Back to the Roots, Inc.
Back to the Roots, Inc. is an American privately-owned company based out of Oakland, California. The company makes a line of indoor gardening kits and aquaponics fish tanks for producing organic mushrooms, herbs, and vegetables at home. It also markets organic breakfast cereal, some of which contain ingredients produced through biodynamic agriculture.
As of 2017, New York City awarded Back to the Roots the contract to replace two of the five breakfast cereals offered by the city’s public school system, the largest public school system in the US. The company is also partnered with Sodexo, one of the world’s largest food services and facilities management conglomerates, which carries its cereal products and indoor gardening kits.
History
Back to the Roots was founded by Nikhil Arora and Alejandro Velez, students at University of California, Berkeley. The idea for their first product was inspired by a business ethics lecture by Professor Alan Ross at the Haas School of Business. After the lecture, Arora and Velez approached their professor, separately, about a concept he had mentioned in passing, that mushrooms can be grown in used coffee grounds. Ross put The Two students, who did not know each other at the time, in contact and they began to develop the idea in a Velez’ fraternity home.
After watching some YouTube videos, Arora and Velez experimented growing mushrooms in ten buckets; only one of those buckets yielded mushrooms. They took the oyster mushrooms to Alice Waters, who used them in her farm-to-table restaurant, Chez Panisse, giving them a positive review. The mushrooms were also accepted by Whole Foods’ produce section. Arora and Velez obtained warehouse space and began to develop their idea into a company. They began producing about 500 pounds of bulk mushrooms a week.
One of the first Back to the Roots products was a grow-your-own mushroom kit. It used recycled coffee grounds from Peet's Coffee & Tea as the substrate for growing mushrooms and packed this into a cardboard box. By the end of 2011, every week, the company was reusing about 20,000 pounds of coffee waste. By October 2012, the company was collecting about 2.5 million pounds of coffee waste in its collection routes to Peet’s and other local coffee shops. With its first yield taking about ten days, the reusable kits can produce as much as a pound and a half of mushrooms in total.
Since then Back to the Roots has introduced several other indoor gardening kits including an aquaponics fish tank and herb gardens in a can or a jar. As of April 2016, the company’s products are sold in Cost Plus, Costco, Kroger, Nordstrom, Petco, The Home Depot, and Whole Foods. The company also introduced a line of ready-to-eat breakfast products and snacks. This included a cereal made from ingredients produced through biodynamic farming.
In fall 2016, Back to the Roots began a partnership with Sodexo, “one of the world’s largest food service companies,” to sell its breakfast cereal in US schools. The deal also allows for the company’s grow kits to be introduced in the classroom as part of a curriculum on how food is produced. In early 2017, the New York City public school system replaced two of the cereals offered at their schools with Back to the Roots products. The spots were previously held by two discontinued Kashi products from Kellogg’s. According to the city’s Department of Education, the decision followed “a student taste test” and because the products have a “better nutritional profile and organic ingredients.”