Our Roots

They all laughed at Christopher Columbus (apparently) and we bet our founders raised the odd smirk when they set up a restaurant called Seed back in 1967. Brothers Craig and Gregory Sams (inventor of the Vegeburger) pioneered vegetarian and, yes, organic food, including the original Bircher Benner muesli recipe. Craig Sams now chairs the Soil Association, champions of all things organic, and inspires us to keep coming up with as many great ideas as he’s had (almost).

• 1967 Summer of Love, Peace & Macrobiotics (exclusive to our Seed restaurant)
• 1969 Ceres Grain opens up, starting a whole new generation of wholefood stores
• 1974 Whole Earth introduce the world’s first wholenut peanut butter
• 1976 First no-sugar jam, legally not jam at all, no-sugar-added “fruit spreads”
• 1977 First organic pasta
• 1985 We do for carbonated drinks what we did for jam -sweeten them with fruit juice instead of sugar
• 1988 First organic peanut butter
• 1991 First organic cornflakes
• 1997 First carbon neutral food product
• 1999 First organic cola
• 2006 SOcrispY, the first soy snack made entirely with natural ingredients
• 2006 Our offices go 100% carbon neutral (that’s good, by the way - see Green Stuff to see why)
• 2007: Whole Earth launches the first organic soya fruit drink
• 2008: Whole Earth launches the first organic choc chip peanut butter