(Photo courtesy of Paul Hodge)
The founder of GolfBoard is launching a new business in Central Oregon alongside business partner Laird Hamilton. Paul Hodge is the founder of GolfBoard which is based in Central Oregon and a popular product at golf courses around the country. Now Hodge and Hamilton have partnered to launch a new business in Sisters called Laird Superfood.
Laird Superfood offers organic coffee and a Superfood Creamer to provide a delicious and healthy twist to the daily coffee ritual. The product is manufactured in Sisters where Hodge has lived since 2011.
“I have wanted to build something locally in order to give job opportunities to our community. Doing a project that has this very large scale potential in such a small community has its challenges. However, we’re doing everything we can to try and keep it in Sisters,” Hodge said.
Laird Superfood is a result of Hamilton’s love for coffee combined with his career as a professional big wave surfer. Surfing big waves requires a high level of focus in order to maintain peak performance levels. Hamilton understood long ago that premium coffee was a natural and healthy solution to keep him performing at a world class level.
The company is beginning with coffee and intends to expand by offering a full line of healthy food products.
“We started with coffee because the coffee market is massive and can provide a gateway to coffee drinkers which may not be currently focused on nutrition. Laird had heard someone say that in many cases people’s diets are so out of whack that the coffee they consume in the morning is their healthiest meal of the day,” Hodge said.
Laird Superfood’s coffee uses a high-altitude, organic-certified, wet-processed, low-acid coffee bean that is grown in Peru. The company currently offers a sweetener, performance and energy blend and a coffee/creamer combo. Hamilton intends to continue expanding the product line of Superfood’s to provide healthier food and beverage products to the mass market.
Laird’s Superfood Creamer combines healthy fats based in MCT form with Aquamin. The healthy fats are paramount for a healthy diet and are the basis for what our brains consume as fuel.
“Recent research has proven that healthy fats are actually the key to losing weight and staying slim. The Aquamin ingredient is a calcified sea algae that grows only off the coasts of Iceland and Ireland. It’s a highly bio-available form of calcium which we all need as we age and it also contains 72 other minerals absorbed from the ocean water which you will be hard pressed to get any other way,” Hodge said.
Nearly 20 years ago Hamilton began incorporating coffee in his daily regimen and began adding healthy MCT fats as fuel for long surf days. He realized that carb loading burnt off too quickly and that healthy fat energy would last long enough to get through a day of surfing. He soon became a coffee connoisseur and created his own coffee, creamer and sweetenerusing natural whole food ingredients.
“Our coffee is organic and Laird scoured the earth for what he felt was the best organic coffee available. Our organic certification coffee is a low acid strain grown at high altitude creating an HB (hard bean) and SHB (strictly hard bean) class bean, and its wet processed to ensure the flesh doesn’t affect the taste as it dries, its then slow drum roasted for 20 minutes instead of flash roasted, then packaged in 99.9 percent pure food grade nitrogen which keeps it absolutely fresh roasted tasting for 6 months or longer,” Hodge said.
Laird Superfood products are currently offered on their website and the company is seeking resellers, distributors and wholesale opportunities.
“We have been selling the products online to Laird’s fans for about a year. We launch September 21 at the Natural Products Expo East show in Baltimore to retailers who we hope will want to provide this to their customers as one of the only healthy coffee creamer alternatives,” Hodge said.
Currently Laird Superfood products are being offered to Central Oregonian’s at Melvin’s in Sisters and Tetherow in Bend.
In preparation for the company launch Hamilton has released an online Crowdfunder which allows accredited investors to be co-owners in the project. The Crowdfunder can be found at this link: www.crowdfunder.com/laird-superfood.
The company has a small 506D equity offering open. It is for accredited investors and the total raise is $500,000. So far $330,000 is banked and another $90,000 is tentatively reserved but not yet received.
If accredited investors are interested they should contact Hodge directly at paul@lairdsuperfood.com.
Laird Superfood
Sisters, OR
https://lairdsuperfood.com
CEO: Paul Hodge
CMO: Laird Hamilton
No. Employees: 6 full time and 4 part time. Anticipates 40 full time employees by this time next year.
Year Established: May 2015
Product/Service: Coffee and healthy, natural organic food products.
Hot News: Official launch to retailers September 21.
Outlook for Growth: Not limited by the size of Sisters this company intends to grow nationally and include Sisters in its headquarters plans.
