Today we’d like to introduce you to Amy Keller.
Amy, we appreciate you taking the time to share your story with us today. Where does your story begin?
I grew up around candy, I come from a family that owns a candy factory, Spangler Candy Company. We make 2B DumDums every year, along with many other nostalgic candies.
I got to witness the power candy has…. The ability to instill fun into any moment.
I wanted to push it further… extend it beyond simply our individual moments into something with even more lasting impact like my partners, Kevin Wall and Dr. Sue Smalley did for Live Earth with Al Gore.
My worlds collided when we were in Svalbard, Norway visiting the Global Seed Bank to learn about food security. I witnessed the United Nations installing generators due to climate change to keep the glacier refrigerated for all the backup seeds of the world.
While on this trip, I was reading Drawdown by Paul Hawken and learned that 40% of food grown globally is wasted. So, I wrote the company business plan in the Arctic Circle for Climate Candy to create FAVES fruit chews from imperfect fruits and vegetables for the health of people and the planet.
I’m sure you wouldn’t say it’s been obstacle free, but so far would you say the journey have been a fairly smooth road?
Increasingly, we expect our professional endeavors to line up with our values, interests, personal histories, and beliefs. I wanted to have a clear and deeply satisfying answer to the question, “Why did you spend all that time and effort producing that product or service or starting that company?
When I decided to create Climate Candy, I determined I wanted it to make a positive impact on people’s lives and health and the health of the planet. This business idea is consistent with my values and lifestyle, and it contributes to my personal goals and dreams. It directly and positively affects lives beyond mine and the world will be better off if I succeed. It will have a positive environmental impact.
As a 7-time Ironman triathlete and having a career focused on climate change, I found that I enjoyed setting a goal and beating it. This is a very complicated world and people will only remember so much about us so we needed to be really clear on what we stand for. This is a world that is evolving faster than ever, we must rely on mission to unlock differentiation through our unique power to move people’s hearts and minds in a positive way. You may have the greatest product in the world, the greatest ideas, but if people can’t understand the problem they solve, they’ll never buy into it.
With the rise of health concerns like obesity and diabetes that inhibit the growth of the candy market, manufacturers have come up with sugar-free and low-calorie candies to tackle this situation. At Climate Candy we observed these improvements but realized we have much bigger challenges to face because we are not just trying to make zeroed-out label or alternative sweetener candy – we are redefining the category of healthy candy to include high nutrition content.
Our goal is to recreate candy using fruits and vegetables but keep all the nutrition intact. We have tested dozens of recipes, form factors and flavors of candy that can be congruent with our mission. And most importantly they all had to achieve high run rates at full-scale factory operations to be sure our positive environmental and social impact is maximized.
When we started, SQF audited facilities and high run-rate equipment were not ready for this challenge in the US. A huge differentiation we achieved in the candy market was engineering equipment that can handle plant-based fibers and a product that provides that stealth nutrition through candy. We realize that the really exciting businesses are innovative and differentiated in categories that have yet to be disrupted and that is what we are bringing with FAVES. Climate Candy is part of a broader category with a lower carbon footprint, sustainable packaging and upcycled ingredients.
We’ve been impressed with Climate Candy, but for folks who might not be as familiar, what can you share with them about what you do and what sets you apart from others?
The way we eat and produce food is a significant contributor to climate change. 10% of all greenhouse gas created is from food waste.
We use FAVES as an educational moment around what is in your food and the need for people to get their 5-8 servings of fruits and vegetables per day and to discuss climate change in an accessible way through candy.
25% of perfectly imperfect produce goes unharvested on farms. Unharvested produce wastes vital energy and contributes to climate change. Climate Candy rescues unharvested fruits and vegetables from farms and gives them new life as FAVES fruit chews.
Food is the single strongest lever to optimize health and environmental sustainability on Earth. This requires a substantial shift towards plant-based dietary patterns and a 50% reduction in food waste.
More than 20 billion pounds of produce go to waste each year simply because they are excess or not perfectly shaped for grocery stores. Meanwhile, climate change is escalating and people are going hungry. This is unacceptable wasting so much food, all while running out of land, water and healthy soil.
Alright so before we go can you talk to us a bit about how people can work with you, collaborate with you or support you?
Cutting food waste by half in the U.S. would reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 75 million metric tons each year. It would also generate an economic return of $75 billion each year. And importantly, reducing food waste also leads to several key co-benefits that get at critical issues of climate justice, climate adaptation, water scarcity, and biodiversity loss. That’s why we work side by side with the non-profit 501cthree.org and the founder, Drew FitzGerald.
It’s time to help people realize their power in our highest potential solution to heal ourselves and the planet: What we choose to eat and this includes all of us.
The secret to success is to find something you love to do so much, you can’t wait for the sun to rise to do it all over again.
Pricing:
- FAVES Assorted Fruit Chews (Cherry, Strawberry, Orange + Lemon) $3.99 on Amazon
Contact Info:
- Website: www.climatecandy.com
- Instagram: @climatecandy
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/amygkeller/
Image Credits
Facet Creative DayJob
Headshot: Vic Igloi.
