Today we’d like to introduce you to Mohammad Salahy.
Mohammad, let’s start with your story. We’d love to hear how you got started and how the journey has been so far.
Our Mission:
Empowering Afghan family farmers by bringing their saffron to international markets, and empowering their children by reinvesting in their local schools.
On April 2017, Heray Spice is founded by two US Army Linguists who served the Army for 3.5 years in Afghanistan. We immigrated from Afghanistan to Chicago in December 2014. The company’s profound aim is to serve restaurants and home chefs with the natural and fresh saffron. As well as, building a better economy for Afghan farmers.
Our saffron is sourced directly from family farmers in Afghanistan. The farmers of Afghanistan, under constant pressure to produce crops like Marijuana and poppy, do not have many options to make an honest living, And we are there to help them cultivate saffron instead of poppy.
It costs only $70 to educate a child for a year in Afghanistan. Despite, 1 out of 5 children reach to 5th grade; the rest drop out of school in those early ages for financial reasons. 10% of our net profit is contributed to educating kids in Afghanistan. At the moment, we are in partner with three elementary schools in Herat Province of Afghanistan. Currently, we are serving 51 restaurants and grocery stores in Chicago land area, including Michelin Stars Restaurateur and Five Star hotels. We have a partnership with 18 Afghan family farmers and 3 elementary schools. The goal is to help 30 family farmers, and 6 elementary schools by March 2018.
We’re always bombarded by how great it is to pursue your passion, etc – but we’ve spoken with enough people to know that it’s not always easy. Overall, would you say things have been easy for you?
Starting a business is like riding a roller coaster, sometimes it is smooth but mostly bumpy and stressful. We are fairly new in the market, so we have difficulties spreading our word out. Also, business development was a challenge for us, and still it is. I think it must be always observed and improved. Since none of us had a business background or entrepreneurial experiences, we had challenges on starting the business. However, as time goes we are learning something new every day, and that makes the ride smoother.
So let’s switch gears a bit and go into the Heray Spice story. Tell us more about the business.
We have three specific values that we are proud of and they make us apart from others. First, for a social cause, helping more Afghan family farmers to cultivate saffron instead of poppy.
Second, helping chefs, our specialty is the quality and freshness of the product. Our saffron is tested according to ISO 3632.2 with the color strength of 264. We serve completely fresh and farm to table saffron.
Almost 90% of US market saffron is adulterated with corn silk or safflower Patel, and the color strength for other companies’ saffron ranges from 110-150.
Third, growth thru education, we contribute 10% of the net income to build schools for Afghan children.
Has luck played a meaningful role in your life and business?
As we are a very small company, we had volunteers who did many projects for us, I think we were lucky to have them. However, in general luck and hard work go hand in hand; the more we worked hard, the luckier we became.
Pricing:
- $8.99 per 0.5 gram retail price
- $13.99 per 1 gram retail price
- $179 per 1 Oz retail price, $119 per 1 Oz wholesale price
Contact Info:
- Website: www.herayspice.com
- Phone: 312-774-9782
- Email: info@herayspice.com
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