Betsy: Grow Your Own Way

Betsy Grinder started her business and then two weeks later the world shut down. Almost to the day four years later, she’s celebrating the grand opening of her own location in the middle of the town she’s always called home.

Your Daily Serving, Betsy’s Monday through Thursday fresh meal delivery service began as an idea she shared on Facebook. Following some feedback from friends and the community, she began renting the kitchen at the Corry VFW and cooked new recipes each day. And each day Betsy loaded up her car with her orders, a list of addresses, and her grandma as her copilot.

When other businesses in the food industry were struggling to pivot and needing to become take-out only, Betsy lucked out. She prepared meals by herself each morning and delivered individually packaged portions to the doorsteps of so many of our neighbors; most of whom are still regular customers to this day.

It is hard to separate those beginning days for her business from the many car rides with her grandma. She fondly remembers getting to spend so much one-on-one time with her and being able to safely get her out of the house during lockdowns. Betsy remarked on how her gram would wave to the customers from the car and then just sit and listen to her gab on and on as she talked about her worries and ideas for her business. “And no one loved coffee more than us!”

Years ago, when Betsy’s space was under different ownership, she took her gram in for coffee and snapped a picture of her in the booth, holding onto her mug. While her sweet gram has since passed, Betsy plans to honor the memory of starting her business with her by her side by putting that picture on the wall beside the booth where it was taken. She will always be a part, and in the passenger’s seat, of this business.

Betsy was born and raised in Corry. She’s the proud daughter of Scott and Julie Grice and is the first to brag about her not-so-little brother, Brock.

Her keen sense of being able to pick out exactly which traits of hers come from which parent comes from an obvious, deep understanding of herself. She is the spitting image of her mom, and she credits Julie for her design skills and being able to see the potential in pieces come together for the bigger vision. She’s turned to her mom a lot in the process of decorating her new location. Her dad, otherwise known as her right-hand man, sous chef, and the guy she calls each morning, is who she inherited her cooking skills, big ideas, and that tireless entrepreneurial spirit from.

“I’m able to do all this because I watched him own a business for years,” she said, “He taught me that no one is going to take care of you if you don’t.”

She gives a pensive smile while talking about them. Recognizing how each of them, and her husband, are the only reasons she was able to pull everything together and make this next giant step in her business. Her gratitude for those three overflows in the moment as she shares about each thing in the room that they helped with.

While she’s lived in Corry for her “whole little life,” she spent some time after graduating high school living up in Erie and making her own way. By 2012 she had moved back to Corry and worked as a waitress, bartender, and manager for Gigi’s and the Library Bar and Grill. Then two years later, on a Florida beach in February, she married her husband, Aaron.

On nice days, you’ll always be able to catch Betsy and Aaron walking their giant pups, Kona and Penny throughout town. One of her favorite things to do.

For the last ten years the two of them have been building a life together, going to Bills games, taking naps on their boat when they both have a day off, and run their own little zoo at home: the pups, a cat named Phil, and most importantly, Bernie.

Bernie is an over 150-pound, black pig that Betsy somehow convinced Aaron into allowing her to bring home about eight years ago. “Well, he used to be so little,” she says in a voice that is so uniquely hers and comes out every time she mentions something she loves or is excited about.

When she first brought him home, Betsy tested out the vegan lifestyle but now in her line of work there are too many things she really must taste to get right. So, while she’s not vegan or vegetarian like many people think, Bernie certainly is, and he eats better than anyone. There is an almost life-sized canvas photo of Bernie in Betsy’s new location on North Center Street. He is easily the most-loved pig.

Beyond her own thriving business, and a busy home life, Betsy still manages to find the time to give back to her community.

She is the force behind creating the dog park in Mead Park, and she was formally on the board of the United Fund and Mead Park Association. She has helped to organize and plan countless community events, and she’s a volunteer at the Salvation Army, where she was most recently renting the kitchen of for her business for the past two and a half years.

While Blue Zones – Corry was in town, they leaned heavily on Betsy to teach their healthy meals cooking classes, teaching folks of all ages all kinds of plant-based meals and how to make them easily at home. Now with her new location, she cannot wait to start those again once she is settled in.

Betsy was also “gifted” the Corry Farmer’s Market by the late Jean VanTassel. And since 2020, she helped to keep the weekly market running, giving local farmers and growers the opportunity to sell their goods and profit from their hard work. It was a natural fit. The farmers knew her already from being there each week, picking produce for her upcoming meals, and she is the reason the Farmer’s Market begin offering Market bags to be delivered to people in town who could not make it to the Market themselves.

Betsy with her first employee, McKenna.

Photos by Morgan Phelps

 She is always thinking of the well-being of others. While she is known for her grand charcuterie grazing tables, Betsy has also curated countless high-end dining events, both private and ticketed, and has catered large-scale events of all kinds. With an attention to detail that listens to the customers’ wants and then pushes them beyond the familiar into the spectacular, Betsy knows how to make food feel special. She calls it her love language.

Although the busyness of wedding season has caused her to have to take a step back from helping to run the Farmer’s Market, she has somehow found the time to become a farmer herself.

In her never-ending mission to make sure people know where their food is coming from, Betsy started growing her own with the help of 3 Pillarz Farm two summers ago.

“I love getting to work hard, and be alone, and just have my hands in that dirt,” she said.

3 Pillarz Farm is a farm incubator right outside of Corry. It welcomes farmers of all types to use their land to get started with their various farming businesses, with whatever parts of the farm or how much of it they may need. For Betsy that means starting her seedlings in the greenhouse in the spring and caring for about a quarter acre of land she gets to call her own into the late fall.

She plans to be back out in that “soul-soothing dirt” again this summer and hopes to be able to offer more opportunities, especially for kids, to learn about where their food comes from and how to grow their own. Through the YMCA and various Farm-to-School grant funding opportunities, Betsy has been able to have a start into giving this education to local youth and has been invited to teach various cooking classes to kids throughout Erie County.

These things and more she hopes to make a more permanent home for at her new location in the town she loves so much.

“I really had to work hard to get here,” she says in almost a self-reassuring way as we began wrapping up our conversation. “Finding out what worked for me and not listening to other outside opinions was really important.”

Corry will benefit from the opportunity to watch its hometown girl, Betsy, thrive in her new environment.