Business I on the cover / entrepreneurships
Staff 'hotos b An ie Baan
Alan Hitsky
Associate Editor
A
hat was pocket money in
igh selool has evolved into a
uccessful nutty livelihood,
bout the only thing the two
don't agree on is when they
started working together.
Jonny's version: "I was 8, and he was
10, and we had a paper route
Danny's version: "He was 3 or 4, and
I was 5 or 6. We sold clay pots that we
dug up under the front porch, and we
sold paper airplanes:'
Now Danny Levy is 43, Jonny Levy is
40, and there's not much else the broth-
ers differ on as the owners of Nuts Are
Good, a manufacturer of dry-roasted,
flavored peanuts, almonds and cashews
being sold around the United States
from 12,000 square feet of space in two
adjacent buildings in Warren.
By the end of 2007, the Levys esti-
mate, they will have sold 150,000
pounds of California almonds, 300,000
pounds of peanuts and pecans from
Georgia, Texas and South Carolina
and cashews they import from India,
Vietnam, east Africa and Indonesia.
While in high school in Berkley and
during their college years, the brothers
worked the holiday season roasting nuts
at kiosks in area shopping malls.
In 1987, while still a student at the
University of Michigan, Danny began
making and selling cinnamon roasted
almonds independently at a mall in
Dry Nuts on page A30
December 13. 2007
A29