The journey began when we experienced acai with local surfers during a trip to celebrate the new millennium in Brazil. Amazed by the natural energy and nutritional benefits of this amazing fruit, we were quickly hooked. Our last night in Brazil, we started working on a plan to share acai with the world and in early 2000, Sambazon was formed.
We scraped together enough money to buy a container of frozen pulp and some marketing fliers and began trying to convince juice bars in Southern California that acai was the real deal. By the end of that first summer, over 50 juice bars were selling Sambazon Acai Smoothies. We started expanding all over the country, approaching the best juice bars we could find in places like South Beach, New York City, Boulder, and Oahus North Shore. We did endless samplings, demos and promo events, and people loved it.
Today our products are sold in virtually every health food store and juice bar in the U.S. and we continue to work hard to spread the word about acai.
In Brazil, we have been working with the local NGOs to build the supply of organic and sustainable acai. Over 10,000 people in the Amazon help us harvest acai through our certified organic, fair trade program. These people now have an incentive to manage their land and protect it for generations to come.
"There is no one solution to save the Amazon rainforest. A wide range of sustainable and effective initiatives are needed to keep the forest alive and this can only be achieved if economic alternatives and solutions to destructive logging can be found ....The tasty dark violet wine ( of acai ) is the most important non-wood forest product in terms of money from the river delta of the Amazon". -Greenpeace.org
We encourage individuals and institutions to support social, environmental and scientific programs that will both preserve the Amazon and unlock its potential to aid mankind.
We are very grateful that we have been given the opportunity to share this incredible fruit with the world and we want to say thank you to all those that have supported us along the way.
Sincerely,
Team Sambazon
CHECK THIS YOUTUBE OF OUR FAVORITE PIX FROM 2006
- starting with the building of our first factory in the Amazon to process Açai- this facility employs 75 locals and can process up to 1 million berries per day- it's rad------
