Seventeen years ago, Elizabeth Stein started making muffin mix in her Upper West Side Manhattan apartment to sell to her nutrition clients. Now she’s worth an estimated $400 million, thanks to the recent sale of her Purely Elizabeth granola and oatmeal brand.

A triathlete, marathoner and nutrition coach with ten clients started promoting her private practice with healthy muffins at the end of her races 17 years ago. That side hustle quickly morphed into an online business peddling baking mixes made in her west side apartment and later transformed into Purely Elizabeth, a popular brand of 40 granolas, oatmeals and cereals now found in supermarkets and specialty stores across the country.

Now the accidental entrepreneur, Elizabeth Stein, is making the biggest sale of her life. On Friday, she agreed to sell her fast-growing $250 million (estimated trailing 12-month revenue) brand to Ferrero, the Italian chocolate and candy giant behind Nutella, Kelloggs cereal and Tic Tacs. While the terms of the deal were not disclosed, Forbes estimates Ferrero is paying more than $800 million, or a multiple of just over 3 times sales, for the entire company, including Stein’s estimated two-thirds stake. The deal for the company, which claims to sell a bag of granola every .7 seconds, is among the largest recently in the natural foods industry.

Stein, 45, who will pocket an estimated $400 million after taxes, will remain CEO. (Stein declined to comment on the financial terms of the deal.) The deal puts Stein in a position that few food founders ever achieve.

“I really hope it shows women that they don't have to choose between being a visionary founder and becoming a scaled CEO,” Stein says, who says staying on as CEO was something that mattered a lot to her. “While those do require different muscles, you can learn and evolve and remain at the table. It’s never shown how uncommon it is for a woman to receive........

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