From Singapore to the USA and all around Europe, Edible Innovations profiles food makers that engage in improving the global food system at every stage, from production to distribution to eating and shopping. Join us as we explore the main trends in the industry from a maker perspective. Chiara Cecchini of Food Innovation Program — an ecosystem with a strong educational core that promotes food innovation as a key tool to tackle the great challenges of the future — introduces you to the faces, stories, and experiences of food makers around the globe. Check back on Tuesdays and Thursdays for new installments.
The average person needs to consume food every three to four hours, depending on physical exercise, to maintain a healthy metabolism. Small meals consumed throughout the day can help reduce overall hunger and keep your diet in check. So snacking is not only something we love to do, but it can help us stay trim! Of course, this all depends on how you snack and what you snack on.
Fiona Less and Larissa Russell saw a problem with how we snack. Most of the savory and sweet options that fill grocery aisles are filled with artificial ingredients and chemicals, making them both unhealthy and unsatisfying. So they created Green Pea Cookies.
Creating the Cookie
Fiona and Larissa started their journey towards green pea cookies with a Singaporean festival cookie idea. This type of cookie is often served at Chinese New Year celebrations.
Fiona is the baker behind the operation. She is both passionate and self-taught. Her little bite sized ‘pealight’ cookie is a simple, healthy, and environmentally conscious option. She came up with the cookie in 2014, developing it from her Singaporean background.
Her co-founder Larissa Russell put the imagination behind it, giving the first cookie and its flavor the name Peater, and dubbing it the ‘happeast’ cookie on Earth. Green Pea Cookie is known for its clever advertising, as well as it’s delicious taste.
The two ladies started with a Kickstarter campaign, and raised over 500% of their target goal in only one month! They have now sold over twenty-five thousand green pea cookies!
Our makers faced a lot of skepticism when they first started. How could a small green pea cookie compete on the U.S. market? The duo made the cookie crunchy, and made sure it balanced both salty and sweet. They soon added chocolate, and then cranberries, and Larissa gave them just as imaginative names: Dimpea and Penelopea.
They were creating sweet treats and snacks, that were not only vegan but healthy. The tasty flavors, clever characters, and wholesomeness of the company started gaining traction, fast. Not only is the cookie itself a healthy snack, it’s packaging is also good for the environment. It is delivered to you in hip brown paper bags, decorated with a homemade feel.
What’s In the Cookie?
This cookie is made from simple roasted green peas and all natural vegan products, with gluten-free options. The bite-sized cookies offer a natural way to snack. Six of these bite-sized delights are only 100 calories! These guilt-free snacks allow you to indulge your sweet tooth and still keep your diet, which is the overall goal from the Green Pea Cookie team. They want people to not only enjoy their snacks but be able to feel good about what they have just eaten.
The clever characters and sweet taste connect people back to the joy of food and how it’s made. The green ball cookies are also culturally significant and bring this delicious snack to the forefront of the market. They currently offer the following flavors: Peater (original), Penaelopea (cranberry), Dimpea (chocolate dipped), Pearl (Earl Grey tea), Opealia (Sriracha), and Pearce (mocha0.
Free of artificial flavor, these cookies are not only good for you, but the environment as well! They contribute to reducing the need for chemicals in both agricultural processes and snack production.
Looking Forward
So, what’s next for these awesome green pea cookie producers? The team successfully launched one of their newer cookies, the Dolores Park, at a picnic day in the San Fransisco Dolores Park! Not only to advertise their newest cookie but to also stay true to their mission to bring people together over simple and healthy delicious meals.
Since then they continue to develop flavors and clever marketing strategies to continue their success! The team continues to market their cookies with ‘peasitivity’ in both design and taste. Their company hopes to create a socially conscious enterpris, that works with special need adults, in both the United States and Singapore. Their cookie brand has set the bar high in flavor, kindness, and environment awareness.
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