Food waste – it’s all a bit of give and take…
Hub Brixton member Ilana Taub is the cofounder of sustainable snack company, Snact, which she set up two years ago with fellow member Michael Minch-Dixon.
What does Snact do?
We make fruit snacks from surplus produce, that would otherwise be thrown away for being the wrong shape or size – so “ugly” fruit and veg or stuff that farmers can’t sell for whatever reason. And then we make it into fruit jerky – we blend fruit together and then dehydrate it.
Two million tonnes of fresh fruit and veg get wasted before reaching the shops in the UK, every year – and that’s just in the UK. Globally, a third of all food that’s produced or grown gets wasted, which is insane!
Right now we have apple and raspberry, and apple and mango flavours. In March we’ll be launching an apple, blueberry and banana flavour. Then hopefully in the next few months another two flavours. We’re also looking at different types of products we can make with different types of surpluses.
Was this your background before?
Not at all! Mike was working in renewable energy, I did stuff in alternative finance — but nothing to do with food manufacturing or selling.
We’ve been friends a very long time, and had just been chatting and said, it’d be cool to start our own business. We’re both really interested in food systems and there are so many things that are wrong with them — food waste was one of those issues. So we started very small, and were doing it part time initially.
What was the point when you took the leap and went full time?
It was always the goal to do that anyway… one stage was when we did a crowdfunding campaign (raising £13,500). That gave us more time and more flexibility, so that’s when we started developing our products with our manufacturer. Then when we’d been doing it for a year part-time, we agreed: if we want it to work, we have to go all the way, or it’s not going to work.
What’s been the most difficult thing about getting to where you are now?
There’s more than one! But we’ve had a lot of issues with packaging, which we never thought was going to be such a nightmare. Getting the design right, yes, but that’s the least of the issues. The bigger one was finding people who could pack it — because fruit jerky can be a bit sticky and when it’s all automated its quite difficult to pack. And then the biggest issue which we haven’t entirely solved yet is packaging which is sustainable. We looked for quite a few months, talking to loads of different companies. We just have traditional plastic film now, but we have reduced the amount of packaging and we try to make it as thin as possible — it’s still plastic which we’re not happy with, but it was the only way we could get started. We then looked at different options like biodegradable plastics, but there were different issues with all of them… now we’re going to trial some compostable packaging with so hopefully we can start that in the spring.
Finding a home for all those “ugly” fruits
Why did you join Impact Hub Brixton?
I was a member when it first started, then we rented a space in Hackney because we were packing stuff there for a while — and came back here in October.
It’s a convenient location, and a fun place to work. There’s lots of cool people and contacts you can make — here or in the other hubs — a whole network of people. Even when we weren’t members here [in Brixton], we did a few things with the Hub Westminster, like their Investment Readiness Programme and also participated in events where we were selling or giving out snacks.
What’s your / your business’s connection with the Brixton community?
We’re selling our products in a few places in Brixton, and sometimes we work with local business depending on what opportunities come about. Recently, we did some work with The Champions Agency based in Brixton. I’m a director on the Brixton Pound as well which does a lot of different things in the community. Marta, who does our communications, does work for the Brixton Pound as well.
We both grew up in Brussels — Mike’s Irish, i’m half Belgian-half Finnish — but I now live in Stockwell. I love Brixton… because it has a community, which actually I didn’t feel in other places in London. Obviously other places have it, but what I liked when I moved here originally was you can feel a sense of community, and people are proud of Brixton. There’s a lot of history and culture and interesting things happening.
You can buy Snact products online, at Impact Hub Brixton, or at the Brixton Pound shop using Brixton Pounds.
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