Behind the Brand
GoNanas was founded by Morgan Lerner and Annie Slabotsky, who first met as freshmen at the University of Michigan. Morgan and Annie happened to be dorm neighbors and quickly bonded over a mutual love for healthy food and baking. Growing increasingly frustrated with the lack of tasty and nutritious food options on campus, they decided to start making their own better-for-you baked goods. Annie invited Morgan to her parents’ house an hour away, where they made their very first banana bread loaf using gluten-free oat flour instead of regular flour. Though they accidentally burned it by preheating the oven to 500 degrees (rather than 350 degrees), Morgan and Annie still got a taste of the delicious center of the loaf and immediately knew they had something special. GoNanas was born on the car ride back to campus.
Morgan and Annie set up a bake sale outside a coffee shop on campus, and shortly thereafter began to sell their banana bread loaves around school and at some retail locations throughout Michigan. After graduating, they both got full-time jobs and moved to Chicago, still continuing to expand their banana bread business. When the COVID pandemic hit and caused all of their retail partners to shut down overnight, they saw an opportunity to come out with at-home baking mixes, when everyone was stuck at home and concidentally, banana bread was BLOWING UP. Fortunately, FOX 2 News Detroit caught wind of the mixes, leading to a GoNanas feature and a flood of orders. Just 1 month after launching their mixes online, they got approached by Nordstrom Rack to go nationwide, and subsequently, Morgan and Annie committed full-time to the business back in 2020. They're now in over 2,000 retail doors and reach over 20M people online monthly with their 2000+ micro and macro influencer ambassadors. With new, Limited Edition, mouth-watering flavors every single month, GoNanas has become the go-to baking mix for thousands and thousands of banana bread and baked good lovers across the country.