AKRON, Ohio -- Evan Delahanty, founder of Peaceful Fruits LLC acai-infused fruit strips, gave himself 30 days to raise $10,000 for his ambitious Akron-based startup. Twelve days into his Kickstarter campaign, he is approaching twice that amount.
As of Tuesday afternoon, 124 backers had pledged $18,306, including one local woman who accepted his offer of an all-expenses-paid, week-long tour of the Amazon to meet the Saramaccan people he worked with in Suriname, South America. Delahanty spent 27 months working as a community economic development specialist in Pikin Slee, a remote village on the Amazon accessible only by canoe.
Previous Plain Dealer story:
Aug. 28: Evan Delahanty hopes his Peaceful Fruits acai snacks bring prosperity to his Peace Corps friends in Suriname (photos, video)
In exchange, the woman has agreed to invest $10,000 in Peaceful Fruits, his social justice venture to build a sustainable, environmentally friendly business from the wild acai berries that grow abundantly in the rainforest. The dark-purple berries are the main ingredient in Peaceful Fruits' all-fruit, gluten-free, non-GMO, ethically traded fruit snacks.
The investor, who asked not to be identified except as a close friend of the Delahanty family, lives in Bath and told him she has always wanted to visit the Amazon Rainforest, he said.
Most people have pledged their support at the $25 level (four free fruit strips, plus a limited-edition Peaceful Fruits T-shirt), or the $50 level (48 fruit strips and a hand-written thank-you note).
The new donors will enable Delahanty to increase his orders of frozen acai (pronounced ah-sa-EE) berries from a cooperative of local villages that harvests the berries in the Amazon, as well as ramp up production at the Hattie Larlham Food Hub in Akron, where workers blend the berries with other pureed fruit, heat-pasteurize it, and dehydrate it. About half of the workers at Hattie's Food Hub have intellectual and developmental disabilities.
The fruit strips are labeled, inventoried and shipped by workers at the Blick Center, an Akron workforce development program also for people of different abilities.
Delahanty, a Peninsula native who graduated from Old Trail School in Bath, Walsh Jesuit High School in Cuyahoga Falls, and Cornell University, said that if he gets at least $25,000 in pledges, he plans to develop three more flavors beyond the current acai-apple and acai-pineapple.
If he gets at least $50,000 in pledges, he says he will launch a line of acai-infused rainforest-friendly chocolates, prompting one of his Facebook friends to comment: "This chocolate concept pleases me. I hope the funding gets there!"
And if someone else pledges $10,000, "we would accommodate them both as necessary, but I'd strongly encourage them to go together, and we may bring some of our interns and employees as well," Delahanty said. "These types of trips tend to be more fun with a small group (four to 10 people), but the pace and tone will 100-percent prioritize the backers' experience.
"This is meant to be a cultural trip, not a production tour. So I'm planning to take people to the village where I served in the Peace Corps, where we will see and taste wild acai -- but not to the factory where our acai comes from," he said.