. Once I eliminated those grains from my diet, the symptoms I had struggled with disappeared. (My son was found to have the same intolerance). As excited as I was to have found the source of my pain, I was also faced with the difficulty of finding things to eat in a culture that bases much of its food on the grains I couldn't eat. Having been a creative baker my whole life, I started experimenting in my kitchen. I knew I could live without bread, but the thought of not having my brownies was intolerable. I played with the alternative flours--rice, corn, garbanzo bean, tapioca, potato starch and potato flour, and others--until I was able to reproduce my brownies to my satisfaction. Pancakes, waffles, muffins, cookies and other essentials soon followed. I got better and better at blending the different flours into something that resembled the texture and consistency of wheat flour and produced different, but delicious results.

Going out in the world was a different matter. While my friends sat in restaurants filling up with warm sour dough bread slathered with sweet butter, I sat hungry. When I went to parties with tables full of cheeses and dips, there wasn't a cracker or bread stick that I could eat. I got an idea for a base for baked goods using brown rice. I played with it in my head for months and then started working with it in my kitchen. I tried it in a variety of forms before I hit on the cracker. That took many tries as well before I eventually developed the recipe for my unique rice cracker--brown rice, quinoa, flax seeds, sesame seeds, salt and wheat free tamari. I made them in small batches for myself, took them in little bags when I went to restaurants and parties, and felt less deprived. Then I watched as others started eating them. Everyone, from finicky teens to young children, to adults with a range of palates, loved them. I had to make more, so that when I went out, there was enough for everyone, not just me.

Soon I was making ovens full, buying sealable bags and giving them away. I took them with me everywhere and never brought any back home. They tasted great and stayed fresh for a long time. And there was nothing like them on the market. In 2000, I decided that these crackers needed to be mass produced. I think it was after I had taken a big batch with me on a trip to the Caribbean. My friend told me not to bother because everything gets stale and soggy in the warm, humid tropical air. I brought them anyway, hoping that they would withstand the environment and they did! One night while I was there we invited a few people from my friend's new neighborhood to have hors d'oeuvres and wine and I put out my crackers. Once again I watched as a room full of adults (from all over the world) tasted my crackers for the first time. A quizzical look would cross their faces as they took their first bite, and then they would look at the cracker and say, "wow, these crackers are delicious, where did you get them?."

We now have nationwide distribution and are reaching new fans every day. (We are also distributed in Canada under the name "Mary's Organic Crackers.") I am VERY happy not to be making them in my kitchen anymore! I'm looking forward to bringing you my other delicious, organic, gluten-free baked goods also developed in my home kitchen.

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