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2023 BENEFIT REPORT

At Curio Spice Co., it's our MISSION to:

IMPROVE the lives of spice farmers
by directly sourcing from small, sustainable farms

INSPIRE culinary creativity by crafting blends
that celebrate unique flavors from around the world.

We value organic, fair trade ingredients, supporting women, and enriching
our local community– and making sure we all have the chance to eat well.

LETTER FROM THE FOUNDER

2023 was a topsy turvy year as we turned the year on the global pandemic. We ventured into many new sourcing relationships, a highlight being the sourcing work we did in Colombia, South America. There we met with several orgs, including the non-profitGranitos de Pazor ‘Grains of Peace’ that motivates urban farmers to grow spices on their patios, and a biodiverse farm in North Central Colombia growing organic achiote seeds. Our products Mariposa Tea and Zenú Spice are direct results of these visits. As it’s built into our mission, this trip also focused on women farmers and highlighted one farmer named Shirleny in our 4-minute spice documentary. Other new exciting partnerships were forged with farmer groups in Afghanistan, South Africa, Zimbabwe, and Greece. More stories on these origins coming soon!We undertook several fundraising projects via our ‘Curio for a Cause’ campaign, raising for example, $2500 for World Central Kitchen after the earthquake in Turkey, where our farm partners are located, and $800 for Vermont Farmers impacted by the floods. Our giving included a micro-grant for women entrepreneurs throughGiving Joyas well as gifts supporting LGBTQ+, food sovereignty, science education and youth development. In total we donated over $13,000 to charities in 2023.Due to focused efforts last year, our communityLab spacehas developed into a thriving community space where we host other entrepreneurs and NGOs on weekends for pop-ups, as well as classes and our ‘Sensory Storytellers’ series that are both free and ticketed. Overall, we’re proud of the growth we made in our impact in 2023 — here’s to making an even bigger positive impact this year!

- Claire Cheney, Founder & Blender-in-chief

SOURCING FEATURE: COLOMBIA

SOURCING COLOMBIAN BUTTERFLY PEA FLOWERS FROM INNER CITY FARMERS

These strange purple flowers are endemic to SE Asia, such as Malaysia and Thailand, where they are often steeped into rice, turning it an eerie blue that is meant to engage the spirits, or else made into a beverage with a squeeze of lemon, turning it a brilliant violet. But recently, in tropical Colombia, on the outskirts of downtown Cartagena, there is a small community growing the vines in their small yards, the green pea-relatives crawling all over cement blocks, covering the scraggy plot divisions with lush vegetation.

My friends Luis and Alejandra at the Colombian spice business Spicarium spearheaded the project, working together with a local powerhouse non-profit called Grains of Peace or Granitos de Paz. For the past 16 years, Granitos has worked to uplift a low-income neighborhood that struggles with violence. The neighborhood, called Rafael Nunez, is home to 13,000 people, mostly of Afro-Caribbean descent and the butterfly pea program creates supplemental income for its participants, 80% of whom are women.

The average income in this neighborhood is roughly equivalent to $50 - $150 per month. The production of the butterfly pea flowers adds another $8-10 per month to this income. When I see the jar of the flowers sitting in my own kitchen, I think about how powerful a purchase it is, to help support this community, even in this small fashion.