We recently connected with Cai O’Reilly-Green. and have shared our conversation below.
Cai, appreciate you joining us today. What were some of the most unexpected problems you’ve faced in your business and how did you resolve those issues?
While not entirely unexpected, one of our foremost barriers has been reconciling our commitment to maintaining our products as natural and nutritious products with the need to provide our customers with a reasonable shelf life. Unlike the majority of our competitors, our products do not, among other things, have chemical preservative additives and are not heat pasteurized, which means that our products have minimal ingredients (our Original Pecan Milk is made only with filtered water, pecans, and a dash of salt) and is a raw food. While we have not solved our shelf life issue, we are currently in a process of collaboration with scientists at UGA to work on an innovative process which would extend our shelf life without having to alter our recipe. This, however, is an ongoing process and in the meantime we are exploring alternative solutions to meet the needs of our clients, including direct-to-home delivery.
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
Our company was founded in 2014 by Nijil Jamal Jones who found the available nut milk options to be lacking both in nutrition and taste. They began experimenting with their own nut milk recipes in their kitchen and found what they were producing to be far superior to any products they had been buying. They were most excited about the results of milk made from pecans, a nut that is native to our home base, Georgia. When Nijil first brought their pecan milk recipe out of their own kitchen and started selling it locally under their newly formed brand, the Pecan Milk Co-op, pecan milk had never been commercially produced by any other company. But the company’s mission did not end with distribution of high quality health products – the business was started with the goal of creating an alternative business model wherein the workers would play an integral role unseen in standard business practices. Rather, the workers themselves would own the business, each sharing in democratic processes to dictate their own work and the direction of the company. Collective ownership and voting rights, as modeled by other cooperatives across the world, are held by each worker-owner with no individual holding dictative power.
How did you put together the initial capital you needed to start your business?
We did not have initial capital. Our co-op was begun on a very small scale with individual worker-owners working with very little resources and just trying to make ends meet one sale at a time. We have been in business for close to a decade and I attribute this relatively slow pace to our lack of funding. However, we were able, through creativity, perseverance, and a commitment to the lager vision, to continue the work even though we did not have the funds that we really needed. It was a huge struggle. From maintaining inventory to payroll to marketing and beyond, we had to do it all on our own as none of us had personal equity to invest in the business ourselves nor did we have access to anyone who could provide us with capital.
Can you tell us the story behind how you met your business partner?
I, Caimalia, first met Nijil through community organizing in Atlanta. We already knew one another well and had observed the quality of our work when we attended a conference in Jackson Mississippi which was put on by Jackson Rising and focused on alternative economics. We attended a workshop while there about cooperatives, how they might offer solutions to current labor and economic problems, and how to start one. Coming back to Atlanta, we both attended another meeting about co-ops happening locally, which is when I learned that Nijil had started the Pecan Milk Co-op. I was inspired by Nijils vision both as a way to bring healthy, clean foods into the market and as well aligned ideologically with the democratic, collective ownership model of business which focused on uplifting the most marginalized within our community, which led me to meet with Nijil to see if I would be a good fit for the company.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://pecanmilk.coop/home
- Instagram: @pecanmilk
Image Credits
Nelda Mays