Nowadays Good Earth is a household name but not that very long ago it was a company struggling, like many other start-ups, to make it in the marketplace.
In its early days shopkeepers thought its founder, Matthew de Giorgio, was trying to sell them scalora (bird seeds) and not brown rice or cereals grains.
More than 300 items carry the Good Earth brand.Until around 1984, when Good Earth “was born”, natural foods were little known in Malta, says Mr de Giorgio. “It was only at Christmastime when packets of raisins and almonds came out, otherwise they were not the rule of the day” – for several reasons.
Firstly, many people were not aware what natural foods are and, secondly, the whole health and fitness ‘thing’ had not yet kicked in.
Natural foods are defined as foods that are not processed and contain no additives or colourings; these include beans, lentils, flours, nuts, rice, grains, herbs, spices and dried fruits.
Of course, some of these items could be found in our kitchens, but not in the varieties now available. “There were possibly two types of rice then, a mahatma and a parboiled”, comments Mr de Giorgio, “and hardly any cereal grains or pulses”. Who had ever heard of sago or freekeh back then?
He did not consciously set out to change the Maltese taste for exotic foods, in fact Mr de Giorgio was more interested in altering his own eating preferences.
On his travels as a sailor on yachts he came across “lots of interesting foods” and was also turning vegetarian. However, the thought of “just eating white rice, boiled potatoes and carrots” put him off. Instead he became a “flexitarian”.
As a flexitarian you “balance things out”, de Giorgio explains, “it’s a good way to go because you can establish your own levels of food choices.
“Food needs to be clean, everything you ingest has to go through your mechanism and either contributes to your body’s well-being or not. You have to be conscious of what food you ingest,” emphasises the 62-year old Mr de Giorgio.
The decision of what to eat and the range of food products he had seen on his travels was the spark that set off Good Earth.
“I started working in my dad’s garage in St Julian’s,” says de Giorgio. In those days the raw materials were sourced from Italy and the UK, and were bought in 25kgs sacks; nuts, on the other hand, are traditionally sold in sacks of 11.34kgs, or 25lbs – one of the oddities of the commodities trade.
Mr de Giorgio and a part-time helper did all the sorting, cleaning, weighing and packaging by hand – “we had basic kitchen scales, automation came later”. This was all done in the afternoons and evenings, in the mornings the packaged goods were delivered to shops.
The company that started off because a wannabe vegetarian wasn’t keen on a rice and potato diet 34 years ago now employs some 90 people
A year later the garage became too small to handle the volume, and a warehouse in Naxxar was rented and two packers were employed.
The variety of natural foods retailed by the fledgling company also grew, by 1986/7 Good Earth was importing rice, grains, pulses, nuts, fruits, spices and flours. And products not previously available on the islands, such as soya beans and brazil nuts, were introduced.
Yet, the unfamiliarity of the products continued to be a major hurdle. Shop owners were still reluctant to devote too much shelf space to Good Earth branded goods.
“I needed a shop”, says Mr de Giorgio, “not just to display but with someone to explain what things were”.
The first Good Earth shop opened in Sliema’s Main Street. “We had this shop for a few years, then in 1989 we leased one in Balluta [St Julian’s] that’s in a more prominent location – we still have it,” he adds.
Meantime, the marketplace began to morph, “as it does every five years or so”; from the three supermarkets that existed at the time, new ones opened.
Also, the public began to be more aware of the benefits of a healthy lifestyle. Walking and jogging became fashionable, and gyms started opening everywhere.
“People began to appreciate that they could take care of their own wellbeing by diet and exercise,” and became more conscious of natural foods.
Although Good Earth grew, it remained essentially a cottage industry for its first 10 to 15 years of existence, but it was prosperous enough to buy a small sandwich company – Brown & Rye.
It was not until around 2000 that Good Earth graduated to big company status and became a family business.
In the early 2000s Mr de Giorgio’s nephews, brothers Sebastian and Nikolai de Giorgio joined the company, and each would eventually manage separate divisions.
In 2004 Good Earth moved to a purpose-built facility at the Hardrocks Business Park in Burmarrad and evolved from being simply an importer and distributor to food production as well. It now manufactures a variety of wholewheat pastas and spelt galletti, for instance. The first decade of the century saw rapid growth – the Da Vinci Bakery was bought, and Fifth Flavour Caterers joined the GE team.
Good Earth remains the packager and distributor of the natural foods it sources from abroad and sells under its own name. And the quantities it imports are large, some examples: 160 tons of flours and flakes a year, 50 tons of nuts, 44 tons of grains, 32 tons of pulses, 32 tons of dried fruits, 20 tons of seeds, 12 tons of rice and eight tons of spices.
Meantime, San Ġwann-based Good Earth Retail operates four shops – two are in supermarkets – stocked with Good Earth labelled products (more than 200 items and around 100 herbs and spices) plus the 30 or so other international brands the company imports.
Artisan Foods, housed at the Burmarrad HQ, was created to group Brown & Rye, Fifth Flavour Caterers and Da Vinci.
The company that started off because a wannabe vegetarian wasn’t keen on a rice and potato diet 34 years ago now employs some 90 people.
And although Mr de Giorgio may have given up his initial enthusiasm for living on veggies, his driving principle has not: “to provide quality and nutritional products”.