Sustainable growth: from farm to summit
The core of Jane and Louise Barden’s company, Farm to Summit, is sustainability. Farm to Summit produces plant-based, dehydrated meals that can be quickly prepared by adding boiling water to omnidegradable bags. According to the manufacturer, omnidegradable bags decompose in any setting with microorganisms, including landfills.
Due to its remote location, the company’s access to municipal compost facilities is restricted. The pair did not want the majority of the compostable plastic to end up in the trash, hence they did not want access to these facilities for their packing. The pouches are consumer compostable and will decompose in an anaerobic landfill setting, despite the fact that they cannot be composted in all municipal compost facilities due to longer composting timeframes.
By accepting veggies that would otherwise be considered “seconds” because of their unusual shapes and flaws, the couple’s business promotes regional growers and decreases food waste.
According to Farm to Summit co-founder and co-owner Louise Barden, “We’re so committed to being environmentally conscious.”The pair decided chosen dehydration over freeze drying because of the food’s texture and cost effectiveness.
Barden stated, “We considered freeze-drying our meals, but it can be prohibitively expensive for a new firm. “We procure all of our produce during the four to five months that we have growing seasons, after which we store and use it all year long.”
According to Barden, freeze-dried meals typically lose their texture more quickly than dehydrated meals do.We work with vegetables, and when you rehydrate and dehydrate them, the texture almost looks like home-cooked food,” the spokesperson stated. “Vegetables get mushy when they are freeze-dried and then reheated.”
According to Barden, “it’s evolved and as we’ve grown we’ve realized there’s a lot more segments than we know.” Many people who eat them are occupied at work or at home and can quickly reheat them before continuing. Our meals have also been distributed via foodbanks and grant funds to the local population of homeless people. It’s good that homeless customers may now enjoy a scrumptious, easily prepared gourmet supper.
There are a variety of cuisines available to customers, including white bean potato stew, Puebloan beans and rice, Thai carrot slaw, harvest green curry, three bean chili and cornbread, green chile cheddar grits, and golden oats. Inspiration for flavors came from the histories of the couple.
According to Barden, “a lot of meals are inspired by Southwestern cuisine.” “Our region has a very unique niche with the green chile, which is extremely Southwestern. Certain things have a southern spin because I’m from Georgia. However, you will notice that practically every meal includes carrots because farmers here grow an abundance of them, and because of the peculiar way they grow, we often end up with seconds. The same applies to zucchini and cabbage.
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I completed my master’s degree in South Africa as a research ecologist before I started this business,” the woman stated. “I said, ‘Does anyone want some organic coffee that has milk powder already mixed up and you can just add water like the meals?’ I was in the back country all the time trying to figure out where to get my coffee from.” We made the decision to sell it, and it became popular as a side business from our dinners.As a three-person team, Barden claimed that the company’s go-to-market approach is impromptu.She described it as “really kind of gorilla style.” “People take pictures of us and/or publish on Instagram to express their affection for us. Right now, the company is genuinely driven by the community.”The brand is centered on omnichannel.