Happy Honest Treats
- Food
- Conscious consumerism
- Corporate social responsibility
- Child labor
- Green business
- Sustainability
Marketplace: Who else is addressing the problem outlined here? How does the proposed project differ from these approaches?
Erik
Van Gangelen
Yes.
The Netherlands
I love treating myself to little tasty treats. But what I eat, I want to be fair. So no unnatural stuff and made with respect.
At my work it was Christmas (or Sinterklaas for the Dutchies) 365 days of the year, chocolate and sweets everywhere. After unsuccessfully stalking the caterer and the vending machine guy, I decided to create my owns snacks. After a while I started letting my family and friends taste them. And asking them if they would buy them. The feedback I got was positive, sometimes a bit rude, but it pushed me in the right direction.
So about a year ago I started justnuts. Realizing that two people know more then one and knowing that I'm not good at everything, I asked my good friend Thijs to join me, which he did.
So now we make Happy Honest Treats together.
I've build up a set of skills regarding, marketing and operations. Thijs knows a lot about finance and is a very driven sales person. The perfect combination.
justnuts organic treats
, The Hague
The information you provide here will be used to fill in any parts of your profile that have been left blank, such as interests, organization information, and website. No contact information will be made public. Please uncheck here if you do not want this to happen..
We only buy organic ingredients, we do not add anything else.
If possible and relevant we buy Fairtrade, otherwise we have set up our own Code of Conduct, which lets our suppliers know what we think of for example labor issues.
We pack our treats in little FSC Mix Sources cartons which contain compostable (made from wood pulp) bags.
These bags are put in these little cartons by a special project of young guys who all have an psychological handicap, e.g. Autism or AHDH.
Operating for less than a year
After just a year in business this really difficult to say, but we have shown that you can make healthy snack that is packed with respect.
In doing so w've kept our packing guys busy, sourced a lot of kilograms of Fairtrade Brazilnuts and used no oil for packaging material doing it.
Financial: we have a margin that gives us the opportunity expand our business, pay our salaries and make a little profit.
Social: making a really tasty and healthy snack, packed by our social project and with partially Fairtrade ingredients.
Environmental: we use FSC Mix Sources cartons and compostable bags. The bags are made from wood pulp and you can throw them in the same bin as your veggies and fruit.
For justnuts it will be in two ways:
- buying Fairtrade and working with the farmers to produce the best nuts and dried fruits.
- sharing a part of our profits with our farmers, so they can improve their business and off course their nuts and dried fruits.
Learning views on how to solve a problem from different cultures. I have a Western way of doing things, but strongly believe that that is not the only way to achieve your goals.