Traidcraft’s story of Geobar so far…
When we started making Geobar cereal bars in 1999 we didn’t know if anyone would buy them…
We just wanted to create a new kind of snack which combined a mixture of high quality Fairtrade ingredients from around the world. It’s not rocket science. We weren’t trying to split the atom, or work out what relativity was. For a start we’re not that clever – and besides someone else had already done those things.
Beekeepers at Apicoop
We just wanted to make something tasty, using ingredients from our friends in developing countries where it was difficult for them to get a fair price for their great products. We wanted to find a way of combining a whole range of their ingredients into one delicious product.
Back in 1999, the only fair trade products available were made from just one ingredient like tea and coffee – which was great, but we wanted to do more. We wanted to come up with something exciting and new which no-one else had ever thought of doing before…
First we found some really nice ingredients from our friends around the world and paid a decent price for them. Then we went back to Traidcraft HQ and spent some time in the kitchen and came up with some recipes… that’s when we ended up with a fair trade cereal bar called Geobar!
We put the Geobar into our Traidcraft catalogue so we could sell it to you. Then we all crossed our fingers and waited to see what you thought – hoping you’d like it as much as we did!
And you did – in fact you liked them so much, that soon we were producing tens of thousands a week… Now more than a million people eat Geobars!… Which is great news for our friends around the world!
When you’re eating Geobars, munching away on the juicy raisins, crunchy nuts and rice crispies, enjoying the sticky honey, fruity berries, and yummy apricots, you’ve also been kitting kids out for school in South Africa, helping beekeepers and their communities to thrive in remote, rural Chile and giving fruit pickers in the mountains of Pakistan a much fairer deal.
It’s feel good food. We call it the Geobar effect!
And that’s why we do it – because changing the world one bite at a time tastes really good, and feels great!
