Interview w/ Kelpful

Alissa – Can you give us an introduction to Kelpful?
Melissa – Our company is called Kelpful Cooperative. We’re a woman founded, worker owned cooperative and our mission is to steward marine ecosystems and the leaders in the field of regenerative aquaculture to build resilience in coastal communities through building our industry. We are sustainably hand harvesting wild seaweeds here locally in the central coast of California. We’re taking that seaweed and processing it into food items and self care items. We have a line of seasonings, broth mix, and whole dry seaweeds. We’re developing a line of ready to eat popcorn snacks as well. For our self care and skin care line we have things like sugar scrub, face mask, soap, and bath bombs all made with sustainably harvested and regenerative farmed seaweed.

Alissa – Was seawood a part of your childhood?
Melissa – No, I probably never ate seaweed until I was in college. Only in sushi rolls and it wasn’t really until a few years ago that I learned that there was a great abundance of edible wild seaweeds growing right here in California.

Alissa – Ah, so that was your touch point. Can you explain in more detail about why you became interested in seaweed?
Melissa – Sure – I grew up in the ocean, my father is an oceanographer. I grew up traveling the world, scuba diving, and snorkeling. We always fed ourselves from the sea – fishing, crabbing, shrimping, spearfishing, and etc. You can say feeding people from the ocean is in my blood. I heard about seaweed farming through a podcast back in 2017, I think it was in an interview with Bren Smith from Green Wave. That was the first time I was introduced to seaweed farming in North America. It was very inspiring and it sort of clicked for me and I knew in that instant that that was what I needed to do, what I wanted to be when I grew up.

Alissa – What interests you about Seaweed?
Melissa – The combination of being able to have a positive and meaningful impact on climate change. We know now that there are many large and complicated barriers to seaweed farming in California, but it is something that we’ve been working really hard on for the past five years and we’re getting very close to being able to start our own seaweed farm here. Food is sort of this lowest common denominator. Our food systems have this amazing capacity to initiate sort of a domino effect of social change if we can change the way we eat, the way that we produce and distribute food. We really believe in shifting our food system, more towards the ocean because there we can grow food in a truly regenerative way.

Alissa – How did you decide to build a seaweed business?
Melissa – I have been working in the solar industry, having a meaningful positive impact. However, I knew I wanted to do something more – around that time I started to get interested in entrepreneurship. Then at the end of 2018, the non profit I was working for lost state funding and I got laid off. It seemed like the perfect opportunity for me to try to build something new and never seen before. Similar to my inspiration for Patagonia, I believe in a business that is mission driven, impact oriented and being a part of building a new economy based on radically different principles that could change the world for the better.

Alissa – What made you start harvesting your own seaweed? We know it is very hard work & there are easier ways to get seaweed.
Melissa – Yeah, it’s definitely a lot of hard work and it would be a lot easier for us to just import seaweed or buy seaweed from other farms. However, we want to farm seaweed here in California. We’re interested in growing the regenerative aquaculture industry here in California. We wanted to get very familiar with the species that are native and saw this incredibly abundant resource that not many people knew about. I like working with my hands and am comfortable in the ocean so I really enjoy getting out there into the intertidal zone and spending time to really touch, feel, and get familiar with that ecosystem. The quality of the seaweed that we wild harvest is just so much better than almost any seaweed that we can buy. People can taste that freshness and notice the difference.

Alissa – How did you find the type of seaweed you currently harvest?
Melissa – I just started experimenting. I just started gathering all different kinds of seaweed, doing my best to identify it. I was literally standing in a tide pool with google on my phone trying to figure out what species of seaweed.

Alissa – What is your motivation to have a seaweed business?
Melissa – Seaweed just made so much sense to me. It was so exciting, I started bringing stuff home and hanging it up to dry in my kitchen, in my shower, in my living room, etc. and bringing it to my friends and neighbors saying try this, try that, do you like this? People loved it, they loved the concept, they wanted to learn more, they wanted me to teach them how to cook with it, they wanted to come forage. I learned very quickly that our community was ready for seaweed.

Alissa – What was your first product?
Melissa – It was just whole dry seaweed in a little compostable bag. People were excited about it, but also intimidated because it’s not something people normally cook with. So we had to provide a lot of education and honestly people were like, oh it’s not just ready to eat, I don’t want it. So then we tried to make it one step easier so our second product was seasonings, so you could just sprinkle it on your food.

Alissa – There seems to be a lot of similar products coming out, what makes your seaweed unique?
Melissa – Our ingredients are all organic. We seek out the highest quality. Even our sea salt is organic from here in California. As you may know, most things in the grocery store have sugar, msg, additives, but ours is like a top shelf version, where the ingredients are organic, clean, and delicious. On top of that, our packaging is sustainable. As a women founded business, everything we do here at Kelpful is impact driven.

Alissa – What do you have to say to the readers?
Melissa – EAT MORE SEAWEED!