In January 2011, in San Francisco’s historic Ferry Building, we—Julie and Richard—proudly accepted a Good Food Award for one of our most popular products, Yin Yang Carrots. We were glowing with delight at being honored by an award that celebrates tasty, authentic, handcrafted foods—products that are responsibly produced and build strong local communities. Alice Waters, a famed proponent of these values, spoke at the awards ceremony. She talked specifically about traditional foods and how far we as a nation have strayed from making them. Only one year into business, we were thrilled to be recognized as outstanding in a field of a hundred other like-minded producers.
Four years later we’re reflecting on that experience, and the successive Good Food Awards our products have received. Although we’ve had to work harder than we ever imagined, we are still amazed by what we have accomplished with just a few ambitious ideas and in so little time. Now, with more than one hundred thousand jars of kraut, kimchi, and other fermented veggies behind us, multiple awards for our repertoire, and opportunities to share some of our knowledge, we are feeling immensely grateful for our ability to do and share what we love. That is what Fresh & Fermented is all about.
We started Firefly Kitchens in 2010 to bring our collective knowledge and passion together to create a line of naturally fermented products. For almost a year we used regular kitchen tools, rental kitchen space, and ceramic crocks to ferment small batches of kraut that we sold at local farmers’ markets. After that start-up year, we moved into our own commercial kitchen space, with fermentation tanks many times the size of our former crocks.
Backing and support from Whole Foods Market’s Local Producer Loan Program allowed us to take the next steps toward growth and expansion, and we spent 2012 scaling up our production to meet the new and growing needs of local and regional stores. By the end of 2013, we had successfully quadrupled our sales and distribution. As we bring 2014 to a close, we’re sending our products off to retail locations throughout Washington, Oregon, California, Nevada, Arizona, Hawaii, and western Canada.
We’ve fermented over sixty tons of organic and sustainably grown vegetables, sourced primarily from local, family-owned organic farms. We’ve stuck to our small-batch principle, keeping the quality of all our products the best we possibly can.
Our experience at Firefly Kitchens has enabled us to teach hundreds of people how to make their own fermented foods. We’ve given talks and shared recipes with students of health and nutrition, opening the eyes of the next generation to age-old fermentation traditions. We’ve hosted team-building meetings for companies who send their employees to our kitchen for a day to share new experiences (packing jars and affixing labels), learn about the fermentation process, taste new flavors—and build more cohesive teams in the process. We’ve regularly celebrated with community members at our fermented happy hours, which have evolved from a small gathering of friends to a collaboration between Firefly and other local producers to share an amazing spread of food, drinks, and other goods.
Throughout it all, our kitchen has remained open to anyone and everyone interested in helping, learning, and sharing with us, and it’s this support from our community that has helped us thrive. From long days of stuffing hundreds of jars with fermented veggies to short visits from friends sharing their favorite new way to eat Firefly’s ferments, our passion for microbe-rich foods and the support and enthusiasm of our community of volunteers and friends have pushed us onward.
Even people who claim they dislike sauerkraut love our ferments—”They taste so fresh!” But the most rewarding aspect of our work is the countless stories that come from so many people who tell us they “just feel better” from eating our fermented cabbage and carrots. We regularly get calls from people who explain that their long-standing digestive discomfort has disappeared after they started eating just a small amount of fermented foods each day. People with compromised immune function tell us they find remedy in our nutrient-dense products, joining the many others who, for many reasons, look to fermented foods to improve their health.
Fresh & Fermented is just part of our response to continued requests for more products in more places and in more forms. Whether for health, taste, or both, we want to show you how you can eat better, feel better, and live better no matter where you are. All of us at Firefly Kitchens hope that what you eat will make you glow!