Raul Fernandez recalled sitting on a tree stump at a cherry orchard worker’s home in Patagonia, Argentina, after his Fudi Food Corp. and its Thx! social impact brand gifted the worker a new roof and concrete floor.
The fresh blueberry, cherry and dried fruit company based in Weston, Fla., creates packaging with a QR code for shoppers to scan and watch a video of the farmworker sharing a dream, which is achieved with proceeds of the purchase.
That concrete flooring did more than replace the dirt that kept flooding during rains.
“He said, ‘I’m very grateful for the floor, but what you don’t know is you saved my life,’” Thx! cofounder and chief imagination officer Fernandez said, recalling the worker’s words. The farmworker and his wife’s only son was a month or two from starting college — the first in the family to even complete high school, let alone attend university, and lift the family out of poverty — when he died suddenly.
“’With his death, all our dreams died. My wife and I decided we had no future and were going to end our lives. Then came a knock on the door, social workers from the U.S. We felt like it was our son’s angel,’” the man told Fernandez.
“You’re sitting there, and you hear that, you start tearing up. It gets very emotional when you talk to people about their dreams,” Fernandez said.
During Random Acts of Kindness Week, Feb. 15-21, Thx! launched a Be Our Guest campaign, a contest that asks for submissions from other produce companies to share about the good things they do for their guest farmworkers. The contest and campaign should last for several months.
With all the angst about import competition, this is a way to support domestic growers, who employ so many guest workers, he said.
“There are a lot of companies that do a lot of good for their workers, and nobody’s talking about it,” he said. “The contest has an indirect benefit for us, but we don’t care. We want every company doing good to be highlighted.”
As for Fudi Food and its Thx! brand, the company partners with growers to use its Thx! label and sells it for them. About 20% of the commission goes toward accomplishing the farmworkers’ dreams, from within the U.S. or abroad.
“We don’t give the farmworkers money. We make the dreams happen,” Fernandez said.
For instance, there was the single mother farmworker in Georgia, who won a scholarship to attend college but couldn’t afford childcare, so she couldn’t go. Thx! found childcare for her.
Fernandez loves to share the personal stories of the 41-plus dreams the company has realized, from buying a wheelchair for a farmworker’s nephew with multiple sclerosis who then went on to compete in Special Olympics basketball national championships, to paying for a few car rides and arranging for a doctor for a farmworker with pelvic prolapse, who couldn’t take the bus for medical appointments because she had no urinary control.
Guest farmworkers form the backbone of domestic production, yet their humanity is often forgotten, he said.
“This industry has tremendous potential to have a huge impact in the community and make the world a little bit better than it is,” Fernandez said. “It might sound romantic, but it’s very real.”
The Be Our Guest campaign is in the early planning stage, but company leaders with kind acts to share can request submission rules and more details at info@thxdreams.com.
