Burlington Native Turns Grandmother's Recipe Into Piedmont Pennies Snack Business

Becca Wright's grandmother, known as Grandbetty, never thought the crackers were worth the trouble. Neither did Wright's father, who had the same entrepreneurial instinct as a young man and was told the same thing: "Son, no one is going to work this hard for what you can sell these for. This is a great treat."

That family verdict held for years. Then Wright, a Burlington native, built a UNC-Chapel Hill MBA project around the question of whether Grandbetty was wrong.

She was.

Wright launched the biscuit crackers online under the name Piedmont Pennies, starting with friends helping her produce 15 to 20 pounds per week. She rented a commercial kitchen off Franklin Street until demand outpaced what that arrangement could handle. The business has since expanded to a commercial kitchen in Matthews, where Wright now runs a seven-person team.

The product sits in its own category. "They're not a cheese straw, and they're not a cheese nip... They're something entirely different," said Jordan, identified in coverage of the business. The ingredient list is deliberately simple: spices, flour, butter, cheese, and rice cereal, with the cereal serving the specific functional role of maintaining crunch.

Wright manages every batch closely. "Quality is really important with small batches, so every single batch we have to keep an eye on," she said.

The jalapeno pimento cheese variety has emerged as a standout. "The jalapeno pimento cheese is my favorite one. There's a zetiness to it. It's got real pimento cheese and peppers in there," Wright said.

The business is woman-owned and produces everything in-house. "We're woman-owned and operated, and I think it's really big that we self-manufacture," Wright said.

The recipe that Grandbetty passed to Wright's father, and that Wright's father passed along to her, now anchors a company that has scaled well past the living room quantities her grandmother once dismissed. The family treat that was never supposed to be a business has become one.