Daniel Lubetzky

Jessica Harris (0:06)

I'm Jessica Harris, this is From Scratch. My guest is Daniel Lubetzky, founder of Kind Healthy Snacks, a food company that produces sweet and savory bars with whole nuts, spices, and fruit, among other products. Kind is sold in a diversity of locations, including Whole Foods, Costco, Amtrak trains, and newspaper stands. Daniel is also the founder of PeaceWorks, a producer of Mediterranean spreads, such as tapenades, hummus, and baba ganoush. PeaceWorks aims to foster business relationships among neighbors in the Middle East and other groups in conflict as a way to reduce conflict in those regions. Daniel grew up in Mexico City and speaks Spanish, English, Hebrew, and French, and a little bit of Yiddish, no?

Welcome.

Daniel Lubetzky (0:55)

Thank you, thank you so much, Jessica.

Jessica Harris (0:56)

Before we dig into Kind, I wanna talk about PeaceWorks, which was the company you founded in 1993 that focuses on Mediterranean spreads. What was the germ for founding this food company in the early 90s?

Daniel Lubetzky (1:14)

I didn't know it was gonna be a food company. It was more about trying to use business as a force for bringing Arabs and Israelis together. That was what I was very passionate about since writing my college thesis and law school work about how to use market forces to help trading partners and partners shatter culture stereotypes, cement relations with each other. So that was the impetus of what I was doing.

And it became a food company because as I was looking for ventures, I was looking in apparel, I was looking in Dead Sea Minerals, and food became the area where I found my passions best. I didn't understand Dead Sea Minerals too well, but I understood food and that's how it started.

Jessica Harris (1:56)

And so food was secondary to the primary mission was to facilitate joint ventures among conflicting neighbors. So what's an example of a collaboration which you established at PeaceWorks between two conflicting groups?

Daniel Lubetzky (2:12)

Well, the flagship venture which still exists today, which is how we started, was my discovery of a sundried tomato spread. And when I, long story short, found out, the company had gone bankrupt because it was sourcing its glass jars from Portugal and its sundried tomatoes from Italy, and it was very expensive.

And when I came to Joel Benes, the Israeli manufacturer, and told him about my ideas, he had Arab friends, and he really believed in the philosophy of what we're trying to do with PeaceWorks. But I also showed him that he could benefit economically, that he could buy the glass jars from Egypt instead of Portugal, the sundried tomatoes from Turkish suppliers instead of Italian ones. So they started buying basil and olives and olive oil from Palestinian citizens of the West Bank and Gaza, and that's how it started.

Jessica Harris (3:01)

How did you secure distribution in the United States with PeaceWorks? Can you walk through that process? Because in a way, you piggybacked on that with kind.

Daniel Lubetzky (3:11)

Well, I didn't know what I was doing, so I emptied my legal briefcase. Literally, I had this big briefcase for carrying legal documents, and I filled it up with jars of sundried tomato spreads, basil pesto, salt spreads.

And I would start at the top of Broadway on 122nd Street on the west side, and then just start walking store by store till I would go at 7 a.m. in the morning, till I would end at 7 p.m. at night in the bottom of Wall Street. And then I would cross the next day, and I would go up Broadway on the other side of Broadway.

And Broadway was an important choice because it was the avenue that I found to have the most concentration of grocery stores. So I knew Second Avenue, I knew Third Avenue, I knew Madison, I did all of them, but Broadway was the juiciest. And I would not go to the next store unless I got either an order or an explanation for what I needed to do different in order to get an order the next time. And I drove many people nuts because everything was wrong, but they were basically taught me, like Scott Goldschein and Mr. Zebar from Zebar's basically taught me what the consumers were looking for. So I really learned a lot of what I do today from all the store managers and buyers at the grocery shops and bodegas in New York City.

Jessica Harris (4:28)

What is an example of something that Mr. Zebar taught you?

Daniel Lubetzky (4:36)

Everything. I mean, I came in and they didn't have much patience because they had thousands of consumers going around and here I am and I don't know what I'm doing, but they really liked that I, they really cared about my mission. And I think they just had patience with me, so they taught me how, what is the margin requirements for a retailer, for a distributor and for yourself so you can run an ongoing business.