Our story: small batches, big ambitions

Our mission is to improve access to better wheat through convenient snacks and pantry staples. As parents of three kids who were three and under when we started this, we also know how important it is to have access to food that is nutritious, convenient, high quality, and affordable.

Why wheat?

As a species, humans have been consuming wheat for thousands and thousands of years. It's only been until the early 20th century that we started having issues consuming gluten. At the same time, there have been two major changes to the wheat we eat:

1. a convergence to highly engineered varieties of wheat seeds, bred for high crop yield and loaf volume, and
2. an extremely industrialized food system that ultra processes wheat into "enriched wheat flour" as a primary ingredient in other ultra processed foods that could survive for years without going bad.

Why unrefined?

We started Unrefined Foods to make real food really easy to fit into our lives. Like pretty much all parents, we have kids that like snacks. Pouches and packages abound with labels that make the products seem healthy. But if you read the labels closely, you'll see ingredient lists that you need a chemical encyclopedia to interpret along with high fructose corn syrup (or cane sugar in the "premium" segment) near the top of the list. 

We'd been baking our own bread for years and at some point started to freshly mill our own flour. Thanks to a local baking store in Cambridge, MA (shoutout to Elmendorf!!) we learned that there are different varieties of wheat, all with their own flavors and best use cases. Imagine that! 

When you think about it, it makes sense: we've been growing wheat across the world for almost our entire existence as a cooperative species. Of course there are different varieties of wheat that are well adapted to different climates, habitats, and diets. These types of wheat tend to be "heritage" varieties -- varieties grown and bred before genetic engineering converged to (1) above.

Why us?

Our goal is to bring these flavorful flours to you in the most simple way we can -- through mediums that nourish our busy lifestyles. I've been making muffins and "cookies" for myself and our kids for years. After a career transition, the time seemed right to turn this into something larger, something more impactful - where we could create demand for farmers raising wheat responsibly, while feeding you and your loved ones the best way we know how.

Our backgrounds also set us up for this. Alex grew up on a ranch in South Dakota with parents who were some of the OG grassfed livestock producers. Now a biomedical engineer by training, he's chief-tinkerer-in-residence at UFC helping to make everything run more efficiently.  I (Melissa) have always been interested in our economy, and after learning more about economic opportunity starting my career on Wall Street, I pivoted to agriculture to focus more on rural economic development. Very quickly, I realized how the food & ag industry touches nearly every pivotal societal issue of our time: climate change, biodiversity loss, economic inequality, the obesity epidemic, and more.

At the same time, through experiences in both big and small ag, I realized our food system has some pretty large core issues which can best be summarized by Gabe Brown (a pioneering farmer in the regenerative ag space): "We are overfed and undernourished." I believe many of these issues stem from the way our ag system is set up: to monocrop commodities for a concentrated set of food manufacturers and retailers, largely producing unhealthy, ultra-processed foods.

Things need to change and we're doing the best we can: feeding our communities, one muffin at a time.

Thanks for being on this journey with us!

(By the way! Good food goes bad. Freeze all our products (including the flour!) when you receive them!)