The Story
The story of peanutsforgood.org begins with Mek, a Bay Area competitive rock climber who was running late for an outdoor climbing trip. After waking up just ten minutes before the scheduled departure time, he frantically searched for the first quick, nutritious snack he could bring with him: Skippy Peanut Butter and tortilla wraps. His climbing foodie friend all teasted him mercilessly at lunch time and joked he should try to get sponsored by Skippy Peanut Butter. After all, when there's Patagonia, REI, and Clif bars, how many climbers could possibly be competing for sponsorships by a peanut butter company? Well, Mek was game to try -- it sounded like fun.
For over two years, Mek trained and he trained, climbing thousands of boulders and tagging @Skippy on all of his facebook climbing videos.
- v11 "Insane Candy-Cane"
- v11 "Amazing Grace"
- v11 "Come On"
- v10 "Line of Symmetry"
- v10 "Burling10"
- v10 "Heel of Fortune"
- v10 "Trust the Heel"
- v10 "First Contact"
- v10 "Green Mono-ster"
- v10 "Hold the Line"
- v10 "Lorax"
- v9 "Bloody Knuffles"
- v9 "Little Wing Sit" (outdoors, no send)
- v8 "Campus Girls" (Mount Tamalpais)
- v8 "Grinch"
It was no use, Mek wasn't strong enough. And so he decided to write a humble plea for Skippy's support:
And it worked!
SKIPPY gave Mek 3 free jars of peanut butter. "How many people", he wondered, "do you think one could feed with a jar of peanut butter? I bet there are a lot of people who could use a free pb&j more than I do". And so one sunny Saturday, Mek went around the Mission, SF, distributing sandwiches to anyone who was hungry. He didn't make it 2 blocks before running out of almost 15 sandwiches and juice boxes.
And just like that, the fun was over. Mek had run out of peanut butter and our story comes to an end. Or story would have ended, had not Jeremy Rubin came to the rescue, donating 2 more 48oz jars of peanut butter to power another round of 30 PB&J for SF's hungry!
That's when it hit us, we don't have to run out of peanut butter. Jeremy planted the idea, "maybe u should start a PB company. Do a jar for jar thing. like toms".
And after weeks of research and user-studies, peanutsforgood.org was born.