Meet Chelsea

When Chelsea O’Neal joined us as one of Bonz Beach Farms’ first influencer partners, she started with a wonderfully simple question:

“Y’all have so many yummy-looking products! Is there anything specific you would like me to work with? If not, what are y’all’s best sellers?”

It was an easy question—but we quickly realized there wasn’t a short answer.

That is because nearly everything Chelsea saw is produced or packaged right here at Bonz Beach Farms in Onaway, Michigan.

We are located in a very rural part of northern Michigan, where we operate a small, self-serve farm market on the honor system. It may not be a bustling supermarket, but it gives us something incredibly valuable: an honest look at what people enjoy enough to purchase again and again.

A few products consistently fly off the shelves.

The Products Our Customers Keep Coming Back For

Our Maple Pecan Granola has earned a reputation for being dangerously difficult to put down. It combines rolled oats, pecans, coconut, sunflower seeds, pure maple syrup and maple sugar to create a deeply toasted, maple-rich granola.

Our Maple Mustard and Maple BBQ Sauce are also consistent favorites. Both take something familiar and give it a distinctly northern Michigan maple character—sweet, savory and made for far more than an occasional novelty meal.

But the product at the center of everything we do is still our pure maple syrup.

It All Begins With 4,400 Maple Trees

Bonz Beach Farms stewards and harvests approximately 4,400 maple trees each season.

When temperatures begin moving above freezing during the day and back below freezing at night, sap starts flowing through the trees. That sap is collected, concentrated and carefully boiled until it becomes pure Michigan maple syrup.

Depending on the season, our trees allow us to produce approximately 1,500 to 2,200 gallons of pure maple syrup annually.

Some of that syrup is bottled just as it is. The rest becomes the foundation for an entire family of maple products.

More Than Maple Syrup

One of those products is pure maple sugar.

Maple sugar can replace ordinary white sugar at a one-to-one ratio in many recipes. It costs more to produce than conventional sugar, but it brings something white sugar simply cannot: a warm, caramelized maple flavor.

Use it in chocolate chip cookies, and the cookies develop a deeper, more golden appearance and a gently toasted flavor. Sprinkle it over buttered toast, oatmeal or fresh fruit, and an everyday food suddenly becomes something special.

We also turn our syrup into pure maple candy.

Maple candy is intensely sweet, but its texture is remarkably smooth. It melts across your tongue without leaving behind the waxy residue or strange aftertaste found in many conventional candies.

It contains no complicated flavor system and no lengthy ingredient list. Its character comes entirely from maple syrup—and it has become one of our strongest-selling products online.

The Newest Addition: Maple Shots

Our Maple Shots began with a request from Kyle's sister, who runs marathons.

She wanted to know whether we could package our maple syrup in a convenient format that she could carry and use during her runs. Athletes need readily available carbohydrates, but many energy gels contain long lists of ingredients, added flavors or unfamiliar compounds.

The answer seemed almost too simple:

Why not use pure maple syrup?

So, right here on the farm, we began packaging individual servings of our syrup as Maple Shots.

Each shot contains exactly one ingredient: pure maple syrup.

There are no stimulants, artificial flavors or mystery ingredients. Just naturally occurring sugar and carbohydrates in a convenient package for runners, cyclists, hikers, gym-goers, busy parents—or anyone looking for a quick source of energy.

What began as a practical solution for one marathon runner has grown into one of the most intriguing products at our farm market. Some people purchase a shot because they are athletes. Others pick one up simply because they have never seen maple syrup packaged that way before.

Either way, they often return for more.

Helping a Small Farm Reach Beyond Onaway

That is part of why we are so excited to welcome Chelsea.

For a small farm in a rural community, working with creators gives us an opportunity to tell our story beyond the people who happen to drive past our market. Chelsea and our other creator partners can help introduce people across the country to food that began here—with our trees, our land and the work performed by our farm team.

This partnership is not simply about putting a product in front of a camera. It is about helping people understand where their food comes from, how it is made and why something as familiar as maple syrup can become so many different things.

Chelsea’s first question gave us the perfect opportunity to step back and appreciate just how much has grown from those 4,400 trees.

Pure maple syrup. Maple sugar. Maple candy. Maple Pecan Granola. Maple Mustard. Maple BBQ Sauce. And now, Maple Shots created for runners, athletes and busy people looking for a refreshingly simple source of energy.

Welcome to Bonz Beach Farms, Chelsea.

We are genuinely excited to have you help us share what is being made here in our little corner of northern Michigan—and we cannot wait to see which product becomes your favorite.