Breakfast is the most important meal of the day, but many don’t have time to either make it or sit down and eat it. That’s a problem two local cousins wanted to solve. They decided to start their own business, Dozy Oats, is proving nutritious meals to customers—and local food banks.
Jeff Freedman and Dana Wantman are cousins and lifelong friends. They also both work in advertising. Jeff was at a client meeting when a bunch of breakfast options were brought in—pastries and overnight oats.
“And I was like overnight oats like they’ve been sitting in milk overnight,” said Jeff Freedman, the Co-founder of Dozy Oats. “Do I really want that? But it was the healthiest option. And I tried it and I was like, wow, this is actually really good.”
Jeff decided to get on the overnight oat train.
“I started trying out these recipes,” said Jeff. “I was looking at stores, trying to find, hey, can I get dried oats, can I make it? And there were no, like, pre-made oats anywhere. So I figured, all right, well, why not start a company?”
Jeff reached out to Dana—who went to school for nutrition counseling and had a passion for health and wellness--to see if he wanted to join his new business venture.
“We’ve always wanted to kind of do something together,” said Dana Wantman, the co-founder of Dozy Oats. “And this seemed like a perfect opportunity.”
The one stipulation for Dana: make this available for his kids to eat— they both have Celiac Disease.
“It’s going to have to be gluten-free, you know, and healthy and something that my kids will love,” said Dana. “So they became part of the testing process as well, and they loved them.”
But creating something healthy that also tastes good—Jeff and Dana admit-- was a tricky combination. Jeff’s basement turned out to be a test lab for the last year and a half.
“What we see here is ten recipes that made it through the testing of our family and friends,” said Jeff. “We had a lot of feedback, a lot positive, but there were a lot like, don’t put this out there.”
Jeff and Dana use certified, gluten-free oats, naturally dried fruit, and date powder instead of added sugar. After nailing down the recipes, the two came up with the name ‘Dozy Oats’.
“The oats are tired, you pour in the jar, you cover them with a blanket of milk so they can sleep overnight,” said Jeff. “They sleep overnight in the fridge and the Dozy Oats wake up and they wake up ready to eat.”
After Jeff and Dana searched for more than three months looking for a co-packer, they happened to find one right here in their backyard in Boston, partnering with Community Work Services.
“They employ people with disabilities or recently incarcerated people and give them jobs,” said Jeff. “So everything kind of came together right, for that. It was just this great organization that’s doing good in our community of Boston and is able to put it together for us.”
Dozy Oats just started selling online to consumers in March—and Jeff and Dana’s mission is to give back to a community food bank each month. Their first donation was to Needham Community Council Food Pantry because that’s where their first boxes of Dozy Oats were sold.
“It’s one of the easiest things we can do as just good business people, good people and, you know, help address a really important issue,” said Jeff.
Just like the ingredients on the package, the mission of Dozy Oats is simple—make the most important meal of the day a nutritious one—and offer it to everyone in the community.
“For a kid not being able to have a healthy breakfast seems like a shame,” said Dana. “So it was we built a whole model around how do we create something that’s really nutritious, taste really great, is easily accessible for people, and then how do we make sure that you know, we help out the communities where our customers are and make sure that people who want this have access to it?”
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