Welcome offer
10% off your first order
Join the nobis list for recipes, stories from the farm and first access to new harvests.
Your code appears right after you sign up. Unsubscribe anytime.
From small farmers in Paraná to your kitchen.
It started on a small farm in Paraná.
Our family has lived on the same farm in Paraná, Brazil, for four generations. My dad was a small farmer, and the base of our meals came from what we grew and raised. Food was always abundant.
We even paid for our school lunch in food. My mom would send a basket of fresh milk, meat and produce from the farm. The school cook loved it when the basket arrived and never stopped praising the quality of everything. That's when I first understood that what we had was special.
I grew up seeing how much care goes into good food.
Squeezed out by the big dairies.
Like most small farmers in Brazil, he did a bit of everything. He planted a few times a year and was up at 5 every morning to milk the cows.
In the 90s, Brazil's milk industry changed almost overnight. A few big companies took over the local dairies and started deciding what every farmer was paid.
The price got so low that even with his own farm, he couldn't make a living from it. He had to take his tractor and work on a big farm nearby to help make ends meet.
I carried that with me.
I also carried a love of food and cooking. I went to culinary school and cooked in restaurants in Brazil and London. Then that love led me to nutrition: a master's in New York, and I became a registered dietitian (RD).
Living in the US, I saw ultra-processed food sold as health food: “natural flavors,” preservatives, and protein powders we were told we needed. That's when I remembered ora pro nobis, a plant I knew from home. Real food, no label to decode.
So I told my brother, who still lives on the farm, about an idea: bring food from small farmers in Paraná to the US. Together we started nobis.
Family and friends who believed in the idea have helped us get it off the ground.
Fewer hands in between, so more can go back to the people who grow it.
nobis was born to build a business that doesn't repeat what was done to my dad and so many other small farmers.
Buyer, exporter, importer, distributor, wholesaler, store
In this chain, every hand buys the food and resells it with a markup, and the farmer gets what is left.
Small farmers
They grow it, and nobis buys straight from them.
Shipping and customs
Hired by nobis to move the food to the US. They never own it.
nobis
Based in Austin, we pack every order with care.
You
We ship straight to your home. Last stop: your kitchen.
We're small, and we're still figuring things out. Our food comes from a couple of small farmers in Paraná who work together. The only help we hire is shipping and customs, and we keep looking for the most affordable way to get it to you.
VilmarThis is Vilmar.
He's one of the small farmers in Paraná behind our products.
A leaf and a root. Nothing added, so you always know what is on your plate.
By buying straight from the farmers, with less reselling in between, there is more room to pay the families who grow your food better.
Two foods, one ingredient each.
We started with ora pro nobis for its nutrition and its history. An unconventional plant.
Ora pro nobis powder
A leafy cactus from Brazilian backyards. Picked, dried and milled into a deep green powder you stir into water, smoothies, soups and doughs.
Meet the powder →first
LeafRubissol sweet potato flour
Rubissol, a cream-fleshed sweet potato from Paraná, naturally sweet and floury. Dried and milled into a gluten-free flour for pancakes, muffins and breads.
Meet the flour →
Why we started nobis
A história por trás da nobis
Every pouch of nobis carries what I learned growing up on my family farm, and the work of the small farmers in Paraná who grow our food today.
Thank you for cooking with us. It means more than you know.