It’s easy to say “we’re a better for you and better for the planet” brand…
But it’s a whole different story to actually live & die by that promise at the sacrifice of profit.
Very few companies live up to this ethos better than Hu Kitchen, Hu chocolate, and now HumanCo.
All of which have been co-founded by Jason H. Karp.
Jason started his career in finance, but within 2 years of working, he began to severely struggle with his health.He developed a handful of vague conditions, one of which was a degenerative eye disease. Jason’s doctors originally told him in 2001 there was nothing he could do and that by the time he was 30, he’d be fully blind. Jason refused to believe this was his destiny and started doing his own research in autoimmunity and inflammation. He quickly became determined to cure himself through food and lifestyle, and within 12 months, fully reversed his conditions.
Jason and his family decided to create an NYC based restaurant called Hu in 2010 that was a manifestation of all the principles Jason had learned from his own healing experience. All the food was dairy, refined sugar, grain, and gluten free. And all the animal products were grass-fed, grass-finished, and pasture raised.
They wanted to create an inviting and casual restaurant where they could trust everything on the menu. Not to mention…all this was done at a time where “eating close to the earth” was seen as insane.
Most people recognize the name “Hu” as the chocolate bar company, which was started on accident out of the original Hu Kitchen. Right before Hu Kitchen opened, they were experimenting with a lot of baked items but couldn’t find any chocolate chips that met their criteria.
From this, they realized they needed to make their own.
After landing on a two ingredient chocolate chip recipe, Jason’s brother-in-law Jordan had the idea of turning them into bars and selling them at the restaurant. One of Hu’s chefs was dating someone who worked for Whole Foods Market at the time and once she got her hands on some…
She loved them so much, she asked if they could sell them in stores. And despite being a $10 chocolate bar…they took off across the nation. Hu was later sold to Mondelēz International in 2021.
The success of Hu gave Jason the insight that there needed to be more products with the same philosophy of Hu, but in other food categories.
Which is how HumanCo got started.
The idea behind HumanCo was to create more foods people loved, but with genuinely cleaner ingredients that met Jason’s rigorous standards.
HumanCo has both acquired brands and cleaned up their ingredients (Against The Grain and Cosmic Bliss)
And incubated their own brands (Snow Days)
Their primary goal is to positively impact as many people as possible and set the bar so other companies raise their standards.
