Caught up in the ostensible romance of war, Arjan Stephens’ grandfather, Rupert Stephens, lied about his age to join more than 650,000 Canadians and Newfoundlanders to fight in WWI. He was 16, a sensitive songwriter.
But, romantic, the trenches of Belgium and France were not. Out of his battalion of 1,000 men, says Arjan, only Rupert and a single other soldier survived—two among the 66,000 Canadian service-members who perished in the war.
Rupert Stephens came home to his native Vancouver Island, suffering what at the time people called “shellshock.”
He found solace and healing for his trauma (which we now understand as PTSD) on a small, family berry farm and produce stand. There he committed to organic farming, which is synonymous with healthy soil. For Rupert, that meant employing a novel combination of sawdust amassed from the many mills on the island, and kelp and seaweed from the local beaches, which he collected with his son, Arran Stephens.
“Always leave the soil better than you found it,” Rupert instructed his son. In turn, Arran would guide his son, Arjan, with that same mantra.
In Rupert’s farms’ unique milieu, earthworms thrived. The worms came up to feed through the layers of seaweed and sawdust spread between the rows of strawberries and raspberries. “They would eat that, and go back down, and they would actually plow the soil for him,” says the grandson, Arjan Stephens, now president of Nature’s Path Foods. “It was an earthworm paradise. And, he didn’t have to use heavy equipment.”
Healing the environment – and the people who live in it – became the underpinning of the Canadian B-Corp, Nature’s Path, says Arjan.
The Trailhead is Cleared
Fast forward more than half a century from the Great War. “Growing up, my parents [Arran and Ratana Stephens] opened the first vegetarian restaurant back in 1967,” says Arjan. “My dad just had $7 CAD in capital and a $1,500 CAD bank loan.” Soon after, they opened “one of Canada’s first natural food stores in 1971.”
The couple founded Nature’s Path in 1985 out of the back of one of their restaurants. For pocket money, young Arjan washed dishes and bused tables there. When the family started the first certified cereal factory in Canada in 1989, “it was tough,” says Arjan. “I remember my mom and dad really struggling to make a go of it. And, of course, we all had to work, whatever it was, putting bags of cereal into boxes.”
Arjan later interned in every department of the family business, and after getting his Bachelor’s in History from Queen’s University, and an MBA from Illinois Institute of Technology, he joined the company full time, eventually rising to EVP.
In 2023, he took over from his mother, Ratana, as president.
Today, Nature’s Path has grown into North America’s largest certified organic breakfast and snack food company. A Big Dog in a medium-sized sector, it’s not done growing.
Giants Want to Invade the Garden
With hundreds of SKUs, the Richmond, BC company’s cereal might be the best known of its offerings, with wide availability in grocery stores.
The enterprise runs four interconnected brands: Nature’s Path, EnviroKidz, Love Crunch, and Que Pasa Mexican Foods, the latter of which is a leading Canadian organic tortilla chip company – gluten free, nut free, and all vegan – with Arjan Stephens as its president.
Still privately held and family owned, still fiercely independent, and still rooted in the principles of organic farming, sustainability, and health championed by Rupert Stephens, Nature’s Path’s revenues are around $307 million USD.
“Our big hairy audacious goal is to be a trusted name for organic foods in every home,” says Arjan Stephens. “But, we have long ways to go in the United States. We have more penetration in Canada, and sell to fifty different countries. We just think there’s so much more to have in terms of growing that vision. And we want to make organic accessible to everyone, not just people who shop in fancy food stores—accessible even to people utilizing food banks.”
In fact, the company reports, in the last 14 years, Nature’s Path has donated more than $41 million USD in food and cash to local food banks, charities, and likeminded environmental partners. In 2022 alone, it donated $4.5 million USD.
“I think our consumers recognize our commitments [to sustainability and social consciousness],” says Stephens. “I think another way it’s really manifested for us is that a number of large multinational food companies have been buying up organic food companies of medium size to larger size. And we’re one of the few remaining ones that are left, still independent, because it’s more than just making a profit for us.”
“We want to support all of our stakeholders, our team members, our farmers that work with us, all our consumers—and we think we can do that by being independent.”
Yet, Stephens concedes that “It’s a big challenge to go up against these big behemoths who have really strong distribution and sophisticated ways of getting to the market. But we beat them with agility, and with authenticity, I think.”
For Nature’s Path, agility sometimes takes the form of strategic acquisitions. It has capitalized on an opportunity occasioned by the recent inflationary period to buy smaller organic food brands that it could help grow. In 2023, it bought Love Child Organics, a Canada-centric brand which specializes in baby food, to expand the brand throughout North America and internationally. This followed Nature’s Path’s move to acquire a majority stake in Anita’s Organic Mill in 2021. Nature’s Path is helping the Canadian organic flour and grain product company, also to expand it in Canada, as well as launch in the US.
