50 Years of Partnership: Celebrating Pines' Ingredient Supply Legacy & Commitment to Formulating Partners

This October, Pines International marks fifty years as the original green superfood supplier to the natural food marketplace. Anniversaries are a natural time to look back. For an ingredient supplier, though, the most important part of the story isn’t what we did alone. It’s what we built with our partners.

This post is a thank-you to the retailers, distributors, brands, formulators, and supply-chain teams who made the last fifty years possible. It also explains what that history means for the partners who will work with us next.

Built on Partnership From the Start

Pines was never built around a single owner. In 1976, Ron Seibold and Steve Malone founded the company with more than 200 investors who put in an average of about $200 each. The farmer and the dehydration company took stock instead of cash. Early employees were paid in stock. From the beginning, Pines succeeded only when its partners did.

That principle still shapes how we work with ingredient customers. We see a supply agreement as the start of a long-term relationship, not just a transaction.

Thank You to the Early Retail Partners

The first channel for modern cereal grass was the independent natural food store. Margaret Isley at the original Vitamin Cottage in Lakewood, Colorado bought 24 bottles and taught our founders how the natural foods trade worked. Her business later grew into Natural Grocers.

Within about eight months, more than 2,000 stores in 35 states carried Pines, including small chains that later became part of Whole Foods Market. Pines Wheat Grass was the first product in what became the “green food” section. That early retail and distribution network proved that cereal grass could be sold and supplied nationally.

Thank You to the Formulating Partners

Over the decades, ingredient sales have become the core of Pines’ business. Many brands and formulators across the supplement, beverage, and functional food categories have built products on our cereal grass. Many of the marketing ideas and phrases now common in the greens category started with Pines. We take that as a compliment.

To every R&D team that ran our powder through a pilot batch, every procurement manager who built us into a forecast, and every brand that put our ingredient behind its label: thank you. Your success is the best proof of what we do.

Thank You to the People Behind the Supply Chain

Fifty years of consistency depends on people. Our growers plant in the fall and watch the fields through nearly 200 days of winter growth. Our harvest crews work during the few days each spring when cereal grass reaches the jointing stage. Our production teams dry, mill, tablet, and pack in food-grade stainless steel facilities at Midland Corners near Lawrence, Kansas, the site of Dr. Schnabel’s original laboratory, which Pines has owned since 1984.

Their work is the reason our partners can count on the same specifications from one lot to the next.

A Legacy of Organic Leadership

Our 50th year is also a chance to recognize work that benefits the whole industry. When Ron and Steve started selling in 1977, there were no national organic standards. Any product could call itself “organic.” In the early 1980s, Ron served on the five-person committee that wrote the Kansas Organic Producers standards, which Pines followed. Later, Ron and Steve joined other natural food leaders in pushing for national rules. That effort helped lead to the Organic Foods Production Act of 1990, which created the basis for today’s USDA organic program.

For ingredient buyers, this history means Pines did more than adopt organic certification after the fact. We helped build the organic system that brands rely on today. We have converted more than 2,000 acres to organic production and helped other farmers convert 2,000 more. We also grow without irrigation and have opposed depletion of the Ogallala Aquifer for decades.

A Mutual Commitment

Gratitude goes both ways. Our commitment to formulating partners for the next fifty years is the same one that built the last fifty:

• Consistency: Jointing-stage harvest, low-temperature drying, and documented specifications lot after lot.

• Transparency: COAs, certifications (Certified Organic, Non-GMO Project Verified, gluten-free, Kosher), and clear answers about how our ingredients are grown and processed.

• Technical partnership: Formulation support based on decades of experience, not a tech sheet put together last quarter.

• Long-term thinking: We are a supplier that plans in decades, not quarters.

Here’s to the Next Fifty

Pines has also donated several million dollars’ worth of cereal grass to feeding programs around the world and has supported environmental and organic farming causes through its foundation. That commitment reflects the same values our founding investors asked us to carry.

To every partner who has been part of the first fifty years: thank you. To the partners we haven’t met yet: we’re ready.

Celebrate 50 years with a partner built for the long term. Contact our ingredient team to request specs, COAs, and samples, or to start a conversation about your next formulation.