Handcrafted Nut Butters and a Mission That Matters
ABOUT GROUND UP
About Us
At Ground Up, we craft small-batch nut butters with simple, all-natural ingredients and bold, unforgettable flavors. But we offer more than great taste. We exist to create real change by providing job skills training and meaningful employment to women overcoming adversity. Through our six-month apprenticeship program, women earn an income while building the confidence, skills, and experience they need to move toward self-sufficiency. Every jar you buy fuels that work directly.
More than just nut butter, a movement in a jar.
How Ground Up Started
Ground Up was founded in Portland, Oregon in 2016 by Julie Sullivan Loos and Carolyn Cesario. Julie had spent years running an employment training program for women in Uganda and recognized the same need at home. Carolyn had been developing small-batch nut butter recipes with a passion for clean, real ingredients. Together they built something that didn't exist: a nut butter company where the product and the mission are inseparable.
Today Ground Up employs women overcoming adversity through a six-month Production Apprenticeship Program, putting products in over 1,300 stores nationwide, and winning Good Food Awards for flavors like Snickerdoodle and Honey Cardamom. The business has grown but the founding idea hasn't changed: make something genuinely good for you, and use it to do good.
A MOVEMENT IN A JAR
Watch Our Mission in Action
IN THE PRESS
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