Living Nutz in the News

06/11/2008

Company located in Bowdoinham
Special to Business

BOWDOINHAM — Seth Leaf and his brother, Davy Pruzansky, set out to make a high quality, tasty health snack which lead to the creation of the Living Nutz company in 2001.

Originally named The Almond Brothers, the two had to change the name after a larger company with the same name threatened legal action.

With their parents starting a hemp lip balm company in Bowdoinham in 1998 — called the Maine IntelliHemp Co. and which the brothers have taken over — it gave the two men a foot in the door to health food stores.

Pruzansky said their creation of the tasty nut snacks began more as an experiment that wielded yummy results. The company, certified organic by the Maine Organic Farmers and Gardiners Association, now ships all over the United States and Canada. It is primarily a wholesale manufacturer distributing its own product.

"Having our lifestyle be the way it is and being interested in food and having a passion for food in general, and to come up with these flavors, really intrigued me to take it further and to start selling these products," Pruzansky said. "And basically the product sells itself because of the way it tastes. It's basically just an experiment that ended up being really successful and then the flavors just really came out and everything tasted pretty good, and it just worked out."

He said they were able to get their product out to health food stores because of their lip balm.

"Food just sells. Once people try food, it just takes off, because people love eating more than anything else it seems," Pruzansky said. "You turn someone on with a healthy snack product that tastes amazing, then people love it and it just sells itself, and that's exactly what happened."

The company, which produces nuts from Pruzansky's home on Post Road in Bowdoinham, has Hollywood clients and was invited to include its goods in guest bags for the Screen Actors Guild awards held in January. Then in February, Congress recognized the company for its green entrepreneurship. And a two-page article will appear in an upcoming issue of The Doctor's Prescription for Healthy Living magazine about Living Nutz.

The reason Living Nutz can claim its nut is a high quality, healthy snack is because of the process it uses. Not possible with a pasteurized almond, its nuts are raw and sprouted, Leaf said.

"Basically, our process is we germinate everything, which is soaking it in water. It's the sprouting process, same way that if you're starting a garden. You're going to plant the seeds, they get wet, they start to grow," Leaf said. "So after they're germinated, we flavor them with all organic ingredients and then we dehydrate them, between 105 and 110 degrees (Fahrenheit)."

Leaf said that because they're not roasting or cooking the nuts, the nuts retain the enzymes, vitamins and minerals they contain. Additionally, heating the oils on the nuts turn them into carcinogens, he said, or trans fatty acids, which is avoided through their process.

The company plans to remain at its current location in Bowdoinham, Leaf said, until it is "busting at the seams."

He believes the state is not business friendly to small operations and that they pay almost 40 percent of what they take in to state and federal income taxes. But so far, the company has been able to pay all its bills and get by.

Tony Cox, Bowdoinham's economic and community development director, is also a small business owner and says he sympathizes with the challenges Living Nutz faces. He hasn't had any direct contact with Living Nutz, but noted that "we're working with the Midcoast Council for Business Development and Planning Alliance. We're looking at four different potential clusters for the region, in anticipation of the (Brunswick Naval Air Station) closure, and one just happens to be food — food production and agriculture. And I've mentioned Living Nutz as a potential leader in the specialty foods market."

Leaf isn't afraid to voice his opinion on the state of the health food industry, saying he believes it's "nearly invalid" and that much of the food in a health food store is "nothing but expensive, overpriced trash. It's TV pop culture trash."

However, he said it is a big deal if individuals can buy produce that haven't been contaminated with chemicals. And he adds that many health food stores do have healthy local produce, which is "the only way to go."

Living Nutz is up to about $1 million a year in business, having doubled every year since it began until last year when it leveled out, primarily due to the production limitations at its current location. Fuel prices for a company that is so rural and ships out so much has affected its pricing as well, Leaf said.

But another scare came from Congress only months ago that threatened Living Nutz.

"The almond pasteurization thing was a huge issue for us, because almonds are 60 or more percent of our business," Leaf said. "And suddenly, one morning, we start finding out that the ABC (Almond Board of California), in conjunction with the FDA and the USDA, passed a mandate declaring that all almonds grown in the United States have to be pasteurized."

Leaf said there was no public input other than from the ABC and that once everyone affected found out, it had already been passed. Many small organic almond farmers lost their business when they couldn't afford the pasteurization equipment with only a few outfits using the process.

The mandate went into affect in September 2007. He said the reason for the mandate was said to have been two salmonella outbreaks, which he says have nothing to do with almond production but rather is a result of stockpiling used by large-scale commercial farming.

Though afraid of the impact on Living Nutz, Leaf said the company actually benefited from the mandate, not to say he supports it and he talks about food freedom choices Americans are losing. But when faced with what the mandate meant for Living Nutz, "I just started researching the laws, reading about what it meant, what we could do, looking for the loopholes. And basically (it came down to) imported almonds. There was no mandate on those. So I just started making connections, setting things up and finding a way to import truly raw unpasteurized almonds and we were able to do that."

Right now the company is importing almonds from Spain, near the almonds birthplace of Morocco, Leaf said, "so it's the closest thing to the original heirloom variety of almonds. The genetics are way more pure, so the almonds are different."

He said that while it would be quicker to roast the nuts — 45 minutes — compared to six or seven days for the germination and dehydration process and with a lower bottom line, "when we started this out, we didn't look at that. We looked at it from the perspective of, let's make the most healthy, best-tasting product we can."

But with a higher quality product, they can sell it for more. One of their 4-ounce bags goes for about $7.99 at Whole Foods in Portland right now, Leaf said. But they also sell bulk, wholesale and online. And they'll be coming out with 3-ounce bags and all new packaging and labeling in a week or so, to get the cost down. The company had struggled with finding a market for its product locally because people don't want to pay the cost of its higher-quality product, or can't.

"Our goal originally was to create the best-tasting, most healthy snack there was. Because when I walk into a health food store and I look at processed snack food, I don't want most of it because it costs a fortune, it's not healthy and it's all hype, scam and marketing from my perspective," Leaf said.