Back to the Roots, an organic gardening company known for its grow-your-own kits, has partnered with Bolthouse Farms and Walmart for a Seed to Sip campaign.
Customers who purchase any Bolthouse Farms juice at select Walmart stores nationwide will receive a limited-time coupon to save $1.50 on any garden seed from Back to the Roots.
Back to the Roots coupon
The campaign takes shoppers to the place where food is grown — the garden — educating them about healthier and more sustainable ways to eat, live and shop. Through the mentorship of one founder to another, a friendship grew and so did the idea of educating shoppers on regenerative farming — from soil, to sips, to plate.
“We believe it is our job as brand builders in the natural product space to guide a consumer down their path of curiosity for growing and eating real food,” Alejandro Velez, co-founder of Back to the Roots, told The Packer. “We must connect the dots between the garden and grocery departments.”
By bringing together Bolthouse Farms juice and offering a discount on Back to the Roots seeds, shoppers are driven to two different yet connected sections at Walmart, creating value for consumer, retailer and brand, Velez said.
“We aspire to the day where kids will only eat food from the grocery aisle whose ingredients they recognize in the seed aisle,” Velez added.
Velez and Nikhil Arora, the co-founders of Back to the Roots, met in college during their senior year. They both were sitting in a business ethics class when their professor mentioned a random fact in a lecture about sustainability — that gourmet mushrooms can grow on spent coffee grounds.
Back to the Roots display
They both reached out to their professor for more information about that detail and were connected to each other. What followed was a connection built off a shared curiosity and passion to figure out not just how to grow their own mushrooms, but also how the rest of their food grew.
After successfully growing their own crop of mushrooms in Velez's fraternity during their last semester in college, the duo received a $5,000 grant from their chancellor and decided to give up their corporate job offers to become full-time urban mushroom farmers in Oakland, Calif.
Back to the Roots has evolved from a college kitchen experiment into a passion for organic gardening and a mission to help reconnect a new generation back to food and where it comes from, Velez said.
"We want to help every family and kid across the country experience the magic and wonder of growing their own food — no green thumb or big backyard needed," Velez said.
To do that, the company says it is building the organic garden brand for a new generation — easy and fun grow-kits and a line of packet seeds.