Our Story
“The more you celebrate life every day, the more there is in life to celebrate.”
-Sara Tidhar, Founder
Like most good things, it all started in the kitchen.
Six years ago, Sara Tidhar found herself in a predicament. She had suddenly become a single mom and realized that to make ends meet, her stay-at-home status had to change. And quick.
So she did what came naturally: She started to cook. She hoped the comfort she felt at the stove would help her think of a way to continue putting food on the table. But it was her son who came up with the solution: “Mom, you should sell those nuts you make for us.” Sara had been making roasted nuts for her kids since they were little. She felt good about giving them a healthy snack, and the kids were crazy about them.
She’d learned her secret roasting technique from her grandmother, who’d made nuts in her tiny kitchen as a special treat for Sara and her cousins. Sara’s love of good seasonings had been passed down from her grandfather, who traveled the globe at the turn of the century as a spice trader. To Sara, it seemed right that her new profession would honor her connection to family.
She started out selling mostly to local cafés in Silicon Valley, and it turned out that people loved the nuts as much as her kids did. Making nuts quickly turned into a 24-hour-a-day endeavor. In fact, she slept by the oven most nights. It wasn’t long before a major national grocery retailer took notice. The next thing she knew, Sara was standing in front of her kitchen stove, holding orders for thousands of cases of nuts.
She couldn’t afford to be in shock for long. She had to go out and find people help her fill the orders. Everyone worked day and night crafting the nuts, never taking a shortcut. They made the order deadline. Sara still remembers how she cried when she finally got to hand out the first paychecks. Because in building her team, she found more than just workers for her business; she found a new family.
Six years later, many of those original employees are still working for Santé. And Sara has created a truly exceptional workplace for everyone, offering competitive wages, health and dental insurance and other benefits. It’s all part of Sara’s passion to create a company with soul. One that’s committed to the health and happiness of every employee. One that handcrafts products with love and integrity.
Sara’s proud that she now gets to share her nuts, so everyone can join her in her mission to Celebrate Life Every Day.
Our Process
“Our secret roasting method was handed down to me from my grandmother, and you can taste the love in every bite.”
-Sara
The devil is in the (delicious) details.
Our process hasn’t changed a bit since Sara made those first batches of nuts in her home kitchen. And we really can’t imagine doing it any other way.
We buy only the highest quality nuts we can find, often from family farms that have been tending the land and harvesting nuts for decades.
Once we’re sure we’ve picked the best, we bring the nuts into our artisan roaster and get the secret family roasting recipe started.
Our meticulous process eliminates any trace of bitterness in the nuts and, most importantly, helps minimize absorption of the organic canola oil we use for roasting. This technique has lots of benefits:
• A lighter nut with amazing crunch
• Less oil = less fat per nut = a healthier nut
• Gives the nuts a perfect, wafer-thin coating of pure cane sugar
• More nuts per ounce than other brands
We always roast by hand in small batches (with lots of care and love) so that every nut in every bag is consistently delicious.
