Karma Nuts Celebrates a Decade in Business and a Lifelong Commitment to Cashews

For its 10th anniversary, Karma Nuts has released a new line of soft and chewy cashew cookies, blending health-conscious ingredients with indulgent taste to expand its product range beyond nuts.

At a Glance:

• Karma Nuts launched a new line of chewy cashew cookies, which come in three flavors.
• The cookies were developed to bridge the gap between healthy and indulgent snacks.
• Karma Nuts leaves the skin on the cashew, as the “testa” is a rich source of fiber and antioxidants.

Karma Nuts, a snack brand known for keeping its signature cashews under wraps (more on that later), turned 10 this year. And to celebrate, the company didn’t kick back with birthday cake for all. Instead, it made cookies—soft and chewy cashew cookies, in three flavors that hit all the classic cookie sweet spots.

And it released those cookies to what appears to have been a robust reception, seeing as how, as of this writing, all three varieties were sold out in the company’s online shop.

While that may pose a temporary hiccup for the cashew-cookie curious, it poses an intriguing question for a brand that’s proving how dynamic the healthy-snacking space can be: What’s next?

Filling a gap
Here’s another question for Karma Nuts: Why did it cap its first decade in the nut biz with a cookie? One answer, said Ganesh Nair, the company’s founder, was to give its community — the customers, extended team and supporters who, he said, “rallied behind our vision” — a gift.
But just as important, he continued, “We felt it was time.”
The brand’s had its eye on the cookie category’s expansion in natural grocery for a while, and in that time it’s noticed a growing gap. “My team and I saw a lot of very decadent, but not-great-for-you, cookies and a lot of very health-and-diet-focused options,” Nair observed. “What we weren’t seeing was a cross between healthy and indulgent.”
So why not be the one to cross them? After all, Nair argued, “We have the expertise in the space and the relationships with our customers and retailers to branch into a new category using the consumer demand we see out there.”

Exacting specs
Based on that demand — and the brand’s own values — Karma Nuts built a clear concept of what it wanted out of these cookies, and what it didn’t.
“We were very passionate about bringing a truly soft, chewy and decadent cookie to the market,” Nair recalled. “A lot of vegan and better-for-you cookies are crunchy, and those that’re soft have a bit to be desired taste-wise.”
Another non-negotiable was an entirely plant-based formulation with no refined sugar. And while that complicated ingredient sourcing, Nair conceded, “Ultimately we ended up with a better overall product because of these guardrails.”

Healthy tension
Specifically, they ended up with a buttery, chewy cookie made from a foundation of dates and cashew flour “that just so happens to be better-for-you and fits many diets, too,” Nair said.
This being the brand’s first line extension, it did have some hurdles to vault during formulation. For example, Nair observed, “When developing a new line for mass production, there’s a healthy tension between creating the best possible product and one that can scale out to large volumes.”
In their case, that meant testing several iterations of the cashew-date variety before identifying the perfectly sized cashew chunk for delivering optimal taste, texture and operational efficiency.
“We also found that adding the coconut flakes to our toasted-coconut flavor changed the dough consistency quite a lot when scaled out,” Nair added, “and we had to tweak the formula to account for a different moisture content than in the other flavors we developed.”
Finally, they had to choose how big to make the cookies — “anywhere from a single-serve large cookie down to the bite-sized ‘poppable’ cookies that we ended up with,” Nair said. “This was a combination of getting the most satisfying cookie experience — who doesn’t love three cookies per serving? — and, again, the best possible product when scaled out to larger volumes.”