Ben Mand @ Guayakí
Guayakí’s Market Driven Regeneration™
On this episode, ReGen Brands welcomes Ben Mand who is the CEO at Guayakí. Guayakí supports regenerative agriculture with their various yerba mate-based products farmed in regenerative organic systems. Guayakí has over 40 SKUs including loose-leaf tea, tea bags, and various ready-to-drink mate beverages available in bottles and cans. Their products can be found at retailers across North America.
Yerba mate is a tree of the holly family that is native to the Atlantic Forest of South America. It has been managed and used by Indigenous peoples of the region for millennia. Yerba mate is consumed like tea, infusing the leaves in hot water inside a gourd and consumed individually or shared among friends. The practice of cultivating and consuming yerba mate was adopted by settlers in South America and has now become a significant cultural practice across Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay and Uruguay.
Guayaki was founded by Alex Pryor and David Karr in 1996. Alex is originally from Argentina and introduced David to yerba mate. The two bonded over the energizing properties of the drink and saw an opportunity to build a business that could expose more individuals to the benefits of yerba mate while conserving the forest ecosystems where it is grown.
Impact In CPG - From Incremental To Exponential
“You don't make decisions that drive impact when it's convenient to you. It's about making the right decision in the moment and then finding a way as a company to make it happen.” - Ben
Ben recently joined Guayaki after a long career working with both large and emerging CPG brands. He built up his marketing and brand-building skills at General Mills, learning how to improve products and drive supply chain efficiencies within brands that were already at a massive scale. He then moved on to Plum Organics where he led initiatives to get fresher, better ingredients into their children’s food products. Most recently, he served as the CEO of Harmless Harvest where he helped lead the charge to transition their sourcing to regenerative organic coconuts. (You can learn more about how Harmless Harvest supports regenerative agriculture on our episode with their VP of Marketing, Allie O’Brien!)
Ben has always been a fan of Guayakí and jumped at the opportunity to be their next CEO. He is energized by the opportunity to support an impact-oriented brand to realize its full potential.
Market Driven Regeneration™
The yerba mate tree grows naturally within forest systems; however, increasing demand for yerba mate has led agribusinesses to clear forests to set up monocropped yerba mate plantations. This practice not only drives deforestation, but it also produces a lower-quality and more bitter-tasting yerba mate leaf. Guayakí does not source from yerba mate plantations and instead works with small farmers and indigenous communities to source forest-grown, organic, fair-trade yerba mate. The yerba mate they source from Argentina and Brazil is Regenerative Organic Certified®.
Market Driven Regeneration™ is Guayakí’s business model that aspires to create a net positive impact throughout their operations and supply web. As Ben explains, the impact of the model is two-fold: it helps regenerate the planet and strengthen indigenous communities.
Ben highlights how sourcing forest-grown yerba mate can be a powerful method for forest conservation. Guyakí employs local technicians and agronomists to support farmers in optimizing yerba mate yields within an agroforestry system alongside other crops, plants, and native trees.
Guyakí pays farmers a 25% premium for the yerba mate and contributes an additional 10% to invest in social or environmental projects. This empowers indigenous communities to continue to steward their land and forests while improving their livelihoods. The brand also worked with the World Bank to build a yerba mate processing factory in one of its supplier communities, unlocking new employment opportunities for community members and additional value generation at the local level.
“For us, regenerative is more than just farming. It is the business model. It’s about how we make products that inherently drive demand for a better way of doing business, not only from a regenerative organic farming standpoint, but also how we interact with producer communities. How we actually run our entire business is this market driven regeneration.” - Ben
The Brilliant Basics and Leading the Movement
In his new role as CEO, Ben is focused first on what he calls “the brilliant basics” – making sure they are optimizing their current product offerings and cleaning up the branding and labeling to be more clear to the consumer. He highlights how an immediate goal is to get their key certifications – ROC™, Fair for Life, and B-Corp – onto their cans and bottles. Then, he looks forward to thinking through Guyakí’s supply chain and identifying additional opportunities for impact. He mentions mapping out new mate brewing locations as an opportunity to lower their GHG footprint.
“I think one of the things that we haven't done a great job in is just making sure at a quick glance that we get credit for some of the great things we do. If you look at a bottle, you don't see anything that says fair for life or regenerative organic. For the vast majority of people, you need a couple of those quick-hit things that make it abundantly obvious that the brand is responsible.” - Ben
Ben sees an opportunity for Guyakí to bolster the entire mate category to compete alongside coffee and tea. Here he points out how the brand might think about new sales channels and where consumers can find yerba mate, such as at cafeterias in universities or other food service channels.
In a similar vein, he also hopes that Guyakí can act as a leader in the regenerative movement. If Guyakí can help drive consumer awareness and serve as a model for other regenerative brands if they nail their quick-hit communication on their packaging, leverage their brand ambassador program to tell the regenerative story, and invest in immersive marketing experiences to “bring the forest to life” for consumers, it.
“There are some ways that we can start to go deeper, interact with other thought leaders, and be a leader in market driven regeneration. We can focus on the areas that we're really becoming experts in, like regenerative organic, fair for life, and how we work with indigenous communities. There are some really powerful aspects to what we do and areas where we can help other small businesses that are really trying to drive a positive impact.” - Ben
50% Market Share For Regen
Ben calls out the important role retailers need to take in increasing consumer awareness and understanding of regenerative agriculture and regenerative CPG. He explains how retailers simply have more resources and more power than any individual regenerative CPG brand. Ben also points out that it's important that retailers not try to directly compete with regenerative products by creating private-label copies without the same third-party verifications for their claims. He urges retailers to step up and share the burden of marketing and selling regenerative.
“We won't get far if it's just a bunch of small manufacturers trying to do this and trying to break through. What you need is you need [retailers] to also sign up, put it on the shelf and frame it with signage and make sure that everybody knows these [products] are all fair for life or these are all regenerative organic. And [they need to explain] what does that mean, and why is that important.” - Ben
This ReGen Recap was written by Katey Finnegan
You can check out the full episode with Ben Mand @ Guayakí HERE
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