March 29, 2024

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Free For All Food

Ancestral food that preferences and does well


7 min go through

This post was translated from our Spanish edition using AI systems. Errors may perhaps exist because of to this process.

Thoughts expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their individual.


Kuna is a word in the Quechua language that implies to give. Precisely for this purpose LiveKuna was launched six yrs in the past in Ecuador. “We want to give farmers health and fitness, nutrition and work opportunities very good products and solutions to individuals and to rescue great eating behaviors ”, clarifies Carlos Gutiérrez, president and co-founder of LiveKuna .

In an job interview with Entrepreneur , the entrepreneur tells that it was in 2013 when, with his partner Santiago Stacey, now co-founder and CEO of LiveKuna, they detected the small business prospect from Canada. “We analyzed the variations in routines and traits in people, we observed a boom in the use of tremendous foods and we did not uncover a brand name that reflected that strategy of nourishment and wellness,” he remembers.

A year later on they introduced LiveKuna, a vertically integrated superfood company that operates instantly with Ecuadorian farmers to make healthy foodstuff that are dispersed and promoted from Ecuador to Canada. They started off with snacks produced from chia, a seed superior in fiber, Omega 3, antioxidants and a source of micronutrients such as calcium and iron.

The generation of this seed was exported in 99% of the Andean place and the entrepreneurs wished to return it to its origins. “We have been pioneers in Ecuador when environment up the notion with chia. There was no superfood difficulty, there was no culture about chia and they even put us future to cereal, it was a problem to educate about the advantages, but that exact yr we grew 800% in the class, with far more than a million bucks ”Remembers Carlos.

Then, they understood that the buyer was inquiring for extra and started to innovate to give included benefit to other seeds these types of as quinoa and moringa leaves, ancestral superfoods of Aztec or Mayan civilizations from which they designed cereals, pasta, treats and many others.

The products and solutions were nicely recognized and customers commenced to request for gluten-free ones, this sort of as flours, which the organization helps make from quinoa, bananas, among other people.


Carlos Gutiérrez and Santiago Stacey, Livekuna co-founders. Photograph: courtesy.

Mexico, opportunity marketplace

This startup was born in Ecuador and Canada at the same time. Considering that before its founding, business people attended the Expo West natural food items fair every yr, where they exhibited their merchandise and stored abreast of sector traits.

It was there that they detected the desire in distributing the merchandise in Mexico. They joined it two decades in the past by means of Tremendous Naturista, a smaller retail chain targeted on pure and healthy merchandise.

Mexico is a country wherever Carlos lived for four many years of his childhood. On his return, as an grownup, he reiterated the warmth of Mexican tradition and the ever-growing lookup of shoppers to undertake a much healthier life-style.

According to the Meals and Agriculture Corporation of the United Nations (FAO), Mexico is the state with the highest fees of childhood obesity in the earth. The figures are so alarming that the Mexican governing administration is by now demanding additional and far more disorders from food stuff organizations to lower the use of sugar, fat and lactose in kids and older people and so reduce them from establishing disorders such as most cancers, hypertension and obesity.

That is exactly the mission of LiveKuna: to supply culture with wellness and innovation through its products, which in a natural way help to improve the body’s defenses. In actuality, several scientific studies advocate consuming superfoods like chia, quinoa, and moringa to reinforce the immune system and slow ageing.

It is significant to be aware that LiveKuna’s wide portfolio of goods does not consist of preservatives, flavorings, or hazardous chemicals. Everything is manufactured from a healthy mixture of 100% natural goods.


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Innovation and sustainability

But LiveKuna’s goal goes outside of major a healthier everyday living by the greatest food items. The startup seeks to improve people’s lives no issue how massive or little the effects. “Each individual working day we have the opportunity to enhance someone’s life,” insists Carlos.

Livekuna has revolutionized the foods sector with the finest methods of social and environmental responsibility, a good price tag for its producers and nutritional ethics with its customers, in countries this sort of as the United States, Mexico, Canada, Guatemala, Panama and Ecuador, the place the company has existence.

“Our business enterprise strategy is to lessen the processed and if there are processed in snacks or cereals, make it as balanced as doable, decreasing harmful fat, oils, sugars or salt”, describes Carlos. And it presents an case in point of 1 of its most ground breaking products: the Kuna Pops, treats designed with 5 entirely normal ingredients: rice flour, quinoa, chia, sunflower oil and seasonings these as tomato, cheese or chili.

“In Mexico our solutions have a stamp [warning of excess calories in processed foods] and we continue doing work to not have a single,” claims Carlos, contemplating that the problem to mass consumption is to educate the client.

Currently LiveKuna in Mexico is dispersed in Tremendous Naturista, the e-commerce of Walmart, Metropolis Club, Soriana, Amazon and its possess on the net store. The entrepreneur considers that a results is to bet on advertising on social networks, where in addition to foodstuff they endorse exercise, education and learning and good rest.

“In Mexico we are going to wager on the supermarket channel, with Tremendous Naturista we have 105 retailers nationwide and a existence with cereals in Citymarket. By the finish of January we hope to have the complete portfolio at walmart.com and in Soriana, distribution of cereals nationwide ”.

This calendar year Grupo Bimbo chose LiveKuna to take part in Bake Lab, its business accelerator, through which the co-development of a products portfolio was sought, highlighting two critical areas for the buyer: functionality and traceability.


Picture: courtesy Livekuna

The next phase in Mexico is to innovate with national substances. “Every marketplace involves its salt. There are very exciting components exactly where we can discover the space to innovate ”, states the co-founder of LiveKuna.

Mexico, for this Ecuadorian company signifies 50% of long run income. “In 2021 we are searching to migrate functions, but it will be carried out relying on how we open the channels,” describes Carlos. “The thought is to mature 50% of our income and penetrate much more than 600 factors of sale and macro supermarkets in get to continue innovating with solutions from the place of snacks, cereals, different flours and pasta”.