Meet a Company Mainstreaming Ethically-sourced Snacks
Joshua Reed-Diawuoh’s fair-trade cashew company is based in Boston, Massachusetts, but all its produce is proudly sourced in Africa, supporting farmers on the continent that is the land of Reed-Diawuah’s ancestors. As GRIA explains, “At GRIA we’re inspired by the amazing produce grown on the continent of Africa. We envision a world where African food brands and local producers thrive.”
As the Boston Globe reports, young entrepreneur, Reed-Diawuoh, started the GRIA food company in 2019, after he graduated from MIT’s Sloan School of Management, growing it out of a business school project. “It’s personal”, he shares, about his motivation for founding the company “I want to support farmers and agricultural developers in West Africa and make sure they’re compensated for their labor.” While Boston is the city in which he was born and raised, Reed-Diawuoh’s family are from Ghana, where they have been working in agriculture for generations.
Reed-Diawuoh’s vision was fanned by his own visits to Ghana. On multiple trips since his first visit as a student, he witnessed firsthand the struggles of local people to sell their produce at a fair price.
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Reed-Diawuoh explains to MIT News that it is very hard for West African agribusinesses and producers to launch sustainable businesses and build up the value chain. It is his intention, therefore, to support hardworking companies to build integrated businesses and employ people and uplift communities in the region through international sales.
Edible Boston details how after developing several flavors in his own kitchen, Reed-Diawuoh applied to join the CommonWealth Kitchen’s Ready to Launch incubation program in the city, where he augmented his business school learning with valuable knowledge on licensing, permits, licensing and food safety. He was also granted access to the test kitchen for production.
Today, the brand operates out of the CommonWealth Kitchen facility alongside a diverse group of business owners and entrepreneurs.
The entire latest range of GREW cashew snacks hails from fair-trade sources in Benin, Togo, and Burkina Faso. Importantly, in its wish to support the local agricultural and food production economies in West Africa, all of GRIA’s cashews are shelled, peeled and roasted in the countries of origin as well as harvested there.
Of course, the snack appeal, great taste and nutritional value are a great reason to buy into the GRIA brand, its founder believes. Today, as well as offering roasted plain and salted cashews, the brand also offers other original flavors, taking in rosemary salted and spicy garlic cashews with cayenne, while hot honey and cinnamon sugar options are there to cater for folks with a sweet tooth. Customers can purchase GRIA cashews directly from the site, or at several independent food retailers in the US.
And Reed-Diawuoh isn’t standing still. Under his guidance, the company is currently exploring other cashew products including cashew milk and smoothie combinations, as well as more bold and exciting flavor options, as he tells the Cook Local, Eat Local podcast.
The broad appeal of fair-trade goods according to GRIA’s founder
As GRIA founder, Reed-Diawuoh explains in his Cook Local, Eat Local podcast, fair trade is a global standard embedded in values paying attention to key aspects of production and processing in the lifecycle of food. These include maintaining environmental standards aiming to conserve natural resources, labor standards such as the basic protection of workers including fair wages, and the commitment to ensure that producers are fairly compensated for their crops and so less vulnerable to exploitation by buyers cajoling them to accept inequitable prices. This fair-trade price is set by farmers and local stakeholders working together alongside the local fair trade organization.
All of GRIA’s partners, Reed-Diawuoh tells MIT News, from the companies harvesting the nuts to the processing facilities, works directly with farmer cooperatives and small-scale farmers, and is certified by Fairtrade international.
In addition, a so-called “fair trade premium”, is redistributed to producer cooperatives and farmers, so they can use that money to invest in their communities. Reed-Diawuoh calls this premium payback “transformational.” He tells MIT News that it can be used to build schools, or improve wastewater infrastructure, for example.
For Reed-Diawuoh, “Fair trade and other types of ethical sourcing certifications are really important for consumers and they are also important for smaller brands because it’s a good way to plug into an ecosystem of traders, exporters, producers who are already embracing the same values that many of us in the food industry have embraced ourselves.”
