EP. 039 Annie Ryu The Jackfruit Company: Establishing an ethical supply chain for plant-based products - a podcast by k80jones

Annie went to India initially to work on a healthcare program that she developed with her brother for mothers and children. When Annie first tried jackfruit, she didn’t intend to start a company around the delicious fruit. But over time, she believed jackfruit could be a solution to the prevailing poverty that led to the health concerns she was trying to address.

Back then, there weren’t any commercial supply chains for it, and no commercial products developed with it. As a result, a lot of it was going to waste. “This was an opportunity to take a truly amazing natural resource, a miracle crop, and instead of letting it go to waste, convert it into massive incremental income for farming families.”

So how’d Annie build the supply chain for her company? It just took an enormous amount of trust, confidence, and persistence, all for an unwanted fruit.

In this episode

• Annie’s first trip to India
• What jackfruit is and the stigma around it
• How Annie built her supply chain from scratch
• Her market research and the plant-based movement
• How The Jackfruit Company develops its products
• How jackfruit curbs climate change
• The gap between medicine and nutrition

Read the full story here.

Further episodes of Food Heroes Podcast

Further podcasts by k80jones

Website of k80jones