One small food stop survived a culture-changing pandemic by staying ahead of consumer and food trends. CEO and co-founder of Palmetto Superfoods Charles Lee credits his business partners and savvy earned from years in e-commerce.<\/p>\n
Palmetto Superfoods first opened in 2019 \u2014 right before the COVID-19 pandemic closed many restaurants. It offers trendy acai berry bowls and smoothies and now has around 20 locations, with Bay Area stores in Corte Madera, San Francisco, Burlingame, San Jose, Palo Alto, Walnut Creek, Livermore, Mountain View, Fremont and now Los Gatos.<\/p>\n
Q: How did you start Palmetto Superfoods? It started through a connection with Cafe de Casa in San Francisco, right?<\/p>\n
A: I met Amanda Moreira (co-founder of Palmetto) of Cafe de Casa back in 2014 or 2015 when she opened up the cafe right next to where my office was. I was doing e-commerce in the fashion and sneakers industries near Fisherman\u2019s Wharf, and I was going to them almost daily for breakfast and lunch. One thing that caught my attention from their menu was their acai. Theirs was something special. We had a lot of respect for each other\u2019s businesses. One day, I had this idea that the acai could be a standalone hero. I had other ideas to do fun tropical flavors with a functional concept in mind. She thought the same. You\u2019ve heard the clich\u00e9 of love at first sight. We had that same thing, but for business.<\/p>\n
She brought her sister Thais Moreira, and I brought in Hessam Shirmohammadi (co-founder and COO-CMO). We started back in 2019 after figuring out the menu.<\/p>\n
We want it to be delicious, but we also want people to actually feel good about it and not feel guilty, so we really focus on letting the fruit do the talking.<\/p>\n
After 2019, obviously, COVID hit, but we still kept pushing through.<\/p>\n
Q: How did you adapt during the pandemic? It was so disruptive for so many restaurants.<\/p>\n
A: I come from e-commerce, and I brought the same strategy into food: keep it online. We try to give the customer different ways to do it. From the get-go, we set up the self-ordering kiosk and online ordering, which no one was using at the time, but when COVID hit, obviously it shifted, so we were ready for those demands. And if we\u2019re in a mall, we emphasize that people can order ahead or order, go about shopping and come back to pick up.<\/p>\n
Q: Taking a step back: What is acai? Why is it a so-called superfood?<\/p>\n
A: You can only get it in Brazil in one particular area, though there might be other smaller farms popping up around South America and a few small spots in Hawaii. Acai has a ton of antioxidants \u2014 it\u2019s 10x or 100x what a blueberry has. Of all the berry families, it\u2019s what is most beneficial to us.<\/p>\n
Amanda and Thais are from Brazil and know how to source it and produce it the right way. They know who to talk to and what farms to work with. Our eventual goal is to keep expanding in Brazil, making sure we can supply all the future stores to come. Those are all things that we think about: How do we keep up with the demand, and how do we farm and produce enough? That\u2019s been one of the bigger challenges as we keep going.<\/p>\n
Q: So walk me through it. How do the acai berries become the purple stuff you get in a bowl?<\/p>\n
A: So the process is that farmers in Brazil pick it from a tree. They literally climb up a couple stories to harvest it. Then it is taken to a facility where it has to be flash-frozen immediately. You have to do it within 24 hours or the berries go bad. After they\u2019re frozen, they get shipped in blocks to us, and we take the blocks and do our formulation to blend them. That\u2019s the product we get into the stores today. So a new batch is freshly made on a weekly basis at all the locations. And that\u2019s also kind of why the taste is prominent, because it\u2019s as fresh as possible.<\/p>\n
Q: What kinds of shifts have you seen regarding people\u2019s health-consciousness in their diets as you\u2019ve been in this business?<\/p>\n
A: I think it\u2019s definitely a shift since COVID, and it\u2019s more prominent today. People care about what they put in their body. Consumers are a lot smarter today. They worry about the consequences of fast foods on the world and about eating heavily processed packaged foods.<\/p>\n
I think that is why consumers gravitate to Palmetto, because it\u2019s easily accessible. We want to be price-inclusive. We want everyone to be able to get something. We keep the price of a small bowl from us under $10 or so \u2014 and we think that\u2019s strategically positioned so the customer can compare it to premium ice cream, coffees and bobas, which are in a similar price range.<\/p>\n
Q: So what\u2019s your go-to order?<\/p>\n
A: If it\u2019s a bowl, I start with a light layer of our coconut beach with coconut milk, coconut cream and coconut nectar. And then I\u2019ll do a big layer of our acai. And then do some chia pudding and some steel-cut oats, just for the textures, and the flavor combination is amazing.<\/p>\n