Specialty Food Magazine

SEP 2012

Specialty Food Magazine is the leading publication for retailers, manufacturers and foodservice professionals in the specialty food trade. It provides news, trends and business-building insights that help readers keep their businesses competitive.

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Q&A; K Q Snacks with a Mission BY DENISE SHOUKAS ind founder Daniel Lubetzky got his start in social work with PeaceWorks Foods in 1994, producing pestos and tapenades while fostering economic cooperation in con- flict regions worldwide. His travels often left him longing for a healthy snack bar, inspiring Kind Snacks, which he launched in 2004. Kind continues Lubetzky's positive philosophy to "Be Kind"—to yourself and the world. In 2009, he was recognized by Time magazine and BusinessWeek for his efforts. Here, Lubetzky talks about his Do the Kind Thing campaign and being crowned a "social entrepreneur." Did you retire the PeaceWorks product line when you started Kind Snacks? It still exists today as a separate company, and its flagship line, Meditalia, driven by my friend and fellow specialty food veteran Joshua Scherz, continues to feature tapenades and pestos made through cooperative ventures among neighbors striving to co-exist. What causes does Kind support? Kind's social mission is to make the world a little kinder through all we do and how we do it. We call this the Kind Movement and to date, our campaign—called Do the Kind Thing—has inspired more than 230,000 acts of kindness that have benefited the lives of half a million people in need. With Do the Kind Thing, each month we challenge the Kind community to carry out one specific act of kindness. If enough people sign up to carry out this act on Kindmovement.com, we pay it forward, often by partnering with a nonprofit organization. To date, we've partnered with numerous causes including Operation Gratitude to deliver Wounded Warrior care packages to hundreds of veterans recovering in hospitals here at home. How did being recognized by Time and BusinessWeek affect you and your business? We don't take ourselves too seriously but we do take the recogni- tion we get as a promise we need to keep and live up to—to grow up into serious contributors to our community, to make sure we give back in every way possible, to make sure we are thankful for all the blessings we have been given, and remember this gives us an extra responsibility to be kind and give back. What's the biggest challenge of your job? At the point that Kind has grown to now, I am unable to have a hand in all aspects of the business as I did at its infancy. I'm learning 120 ❘ SPECIALTY FOOD MAGAZINE ❘ specialtyfood.com when to step back and trust my team members to be the experts in each of their respective areas of practice. I also find it hard to not know everyone intimately; there are team members doing great work that I have yet to meet in person. My challenge is to learn how to empower and inspire everyone to continue to build on this amazing culture we've created. If you knew you were having your last meal, what would you eat? I am an obsessive, nerdy foodie so this is hard to answer. If this was my last meal, I would worry more about who I was going to be eating with and make sure I impress upon my kids how much I love them and wish them to find purpose, meaning and fulfillment in their lives. |SFM| Denise Shoukas is a contributing editor to Specialty Food Magazine. PHOTO: DANIEL LUBETZKY

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