sweetriot blog - cacao | culture | cool!

Net Impact!?

Net Impact, you ask?  This is a great organization that sweetriot has been supporting since our founding.  It brings together young people who believe in socially conscious business.  Their annual conference was just held at Northwestern University, and we were there speaking at a session on 'mission-based food and beverage businesses."

Kristin from Revolution Foods and Annie from My Family Farm and were also there and have great stories to tell about their businesses.  John the founder of Room to Read spoke about his amazing literacy non profit, and Graham from Net Impact Boston was there with his reused sweetriot tin and his iPod earphones.  Nice.

To top off of the evening, it was Saturday Night - Halloween eve in Chicago, and the ghosts were out!  The infamous Ted Ko was seen dancing into the wee hours.  Have you heard of Net Impact and/or attended?  Let us know... 

PS - My alma mater, UMichigan, was awarded University Chapter of the Year!  Go Blue!

The Leadership Gathering

sweetriot was honored to be invited to speak at the recent Leadership Gathering in Austin.  This is a small and special conference hosted in Austin by some of the founders of the natural products industry (Peter, Steve, Doug, and Drake).  Our friends at Gary and Kit at ClifBar and Ryan, Jeremy, and Richard at Sambazon were also awarded for their industry leadership.  Congrats!  Sara Snow who has a great new Discovery show was also attending.

One of the most memorable moments was John Mackey, the CEO of Whole Foods, speaking about his views on 'conscience capitalism.'  To summarize in short form, he believes companies should begin with their purpose and mission first before focusing on pure profit.  Through this model, he believes profits will accelerate and be more sustainable.  We at sweetriot tend to agree with him!

One of our way back from the conference, I took the Kopali bus (video here) to Whole Foods Austin -- thanks Zack and Steven for the ride!  :)  Thanks also to David at Guayaki and Josh at Pangea for their support during the Whole Foods sampling and to Charles, Faye, and Jere for always setting us up so nice in Austin.   The adventure continues...

SVN - Social Venture Network

SVN (Social Venture Network) is an organization which was created in the 80's as a way for socially minded business leaders and entrepreneurs to come together.  Their members include business visionaries such as Ben Cohen of Ben and Jerry's.  As SVN would say directly, "Founded in 1987, SVN is a community of leaders-company founders, private investors, social entrepreneurs and key influencers-who share a commitment to building a just and sustainable world through business."

I attended their Fall Conference and saw friends from great organizations like Indigineous Designs, NUMI tea, and many others.  The founder of Aveda, Horst, was speaking at the event, and is clearly a creative thinker.  His new venture is Intelligent Nutrients.

One of the highlights of the conference as the last evening which included poolside live music until the wee hours (pictured above).  :)

Have you heard of SVN and/or attended their conferences?

Whole Foods West Orange.

Just when you thought the schlepping may be over, it starts again.  :)  Our partners at Whole Foods are opening a beautiful new store in West Orange, NJ, and we were invited to help with the store preparations. 

Nina and I went out late one Monday night and worked on the store from 6 pm - 1 am - no kidding.  This included more than a few boxes....when we arrived, the shelves were empty, and when we left, they were starting to look ready to open.  Whew.  All in a day's work.

Our special warehouse.

We have a warehouse on the East Coast, which is a very important partner for sweetriot.  We don't always pack our orders, but today was the day for Matt, Evelyn and I!  (Evelyn is new to our team - more on that later.)  We had so many orders as the holiday rush began that we decided to stop by and help our partners make it happen.  Many, many boxes later (see above), our job was finished.

Our warehouse helps us ship daily to our customers - stores and individuals.  We have some great people there making it happen including Don and Robert.   Thanks to you both and to Matt from our team for being the lead guy on all of this. 

Our 1st birthday party.

sweetriot celebrated its 1st birthday this past Thursday.  It could have been our anniversary but don't birthdays sound more fun?!  We think so.

It was quite an affair with many old and new friends celebrating.  Thanks to Shivani and the team for organizing...Nina, Robyn, Lauren, Matt, Heidi, Teresa, Evelyn, and more!  I'll let the photos speak for themselves...

New Artist, Doug Turner!

Each sweetriot tin (on the top and side) features artwork from emerging artists.  It's great to support an artist on every tin we sell.  Every few months, we involve a new artist -  it is always sad for us to see an artist go, but it is also exhilarating to see new art.   

We just closed our new emerging artist submission round for this quarter, and we are very excited to see Doug's work now on the tins!  HUGE thanks to Tom Fedro whose work graced our tins over the summer -- it is truly amazing. 

As for our new artist, Doug Turner, you have to check out his work on the Elastic Image.  Beautiful stuff.   Thanks again to Tom and welcome to Doug!  We are excited to have you both in the sweetriot family.

Hell's Half Mile Film Festival

My hometown area of Bay City had its first film festival ever called - Hell's Half Mile!  My friend, Alan, organized the whole affair, and from what I understand, it was pretty damn cool.  sweetriot provided some filmmaker gifts for those who made the trek all the way to Bay City, Michigan!  Read more here.  It will be back in September of 2007.

Our super NYU interns.

Our special Fall college interns are in full swing and all hail from right down the street at NYU.   How lucky are we?!  Here's a bit about them...

--Lauren owns a 2-foot tall inflatable giraffe and loves Ethnic food – Thai, Indian, Lebanese.  Number 13 is her lucky number.

--Shivani's favorite hobby is people watching and she can take a nap at any hour in almost any place or position.

--Robyn loves scrambled eggs and sushi.  She grew up in Hawaii but up until this past summer had never surfed; she even once made a kimono out of receipts!

They also have a lot in common!  Lauren and Robyn love the movie, Amelie, and Robyn and Shivani love Ben and Jerry's.  We asked each of them if they liked soda and they all said NO! 

What is your favorite soda?
Shivani:  I don’t like soda.  I love pineapple and passion fruit juice!
Robyn:  I don’t like soda, but I have a love affair with orange juice.
Lauren:  Not a big soda fan. I do love lemonade though.

You heard it hear first.  Welcome, Shivani, Lauren, and Robyn to our team!

Expo East

Expo East, the largest natural products show on the East Coast just concluded in Baltimore this weekend.  It shouldn't come as a surprise that sweetriot was ever present.  :)

Some of our highlights of the show including see many new and old friends including Patrick from New Hope, Brian from Fairway, Bill from Presence, Melanie from Wildfire, Richard from Sunwest, our foodie friends, Brian, Lee, Patricia, Art, Mike, John, Mary, Ted, Lance, David, and our many friends from Whole Foods - Tim, Todd, AnaMaria, Scott, Guy, Chris, Will, and more!

We even had a chance to visit Alex and his crew at Whole Foods Harbor East - pretty cool store if you're shopping in the area.

Check out some of the photos above.  Were you rioting at Expo East?  Let us know.