We are not a brand that sources from Brazil.

What was here before

Açaí is a stone fruit. Around 85% of the weight of each berry is the seed in the middle, and the pulp everyone eats is the thin layer scraped off the outside. For as long as açaí has been processed commercially, the seed has been waste. Brazil discards hundreds of thousands of tonnes of it every year.

In the interior of Pará, people had long since worked out that a dried, roasted, ground açaí seed brews into something worth drinking. What did not exist was anyone doing it consistently, at scale, with proper control over the process.

Why we built a factory

The idea was never the hard part. Making the same thing twice was. Seed roasted by eye varies batch to batch, and published research has found exactly that variation between producers. The only way to fix it is to own the equipment and control the process, so that is what we did.

We built in Itupiranga rather than near a port or a market, because the seed is here and it does not travel well as waste. Being where the fruit is means we take the seed while it is fresh, and it means the decisions about how it is handled are ours to make. How we roast it covers the process itself.

Where the fruit comes from

The palms are not planted. They grow wild in the floodplain and are climbed by hand at harvest, as they have been for generations. The fruit comes in from the river, and the seed comes to us.

The part worth saying is structural. When the seed was waste, it was worth nothing to anyone who brought the fruit in. Now it is the product, which means the part of the harvest that used to be thrown away is the part we buy.