Clicky

Sayville mom on a mission with gluten free food business

|

Establishing allergen-free meals her whole family could enjoy became Mayra Robayo’s top priority when her youngest child was diagnosed with life-threatening food allergies four years ago.

And when her friends and neighbors started to rave about her recipes, Robayo’s mission expanded.

“They were telling me that I should sell it,” said Robayo, owner of Precise Gluten Free Foods. “I was like ‘Really?’ But then I saw a lot of other moms going through the same thing and I said, ‘Maybe I should look into this.'”

What came next was a visit to the Stony Brook Small Business Development Center, where an adviser helped Robayo get all her ducks in a row to create her organic, gluten free packaged food business.

“I found a lady there that guided me through everything,” said Robayo, 37, who previously worked as a marketing manager for 10 years at a major pet supply distributor. “I learned all about the FDA regulations, how to package the food and how it should be labelled.”

The mother of three explained that Precise GF uses carefully selected, high quality ingredients. She said her company was founded to address the need for gluten free products that are also soy and nut free.

The result is a guilt-free, healthy and delicious assortment of pancake, cookie and muffin mixes.

Precise GF products are sold at Cornucopia and Fancy Nancy Country Store in Sayville, the new Fresh Food Supermarket in Oakdale and Sherry’s Market in Babylon. You can also find them on Amazon and on the Precise GF website.

Now, if she can only get her products onto the shelves of Whole Foods Market.

“That’s my goal — selling at Whole Food Market,” she said. “But I need to be in more small stores first.”

So far, Robayo has relied on “knocking on doors” herself to get her products in local stores. But she now has her heart set on hiring a food broker.

“It hasn’t been easy. It’s hard to get your products in stores without using a food broker,” she said. “Unless you’re a broker, they don’t really look at you.”

Precise Gluten Free Foods station at Fresh Food Supermarket in Oakdale.

Robayo notes that as her family continues to manage her daughter’s allergies, the youngster remains “our hero and the inspiration behind Precise GF.”

”The amount of products that are free of the things she’s allergic to is very limited or contains artificial ingredients,” Robayo said, recalling the days that led to the creation of Precise GF. “So, I began making everything at home from scratch.

“The one thing that makes me most proud is to be able to provide safe products for children like our daughter,” she continued. “When you have a child that even the smallest trace of an allergen can send them into anaphalactic shock, safety becomes a priority. When a parent approaches me and thanks me because their child is able to have my pancakes and also loves them — that is everything I could have hoped for.”
One of her biggest challenges in operating her own business is juggling work with being a mom of three.
”I’m very involved in their lives, and running a business at the same time — it’s not easy,” she said. “But I’m on a mission to educate people about food allergies — there are a lot of misconceptions and a lack of knowledge.
”What we thought was a rare problem has now become an epidemic that affects 32 million Americans, Robayo added.
The easiest and quickest way to order Precise GF products is by visiting the company website.

Our Local Supporters