GRANDBETTY'S POPULAR PENNIES.

• Author: Martin, Cathy

Cheese please! Becca Wright turns a family recipe into a burgeoning gourmet snack.

Running a commercial bakery was far from Becca Wright's mind when she enrolled in the MBA program at UNC Chapel Hill in 2019.

But the idea for Piedmont Pennies had been baking since 2016, when the Burlington native drew up an unofficial business plan after sharing the crunchy, cheesy snacks--based on a cherished family recipe--as holiday gifts. At the time, she was working for Deloitte Consulting in Washington, D.C.

"I made Pennies in my Dupont Circle row house for my clients," Wright says. Impressed, they asked, "Where did you get these? Did you buy them at Whole Foods?"

Soon after, the Carolina grad returned to Chapel Hill to pursue her MBA, with concentrations in entrepreneurship and venture capital. When COVID-19 derailed plans for an in-person internship at Facebook (now Meta) in Menlo Park, California, the idea of turning Piedmont Pennies into a bona fide business returned.

"I had so much free time at home, and I was working on the Instagram [account for Piedmont Pennies] behind the scenes," Wright says. After completing her virtual internship for the social-media behemoth and mulling a full-time job offer, she launched the brand online in September 2020, renting a commercial kitchen in Chapel Hill.

With the holiday season approaching, the business exploded. "I had my MBA friends in there hand-pinching Pennies from 8 p.m. to 2 a.m. People were shipping them as gifts, because no one was buying stuff in person," says Wright.

With momentum for the brand building, she declined the Facebook offer and decided to make Piedmont Pennies her full-time occupation. "I thought, I just really want to try this. If I'm going to do it, it's going to be now," she says. She moved to the Queen City in December 2020 with her husband, Coble, a Charlotte native.

Cheese straws, or pennies, are a holiday staple in many Southern households. Wright's gourmet version is based on her late grandmother's recipe, tweaked by her father after her "Grandbetty," who lived in Rocky Mount, developed arthritis and could no longer "pinch" pennies. The flour is milled by Lindley Mills in Alamance...