A bite of healthy snacks from The Honest Crop

MANILA, Philippines — Making healthier food choices is not a walk in the park considering the effort and money one has to put in.

But what better way to savor the food you eat than to munch on your favorite chips.

The Honest Crop is giving consumers the double benefit of eating healthier food such as banana, taro and sweet potato, and enjoying them at the same time without having to spend so much.

Joana Tan, owner of the two-year-old The Honest Crop, has always been trying to balance healthy diet while supporting locally produced crops to help farmers from different parts of the country.

Prior to her snack venture, Joanna was selling fresh produce directly from the  farmers but she had to stop due to issues on logistics.

“That time in 2013, the terms natural food and organic were not yet  buzzwords. It was hard to handle fresh produce then,” Joana said in an interview.

Learning from that previous experience, Joana thought of adding another procedure to lengthen the shelf life of various produce by cooking potato chips, taro chips, and banana chips in coconut oil with no sugar.

“I want to keep it as healthy and simple as possible.  You have similar potato chips in the market but they are always coated with sugar, honey or something else that makes them crispy,” Joana said.

“People love flavorful food but that’s not always good. I want to provide healthier options at an affordable price without compromising the benefits,” she added.

Joanna, who graduated with a degree of BS Management Information System from the Ateneo De Manila University,  admitted she did not have any prior background on  farming and was only exposed to agriculture in college.

“My goal is to grow the demand in a way that would encourage us to work with the farmers on organic farming,” Joana said.

“I was exposed to the life of farmers here and when I started travelling to nearby counties like Cambodia, Thailand and Vietnam. They learned from us but now we have become very dependent on these countries,” she added.

While Joana handles everything from marketing to contracting delivery services,  about 12 homemakers from Luzon do  the cooking of the chips.

The Honest Crop procures taro and sweet potato from farmers in Tarlac and bananas from Zamboanga.

“I want to help our homemakers who cook our chips and the farmers who produce them. I want to focus on the back end which is farming and agricultural livelihood,” Joana said.

Joana’s P18,000 initial seed capital in 2016 has definitely come a long way as her products are  now being sold at online shopping site, Shopee.

After giving up her IT consulting job a few years back, Joana is focusing her time and effort on further expanding The Honest Crop through e-commerce and partnering with retailers.
“Sometimes, it is a struggle to balance quality, affordability and health benefits.  The margin is low but it is enough to keep the business going. We are still small but we continue to persevere,” she said.

While she has no plans of putting up her own pop up store, Joana hopes to enter grocery chains and export her products in the next two years.

“We are still trying to apply with the FDA (Food and Drug Administration). We still have to improve the packaging and the shelf life. We need to improve a lot on our production and supply side,” she said.

“We also want to be known as a Filipino brand for healthy snacks. We plan to add more varieties, like ube, “ Joana added.

Joana said her goal is to provide healthier options that are affordable.

“There are a lot of people who want to eat healthy but they have this notion that it is expensive,” she said.