Matthew Bennett, founder of dried-fruit business Nibblish and finalist for the Entrepreneur of the Year award, outside the Havelock North headquarters. Photo / Warren Buckland
Matthew Bennett, founder of dried-fruit business Nibblish and finalist for the Entrepreneur of the Year award, outside the Havelock North headquarters. Photo / Warren Buckland
Matthew Bennett's dried fruit snacks have lifted him to national recognition as an EY Entrepreneur of the Year finalist.
Nibblish is headquartered in Havelock North and collaborates with growers overseas to source its widely renowned fruit-based snacks. The snacks are sold in most supermarkets nationwide and in 800 Woolworths storesin Australia.
"It's been a really big honour and a surprise to get to this stage of the process, given the calibre of the other finalists. There are 18 other companies nominated nationwide for this multi-industry award and we are the only food nomination," Bennett said.
The nomination has provided Bennett with an opportunity to reflect on how the business has come to fruition since the initial planting of the Nibblish seed in 2018.
"It's been a long journey really, it originally started with our daughter being born with a number of food allergies. We had to think of things to give our toddler to snack on that weren't full of rubbish and sadly, there's still not a whole lot of stuff out there," he said.
"We started making dried fruit in a traditional way. We slowly baked the fruit without adding any nasty stuff. People started trying our product and they loved it, they told us that we should launch it."
The success of their home-baked banana and pineapple prototypes prompted Matthew to continue to pursue his Nibblish notions.
"Banana and strawberry were the first ones we launched, as we figured they would be popular with kids. We developed the mango and pineapple later and the mango is now the biggest-selling health snack nationwide."
Feeling Nibblish? Your options include banana, strawberry, mango, pineapple, apricot, cranberry, or prune. Photo / Supplied
As both a business operator and father of two, Bennett sees the benefit in being able to operate Nibblish according to his values, the core of which he says has been family.
"We now employ a couple of mums in Hawke's Bay who are able to work around their families. We also produce a product that is eaten by families. Family is at the heart of what we do" he said.
It is not only local families that will benefit from Bennett's fruity ideals. In Ghana, Nibblish is trying to make re-entering the workforce more of a possibility for Ghanaian mothers.
"Women in Ghana often have to stop working once they have children because they are the ones who are expected to look after the kids, despite the fact that these women might want to keep working.
"Many of the women in management positions will then lose their jobs once they have kids. We want to keep these women in our team, with a route to a career" he said.
The twofold problem of how to care for the women's children and then how to transport them to and from work was solved by the business' implementation of a bus service and the conversion of an on-site building into a creche, where mothers can drop their children for the day.
Bennett is also driven by a motive to reduce the environmental footprint of his business. All of the fruit that is used for the snacks is grown natively and sustainably, and the business utilises alternative power sources to run operations.
"In Ghana, we have a circular model. The waste fruit from our snacks gets fermented and the methane from this fermentation is captured and used as a power source for the site and the rest of the fermented waste is used as fertiliser," he said.
"We also use a lot of water because it gets so sticky when working with fruit, so all of our plants have a recycling system that cleans and then recirculates our water, which means we are not taking from the well constantly," he said.
Armed with his ethical, sustainable, and inclusive kaupapa, Bennett intends to continue expanding his dried-fruit snacks into international markets and growing the Nibblish name.
Bennett will attend the Entrepreneur of the Year awards in mid-October, where a winner will be judged from the 19 finalists.
