ENTERPRISE
The Universe Wants
These Crackers:
Mary’s Gone Crackers’ Story of Perseverance
By Kat Schuett
On New Year’s Day 1999, Mary Waldner woke up with an idea— a calling, one might say. She knew she had to share her crackers with the world.
These were no ordinary crackers. After suffering for years from an undiag-
nosed illness, at the age the of 43, Waldner
found out that she had celiac disease, an
autoimmune disease caused by an intoler-
ance to gluten, the protein found in wheat,
rye and barley and an additive in a plethora
of products. Not only that, her son had
celiac disease as well.
Frustrated by the lack of quality gluten-free options
in grocery stores, as well as at parties and restaurants,
Waldner started mixing up something to munch on
that she could take with her anywhere. As people tried
the cracker, they loved it and soon she was making
batches of 250 crackers in her home kitchen, packaging them in hand-labeled bags and watching them fly
off the shelves at her local natural foods store.
Since then, the gluten-free category has exploded and Waldner and her husband Dale Rodrigues, the visionaries of Mary’s Gone Crackers, have created a line of products that has not
only become a top seller for those avoiding gluten, but a superstar mainstream product as well—
