We spoke with Kate Taylor Martin, superfood purveyor and founder of Nutbar, about the challenge and importance of making and consuming organic foods as an armour to modern life.
AS TOLD TO MARYAM SIDDIQI
COOKIE ART BY LINDSEY GAZEL
The best best advice I’ve ever received
“It’s very simple: It’s just one foot in front of the other, in a direction that feels in alignment with what I’m trying to create. Just keep going.”
Health isn’t just the absence of disease. We are meant to feel amazing. We are meant to have deep, restful sleeps, wake up feeling rejuvenated and have energy throughout the day. And that’s really hard in modern life. Everything is kind of working against us: screens, noise pollution, light pollution and stress.
But instead of late nights out, huge bar tabs and hungover brunches, people are now going to the sauna or early-morning workouts and then heading to Nutbar. It’s a big cultural shift, especially for those at a younger age, in terms of prioritizing taking care of themselves.
People are intuitively making that connection between what we eat and how we feel. Our tagline is “Feel good here.” The food we put in our body is one key component of that, but I think it applies to everything. It’s how a space makes you feel, how you’re greeted when you come up to the counter—those human-to-human interactions. I love the idea of providing an actual product and a space that can almost be a daily armour for people to help them navigate and be able to handle all that modern-day life throws at us.
We have the highest-quality, most-nutrient-dense food that you can get on the go. Our food is 100 per cent organic. It is made in-house by a real person every day, from scratch. We make our own nut milk from scratch, using only organic nuts—no processing, preservatives, stabilizers or fillers. We have an unwavering commitment to quality, and we’ve had it since day one. I think that’s what has set us apart as the market has become more crowded.
With food, you have to trust what a brand is telling you. Making nut milk from just five organic whole-food ingredients is an unbelievable commitment of expense, time and, honestly, fortitude. It is way easier and cheaper not to do this, but that’s not a business that I care to have.
