These Healthy Desk Snacks Fight Food Waste and Help Farmers

At first glance, Mavuno Harvest’s Chewy Fruit Bites look similar to a lot of other dried fruit products on the market. But take a closer look, and you’ll spot a few things that set these healthy desk snacks apart. 

First, their shape: Instead of strips or chunks, Mavuno’s dried fruit comes in snack-sized balls that combine two different fruits (like pineapple, passion fruit, coconut, and mango) into a single bite. Then, there’s the ingredient list. The bites are made from organic fruit—that’s it. 

Keep reading the package, and you’ll spot an even bigger difference: Mavuno’s snacks use organic fruit grown and dried in Africa. Founder Phil Hughes created the company specifically to bring more income and opportunity to African farmers. In the process, he has helped save thousands of pounds of organic fruit from becoming food waste. 

Phil’s Story: Kenya & The Peace Corps

When Phil joined the Peace Corps in 2003, he was a mechanical engineer fresh out of college. 

“I had some wanderlust, and I also had this vague notion of wanting to help people,” Phil said. “But I was 21, so I didn’t even really know what that meant.”

That decision changed the course of his career. He landed in Kenya and moved to the village of Miti Mingi to work as a public health volunteer. At the request of his neighbors, he helped build a voluntary counseling and testing center for HIV and AIDS education. But even as the village’s healthcare improved, Phil noticed another problem—a lack of economic opportunity. 

The Opportunity Problem

“My biggest takeaway from the Peace Corps was the overwhelming poverty where I lived. In my village, there were zero job opportunities. It was very rural. The closest city was about two hours away, and it’s not like the city had a ton of opportunities either,” Phil said. 

Organic fruit farming was the go-to job in Miti Mingi. But because of unpredictable harvest times, farmers couldn’t easily schedule a truck to bring their produce to the city. They usually sold their pineapples, mangoes, and papayas at roadside stands instead. 

This wasn’t a very effective strategy. Only a few cars passed by the remote village, and in the end, most farmers sold only about one-third of their harvest. Without reliable cold storage, they had to leave the rest of the fruit—and the hard work and financial security it represented—to rot.

The problem stuck in Phil’s mind. He kept thinking about it when he returned to the US to earn a Master of Business Administration in International Business, and when he took a job in Rwanda helping coffee farmers improve their crop quality and find international buyers. Then, in 2011, the lightbulb went off. What if he could find a way to help family farmers in Africa increase their income by drying and exporting their fresh fruit? 

“All of my experience—the Peace Corps, getting my MBA, working in Rwanda—led me to the idea of Mavuno Harvest,” he said. 

How Mavuno’s Healthy Desk Snacks Help Farmers

Phil started connecting with fruit drying facilities in Africa and looking for a market for their fruit in America, where he lived at the time. He visited eight different African countries on his hunt for the right suppliers.

“I didn’t want to be seen as ‘the foreign savior’ that comes in and fixes everything for everybody—I wanted to help them develop infrastructure themselves,” Phil said. “… I provided business, cash flow, and profits for these businesses by providing a US market. I essentially became a customer and tried to tell their story.”

Phil built a network of fruit-drying facilities in Ghana, Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, and Cote d’Ivoire. Soon, his drying partners began buying more of the fresh organic fruit that local farmers couldn’t sell, drying it, and exporting it to the US for Mavuno Harvest.

“The name Mavuno means ‘the first fruit of the season’ in Swahili,” Phil told The FruitGuys. “…It’s a nod to the national language of Kenya, where I completed my Peace Corps service.” 

A Mavuno Success Story: Papaya Farmer Muwonge Herbert

Mavuno’s business model worked. It brought a new source of income to African farmers, and some of them, like papaya farmer Muwonge Herbert of Uganda, reinvested in their crops. 

“He had papayas on his farm and we started buying those papayas,” Phil told The FruitGuys. “Less than a year later, with the income he made, he was able to rent another plot of land. He planted more papayas and sold them to us the year after that. It was a relatively quick turnaround, and he doubled his output because he had found a solid market.” 

In 2024 alone, Mavuno purchased fruit from ninety-seven small family farms in West Africa for its dried fruit snacks and supported 297 factory jobs, helping families afford necessities like healthcare, school uniforms, and more. 

Bonus Benefit: Saving Food Waste

Mavuno Harvest does more than help farmers—it also helps the planet. Its partners focus on buying fruit that farmers can’t sell locally, saving it from going to waste. In 2024, that savings amounted to 347 metric tons of dried fruit.

“Starting out, I don’t think I even knew food waste was a thing!” Phil said, laughing. “I wanted people to be paid more and wanted farmers to make a living doing something they were good at. … But it worked out that we were able to help work on solving another issue, as well.”

All of Mavuno’s products reduce waste, but its Chewy Fruit Bites are particularly eco-friendly. Workers at one of the factories Mavuno sources from created the product by upcycling “ugly” bits of dried fruit from Mavuno’s other snacks. They ground them in a paste, mixed them with other fruit, and rolled them into balls, inventing a new treat. It’s an eco-friendly alternative to setting the leftovers aside for fertilizer or animal feed.

Healthy Desk Snacks that Empower With Every Bite

Today, Phil runs Mavuno Harvest from the US. He usually visits Africa once a year, and trusts that his suppliers will provide high-quality dried fruit without his oversight.

“In the Peace Corps, I learned about the concept of sustainable development. If you actually want to create sustainable development, the people you’re trying to help have to do it. If I went over to Africa, built a drying facility, ran the whole thing, and got hit by a bus tomorrow, [the farmers and factory workers we support] would be screwed. What would they have? Jobs that were now gone. But if I can help develop them as suppliers so that they can grow to a new level and sell to other companies, then they’re developing a business as opposed to me doing everything for them,” Phil said. 

The FruitGuys is proud to celebrate Mavuno Harvest as our January 2025 Snack of the Month. You can find its healthy desk snacks in all of our Thoughtful Snack Boxes throughout January along with snacks from other mission-minded brands. You can also purchase them by the case to kick off a healthy new year in your office! We stocked up on the Mango + Coconut and Pineapple + Passion Fruit flavors.