August 18, 2026
By Kim Velsey
When Mike Shuster and Lisa Zaccaglini, the founders of Mu Mu Muesli, moved upstate to Sharon Springs in 2001, they never imagined that in a decade they’d be making more than a thousand pounds of muesli a week. The couple, who’d met in an MFA program at Stanford years earlier, loved muesli—an uncooked blend of oats, nuts, and dried fruits typically eaten for breakfast with yogurt—which they’d first tasted on a trip to Switzerland when Shuster was studying abroad. But they hadn’t had any decent muesli since then. “We tried buying some here and it was just terrible,” says Shuster. “It had all this sugar and other additives.”
They’d been living in Greenpoint, trying to paint when they could and paying their bills with artistic carpentry and mosaic work on high-end residential projects. But they were nearing 50 and had recently adopted an elderly Akita from a local animal shelter. When they saw a real estate listing for 88 acres and a decrepit house near Cooperstown, NY, it felt like the right time to make a change.
Shuster and Zaccaglini started making their own muesli after learning about acrylamide, a potentially harmful organic compound that’s created when grains are cooked at high temperatures. (Acrylamide has been linked to cancer in animals.) They settled on a raw blend of all-organic oats, wheat flakes, brown flax seeds, almonds, dates, raisin and cranberries sweetened with apple juice. The couple enjoyed eating and making it so much that in 2008 they decided to try selling it at the farmers market in Schenectady. After all, they knew that there were no compelling alternatives on the market. (Dorset, a muesli brand from then–Prince Charles’ model village made a brief debut in the U.S. market around the same time, then disappeared. King Charles is known to be a muesli lover.) The couple designed the logo, a cow wearing a mu mu (moo moo and mu mu), themselves.
“What’s cool about a farmers’ market is it’s so democratic. You get your own stall, and it’s up to you to sell your stuff,” says Shuster. After success in Schenectady, they started selling at the Syracuse Regional Market. Because many people were unfamiliar with muesli, he and Zaccaglini would hand out 2-ounce paper soufflé cups of muesli and yogurt with wooden spoons. Shuster emphasized the health benefits: raw, organic, no added sugars, oil or sulfates. “If you think about the ingredients of granola today, it’s basically cookie recipes,” he says. They’d often sell 100 bags by 10 a.m.
Although cereal was created as a health food in the 1800s, over the years, most grocery store brands have abandoned any attempt at healthfulness, turning out a highly processed product whose oats and flakes are laden with corn syrup and other unhealthy additives. (Even Quaker Oats does a brisk trade in sugary instant oatmeals these days.) It seemed fitting to Shuster and Zaccaglini that Sharon Springs had once been a 19th-century resort spa, an echo of muesli’s European resort spa roots.
“If you think about the ingredients of granola today, it’s basically cookie recipes.”
Mike Shuster, Co-Founder of Mu Mu Muesli
One day, a Whole Foods executive came to the farmers’ market. Soon, Mu Mu Muesli was on Whole Foods shelves throughout the Northeast region. Shuster and Zaccaglini ramped up production and got a distributor who landed them in the Park Slope Food Coop.
Shuster said there was talk of going national, but they realized that they wanted to scale back, not up. Besides at Whole Foods, they were selling 600 bags a week via their distributor, and online orders were way up because of the visibility of Whole Foods. “It got to be too much,” says Shuster. “It was overwhelming.” They were in their sixties and Zaccaglini was making two 240-pound mixes some days. They had no employees and didn’t want them (they’d tried but realized they hated managing other people and enjoyed working alone). Moreover, they had other interests they wanted to devote time to. A friend runs a mustang sanctuary in the area and they ended up adopting two mustangs. They have also built fairly extensive gardens and walking trails on their property that require tending—last year, they harvested 80 pounds of blueberries. Plus, after their first rescue Akita died, they adopted another and have cats and chickens as well.
The couple decided to leave Whole Foods in 2019. Then their distributor sold his business to another company, which they decided to leave after about a year. But this meant they had to leave the Coop as well if they didn’t find a new distributor. “One of the Coop’s basic requirements is that products be sold through distributors, since ordering directly from a single brand is time-consuming and adds significant operational work,” says Buying and Receiving Coordinator Gillian Chi. “While we do make exceptions, we have to be mindful about how often we do so.”
But, says Chi, “I started to realize that Mu Mu might be a Coop favorite.” She brought it back by ordering from Mu Mu directly. Soon, the Coop began to sell 50 to 70 bags a week. After a few years, Coop buyers decided to add it in bulk, and it could be found in both the retail and bulk aisles for nine months. However, Chi and her team finally decided to sell Mu Mu only in bulk because of its lower price. (As it happens, bulk turned out to be easier for Shuster and Zaccaglini, too.) Today, sales per pound are higher than ever, at more than 100 pounds per week. “We decided to make an exception, and I’m very glad we did,” says Chi. “The only thing I miss about the retail bags is seeing the cow in a mu mu every day.”
Kim Velsey has been a Coop member since 2020. When she’s not writing for the Gazette, she’s a staff writer at New York magazine.