Courtesy of Bright Future Foods, LLC
How can a cracker help save the planet? If it’s an Airly cracker, it helps remove greenhouse gases from the air. In fact, according to the packaging, one box of Airly’s Cheddar Oat Cloud crackers removes 21 grams of carbon dioxide from the air, or the equivalent of 2,900 beach balls worth of fresher air.
Airly began in the St. Louis area as part of Bright Future Foods, LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Post Holdings, Inc. Airly crackers are made in collaboration with EverGrain, the sustainable ingredient company backed by Anheuser-Busch, which broke ground in June on its first U.S. facility and produces EverPro, a barley product made from spent brewing grains.
Four flavors are currently available in Schnucks and Fresh Thyme: cheddar, sea salt, chocolate, and salted caramel. Two additional flavors, butter and cinnamon, are slated to debut in January. All crackers would make a great addition to a holiday cheese, fruit, and dip board.
Courtesy of Bright Future Foods, LLC
The Background
Two years ago, Bright Future Foods co-founder/CEO Mark Izzo charged chief marketing officer Jen McKnight and chief supply chain officer Kris Corbin with “disrupting” the food and beverage industry. One of the questions they began with: “What if?—What if instead of being less bad, we could actually come up with a food that heals the Earth?”
They worked with Post’s farmers across the country and Nobel-Prize-winning soil and crop scientist Dr. Keith Paustian to figure out how to sequester carbon on farms, primarily by moving it out of the air and into the soil by following three key practices:
- No tilling of the soil
- Using prescriptive amounts of seed and fertilizer, ending over-fertilization
- Planting cover crops (legumes) in fields between growing seasons for cash crops
Currently, there are 17 farms across the country and in southern Canada from which Airly sources its grains—wheat farms in central Michigan, oat farms in the Dakotas, for example, and a sorghum farm in Kansas that just completed its first harvest. A key part of mapping the carbon negative farming process involves validation or measuring the soil to ensure that the balance is negative, and performing lifecycle assessments from seed to post-consumer use. Any area along the chain that is carbon positive—for example, production or transport—is offset by investing in carbon credits to balance the product’s overall footprint back to negative.
Courtesy of Bright Future Foods, LLC
So why crackers? “Crackers made a lot of sense as an initial product because of the high consumer engagement," Corbin says. "It’s a high-growth, high-demand category in the supermarket, and from a supply-chain perspective, we could get our hands on the grains.”
Because grains are milled in the same way as traditional grains, there are no additives needed for stabilization or flavor. In fact, Corbin researched butter crackers on the market and says that none contain real butter, but Airly’s crackers do. As a food scientist, he was accustomed to performing “chemistry experiments” in food production, but with Airly, he wanted to return to more traditional baking based on cutting-edge climate science—“Luke Skywalker meets Laura Ingalls,” as McKnight puts it.
Courtesy of Bright Future Foods, LLC
The Future
McKnight says the company has to offer “sustainability with no tradeoff” for the consumer. That means a box of crackers runs around $3.50, which is in the same ballpark as competitors’ prices. “We meet or beat Cheez-Its and Goldfish on all taste attributes,” she says. “We fundamentally believe that by not passing on a premium to the consumer we can build a business that is both sustainable for the planet and the bottom line.”
Korbin and McKnight emphasize that there’s no waiting for perfection when it comes to climate change: “We’re not going to wait until this is perfect—like in 2030,” Korbin says. With the farm benefit available now, the team hopes to be a “lighthouse” for other companies to follow suit. Corbin adds, “We want to drive that conversation around carbon negativity as part of sustainability, so we can put all those puzzle pieces together; no one company or government agency can solve the problem of climate change.”
Looking ahead, Corbin noted that cookies, pretzels, breads—pretty much any grain-based baked good—are all possible products that Airly could make, especially considering EverGrain’s nearby facility. “Our grains are magic," says Corbin. "That’s what’s going to heal the planet.”
