Please introduce yourself. What is Dearborn?

Hi, my name is Chris Kong and I'm the chef and owner of Dearborn granola in Singapore. Dearborn is a small little space that we started two years ago, from home.

Basically we are a small business that focuses on granola, but specialty artisanal granola where we don't have a lot of waste – we try to make everything within the same week, focusing a lot on transparency as well with where we're getting our ingredients.

Why does your organization care about sustainability? Has it always been a priority from the start?

Sustainability is very important for us, and our ethos is to be able to leave the planet a better place than when we started. It has always been a goal of ours to create a business that would be able to sustain itself, not only as a business, but as a whole, allowing us to be impactful and to be a bit of a social enterprise.

Before the granola, we did the Supper Club – it was greens, grains and sustainable seafood – we didn't serve any red meat. For our business, we always wanted to keep it as sustainable as we could. Obviously, you can't be 100%, you know? With zero waste, as it's just not, it's just not feasible in this time with how things are set up with infrastructures and stuff like that.

How does your organization go about doing things differently from the industry standard? What makes your business different from the industry standard?

We focus on trying to reduce food waste. So we always try to increase that reduction as much as we can. That’s what we always wanted to focus on, and it's all-encompassing with everything we do:. From the packaging, we have 100% recyclable bags and we are now using glass jars where people can return them and get a financial incentive back. We also donate 10% of our profits to the Food Bank every month.

How does your organization’s sustainability performance compare to your competitors? What are some accomplishments your organization has made? Are there quantifiable achievements? (ex: gallons of water saved)

We are taking the big steps to make it as zero waste as possible. Currently, we’re getting our emissions tracked by a third party company, so that we can know actually how much each emissions are produced by our different flavors of granola. I don’t think anyone else is doing that. Food-wise for us we're also partnered up with Green Steps.

Additionally, we also have a “Dearborn Forest” that's being planted for us now. One in Borneo and one in Indonesia, so a percentage of our revenue will go into contributing to building this forest, and I think it's really great because with it, you can track and see everything and also give work to local communities.

I would say like once we know better, we should do better. So as a continuous thing, you know we’re always trying to get better.

In 2022, we donated about $7,100 SGD to the Food Bank, and $2,300 SGD to the NUH cancer research research, which is a national uterus hospital.

What are the challenges you face by being a sustainably-minded business?

Some of the infrastructure isn’t set up necessarily for you to be 100% sustainable, for example: packaging. It's not so easy, you know? And also each place is going to be different with how they dispose of their waste or recycling practices, and that's not always easy.

Also, suppliers that bring things in Singapore, there's about four major suppliers who are importing the nuts and stuff – we don't want them in plastic or want them in crates –but for them, it's not feasible with the amount of product they're moving. It'd be even more trouble for them to do that.

And then I think the big thing for any small business is like, when you want to scale, you are always going to run into issues, like how do you scale without losing quality?

Our supply chain is also difficult currently ever since the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. For instance, the majority of our granola came from Ukraine. Obviously, Ukraine has had to stop the export of that product, so you're going to have to get them from China. It is organic, but it's still coming through China, and they are coming into Australia. So you don't really have full traceability of the full supply chain.

What are the benefits in doing things your own way? What returns have you seen?

Creating the culture and the people that you work with the way you want.

The other thing is like when you're growing your business, everything is your problem, right? So for me, what I enjoy the most, is to tell our story to the fullest. Telling our story to the fullest, being able to be transparent with people. Connecting a face with the product.

I think a lot of times, people think of the products and then the consumer, and they kind of forget about the story or how it got there. Being able to translate that story and tell people about it is really important, and I've been seeing people who value it and understand it.

Why did Dearborn choose Topiku for their hats?

I found Topiku on Google, while I was looking for merchandise! I just really liked Topiku’s ethos, what you guys were doing, and how transparent everything was. It was all laid out there right in front of you. You know, you understood where I was, where it's coming from and all this. And I think is very cool because there's no other brand or other product like that was as open as Topiku was.

It was also really cool that Monty wanted to talk to me beforehand to get the gist of our brand – we had a call which I appreciated a lot.

Topiku and Dearborn have the same ethos. We're on par, or similar on what our brands like to do for each other. And I think for me, when looking at partnerships or companies that we want to work with, I think it's important to look at these things for sure. When it comes to choosing a hat supplier, we’re not going to choose the next hat company we see, but we want to do the research and choose a company that shares the same values with us.

What would you say to other businesses or people that are looking to become more sustainable but don’t know how?

My general advice would be to start small instead – small tangible goals that you want as a business that you can reach, that aren't going to hurt you financially.

For example, we were not able to join Green Steps or track our emissions before we set up, but we started with the using glass jars and started donating to food banks. We did those initiatives relatively early on, so that we had a budget, and I think important to always set a budget.

Sometimes the world is just not not made to be 100% sustainable. So you will get angry. I’ve gotten angry. Sometimes, it's like goddamnit! Why is it like this? But at the end of day, you have to do your part. You can't think about what everybody else is doing, right?

Spotlight: Dearborn - The Granola King