How 2DiE4 Live Foods built the world's first activated nut brand from the ground up
From a plastic bag in Planet Organic to a farm in the Bavarian Alps, the brand that invented activated nuts & why it’s more important than just taste
2DiE4 Live Foods - Agni & Filip
The nuts you buy in a supermarket, even the ones labelled unroasted & raw, almost certainly aren't. Chances are unless you’re buying from a specialist nut supplier those nuts have been processed with high heat during shelling, destroying a lot of what made them worth eating.
As Filip Good, one of the founders of 2DiE4, puts it simply “It looks like a nut but it's not like a nut”. That gap between what people think they're eating & what they're actually eating is why 2DiE4 Live Foods exists.
2DiE4 Live Foods product range part 1
The idea of activating nuts began thousands of years ago in the Mediterranean. Back then people understood the power of soaking nuts in saltwater & drying them slowly. Agni Thalgott, the other half of 2DiE4, was fascinated by the flavour activated nuts had & she began building 2DiE4 Live Foods in 2012.
The brand's first listing came by walking into Planet Organic in London with a plastic bag of activated nuts where Planet Organic’s founder, Renée Eliott, was told to try these. It worked & led to wider distribution through Marigold, then listings in Whole Foods & many others. The full range of activated nuts is much larger now. Filip joined in 2020, bringing a background in elite sport & brand building to help the business move up to the next level.
2DiE4 Live Foods product range part 2
The recipe for activated nuts hasn’t changed from three thousand years ago. 2DiE4 soaks raw nuts in spring water & sea salt chosen for its mineral content & flavour before drying them slowly. It sounds simple but just like making good bread or beer it’s highly complex & took two years of development & custom built machinery before 2DiE4 were satisfied enough to launch their first product. They’ve been improving the process ever since.
Each batch is kept at raw temperatures for up to two & a half days. The spring water comes from their own source at their Bavarian Alps farm. The salt is hand harvested from Brittany & Croatia. The result is a nut, which is easier to digest & with nutrients that are more easily available. Raw nuts contain phytic acid, which makes them hard to absorb. Activation breaks that down without any heat destroying the nutrients. People who struggle with conventional nuts because of digestive issues & mild allergies, find they can eat 2DiE4 nuts without a problem.
I didn't work on the packaging but it's a great example of design that reflects exactly what a brand stands for.
2DiE4 Live Foods’ packaging
Getting customers to pay two or three times as much for a nut that looks identical hasn’t been easy but Filip calls it a small, slow, word of mouth process. Someone tastes them, notices the difference & starts telling people about it. The journey from "these are expensive" to "these are value for money" doesn't happen on a shelf though, you have to try them & that’s when customers start spreading the word.
Agni visits every farmer, she walks through the fields, meets the people, understands exactly how the nuts are grown & processed. It's taken over a decade to build those relationships. Direct to consumer is now their biggest growth channel, including a subscription model delivering freshly activated nuts regularly. Farm to production to customer…nothing else in between.
Watch the full episode to understand:
Why the nuts you buy labelled raw in a supermarket almost certainly aren't
How industrial shelling uses high heat & what that destroys
The two-year development process behind the first activated nut
Why Agni visits every single farmer personally & what she's looking for
How walking into Planet Organic with a plastic bag started the whole thing
The subscription model that's driving direct to consumer growth
Why there are no peanuts in the range
The role of consciousness as a core value
If you care about what's actually in your food & where it comes from, this conversation will change how you think about something as simple as a nut.
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