Slow & Steady Market Penetration, Always Starting with Quality
As a prime example of its philosophy and execution of getting products to market, Stephens points to Nature’s Path’s suite of Love Crunch granola products.
One of its bestselling lines, Love Crunch started as a party favor for Arjan and his wife, Dr. Rimjhim Stephens’ wedding. The boxes of granola were tied to the Stephens’ request for guests to donate money to good causes, rather than giving it to the couple.
“We were just so overwhelmed by the gifts that they gave the communities on our wedding day,” says Arjan, and the guests were so impressed with the granola, that the couple was inspired to take it to market. “The buyer at Whole Foods loved it and convinced us to launch it. And we said, ‘Well, if we’re going to launch it, we want to do a giving-back component as well.’”
“So, we helped support the Whole Planet Foundation with the first launch of Love Crunch, supporting women entrepreneurs in the developing world in starting their own businesses through microcredit loans. And a lot of these women bought a goat or a sewing machine and were able to generate some income to help send their children to school or save up money for medical emergencies and so and so forth,” Stephens recalls.
“Love Crunch quickly became one of our top-selling granola products and is still today. Now we have seven different flavors of Love Crunch and every year, we support food banks through donations [e.g., through the Bite4Bite foundation].
One of the first and longest-lasting initiatives created to fulfill the brand’s mission of giving, the program has donated more than $27.6 million in food to food banks since 2010.
More Give-Backs
Nature’s Path is committed to donating $727,000 USD to organic, community gardens impacted by food insecurity through its Gardens for Good grant program. The brand is already more than halfway there, having donated $447,000 USD to 74 gardens across North America.
In addition, for more than a decade, Nature’s Path has hosted “foodraisers” in the communities where team members live and work, to help raise food and funds for local food banks and elementary schools. These events have raised more than $2 million worth of food to date. This year, the brand has pledged to match 1 pound of organic food for every $1 donation to its food bank partners across North America.
Nature’s Path also donates a portion of EnviroKidz sales to organizations around the world that help save vulnerable and endangered animals. Since 2002, Nature’s Path has raised $4.2 million USD to help these endangered species.
More Bold Goals & Achievements
In 2022, Nature’s Path supported more than 92,800 acres of organic farmland and its farmers, using innovative climate-friendly practices to protect people and the planet.
The brand kept an area the size of Philadelphia free from 17,800 tonnes of synthetic fertilizers equaling the weight of 80 Boeing 747 airplanes and 230 tonnes of toxic pesticides equivalent to the weight of 34 African Elephants.
As part of the brand’s zero-waste certification and commitment to reduce its impact, Nature’s Path diverted 22+ million pounds of waste from landfills in Canada and the US in 2022, resulting in a 94 percent diversion rate, the company reports. That’s the equivalent of the weight of 50 Boeing 747s.
In 2022, the brand’s Blaine, WA plant sent 2.8 million gallons of wastewater to an anaerobic biodigester which creates renewable energy: The company operates with zero waste, says Stephens.
Every year Nature’s Path chooses 100 percent renewable energy for its Canadian and U.S. operations. In 2022, this had a similar impact to growing 131,000 trees for 10 years or removing 1,700 cars off the road for one year, says the company.
Worms to Riches: Reflecting on Rupert
What would grandfather Rupert Stephens think if he could see what Nature’s Path’s staff of 371 have accomplished of late? Would anything surprise him?
“Yeah,” says Arjan. “I think he would’ve been surprised about just how genetically modified organisms have truly infiltrated every aspect of the food chain, and how organic is really that bulwark against GMO technology.”
Through the University of Victoria, the Stephens family has donated $25,000 to create undergraduate and graduate student awards that support research in an area related to organic food, sustainable food systems, community and agricultural development, food security, or environmental stewardship in agriculture. They want to keep Rupert’s innovative eye on the prize.
Rupert would likely find himself surprised by the scale of Nature’s Path’s success, says Arjan. “Because we had just a very small berry farm on Vancouver Island. What he and other organic pioneering farmers were able to develop and create over the years. To see how big it’s become because of the Green Revolution that took all these armament chemicals and turned them into fertilizer and other sorts of nitrogen fertilizers to ‘help’ with conventional farming.” Surprised at the extent to which all those weapons of war continue to wage war on people and the planet through conventional farming.
From Rupert Stephens’ original experiments with earthworms, Arjan reflects, “to an $80 billion dollar worldwide organic food industry.”
If you’d like to dive deeper with more purpose-led companies like Nature’s Path Foods, check out the Lead with We podcast here, so that you too can build a company that transforms consumer behavior and our future.