Our Story

It Started Because I Got Fired

I was 28, freshly let go from an energy-tech company in California. Wrong job, wrong career, wrong company. Right decision, I just didn't know it yet.

I had time on my hands and I was cooking a lot. One morning I grabbed a bag of granola at a coffee shop, looked at the price, and thought: I could make this myself. So I did. The first batch was rough. It got better fast.

I'd been a "gym guy" since I was a teenager, always had some type of beard, and an impressive flannel collection. A friend took one look and nailed it: "Call it Burlyman Granola." Everything clicked.

Then I got scared. I went back to a W2 job and spent most of my career inside startups, always one step removed from the ownership I actually wanted. But Burlyman never left my head.

Strength Is Longevity

I spent my twenties bouncing between Boston, San Francisco, Venice Beach, and Miami — lifting weights, trying to figure out what "health" actually meant. For many years it meant no real diet, cardio if I wanted to "lose weight", and no change to a single life filled with lots of beer and plenty of late nights. Then, my wife and I had a kid, I got tired, I got older, we moved from the west coast back east closer to family, and I slowly realized:

Strength isn't just about how many plates you can stack on a bar (though I love the feeling of squatting heavy). It's how long you can keep showing up.

It's metabolic armor. It's being the dad who can still chase his kids, still pull 400+ pounds off the floor, and flatly refuses to accept that getting older means getting weaker.

That's why Burlyman exists.

One Protein. One Source.

Every bag is baked in a real kitchen with ingredients you can pronounce: rolled oats, grass-fed whey protein concentrate, real butter, maple syrup, walnuts, almonds. That's the whole list.

No seed oils. No soy. No refined sugar. No franken-protein.

We use grass-fed whey because the science matters: a better amino acid profile and more leucine, the trigger for muscle repair. We use butter because it's delicious and we're not scared of flavor. We use maple syrup because real food deserves a real sweetener.

The result: 16g of protein per serving on its own. Add a cup of Greek yogurt and you're at 35g of protein, under 400 calories.

Why "Burlyman"?

People ask about the name. Fair enough.

I'm burly. I'm a man. I make granola. It started that simply. But the meaning grew with the brand. Burlyman isn't a body type or a gender, it's a stance. Rugged, resilient, unapologetic about health. It's the person who takes their nutrition seriously without taking themselves too seriously.

Man or woman, 25 or 65, gym rat or weekend hiker, if you care about what goes in your body and refuse to settle for garbage dressed up as health food, you're a Burlyman.

Every Bag Fights Back

One more thing. 10% of profits from every bag goes to cancer research.

Not during awareness month. Not as a limited-time promo. Every bag. Every time.

Cancer has taken too many people I love and threatened too many more. This isn't a marketing play, it's a promise. Because strength was never only about muscle. It's about fighting for a long, healthy life for yourself, and for the people you love.

We're building this one bag at a time, out of a real kitchen, with real ingredients, for people who give a damn.

Thanks for being here.

— Mike