Want Seed Oil-Free Snacks for Work? Try Artisan Tropic’s Strips

Are employees at your office asking for seed oil-free snacks? If they are, Artisan Tropic could be a great choice for your break room! The Hispanic-owned family business makes its chips in Colombia from farm-fresh cassava (a root vegetable) and plantains (a tropical fruit). It fries the chips in local Colombian palm oil. 

The FruitGuys recently teamed up with Artisan Tropic to bring its savory, crunchy snacks to workplaces like yours through our office snack program. We’re also celebrating the brand as our Snack of the Month in September, which is National Hispanic Heritage Month.

To kick off the celebration, we sat down with Artisan Tropic CEO Juan Pablo Guzman to learn about the “why” behind the business, the ingredients in its snacks, and how he and his family are advocating for regenerative agriculture in Colombia. 

Why Make Seed Oil-Free Snacks? 

Juan and his Colombian American family have been making snacks without seed oil for more than a decade—not because of a trend, but because of a diagnosis that changed the family’s whole outlook on food. In 2014, Juan’s sister, Maca, was diagnosed with Hashimoto’s disease, a chronic autoimmune disease that affects the thyroid gland. It comes with unpleasant symptoms like fatigue, memory problems, and joint pain. 

After exploring other options, Maca decided to try the autoimmune protocol (AIP) diet to manage her symptoms. She cut out a long list of potentially inflammatory foods, including grains, dairy, processed foods, nightshade vegetables (like tomatoes and potatoes), nuts and seeds (including products made from them, like oils), and more.*

It helped! Pretty soon, all of the Guzmans took notice, including Juan and Maca’s parents, Camilo and Margarita. They decided to try the same thing. 

“Our whole family went on a collective health journey with her to reconnect to food as medicine and rediscover the simplicity of eating real food,” Juan told The FruitGuys. He was playing professional soccer at the time and thought eating more whole foods might help his game. 

“I started removing seed oils, removing gluten and sugar—not natural sugar, but refined, processed sugar—and really prioritizing good quality meat and organic produce,” he said. 

The whole family saw positive results from eating more whole foods. Along the way, Camilo and Margarita realized that two of their favorite Colombian staples, plantains and cassava, are AIP diet-friendly. That realization triggered an ah-ha moment: If they turned those staples into snacks, they could share their culture and new lifestyle with the world! 

Putting the Pieces Together to Start a Snack Business

The Guzmans were uniquely positioned to make their dream of AIP diet-friendly plantain and cassava chips a reality. Camilo and Margarita owned a successful food distribution business in North Carolina that they’d started after moving from Colombia in the 1990s. 

They leveraged their years of experience in the food industry and their family connections in Colombia to source fresh plantains and cassava roots and test different chip recipes. Before long, Artisan Tropic was born! 

Fresh Ingredients: 24 Hours From Farm to Bag

Artisan Tropic makes simple chips with wholesome ingredients. Its team slices the fresh plantains and cassava roots, cooks the slices in local palm oil, and sprinkles them with sea salt. The cassava strips are crispy, nutty, and lightly sweet, while the plantain strips are savory, crunchy, and perfect for dipping. They’re both certified gluten-free, paleo, non-GMO, kosher, seed oil-free, and glyphosate residue-free. 

The Guzmans wanted their supply chain to be as simple as their products. So they purchased a farm in Colombia where they could grow a portion of their ingredients and built a chip-making facility next door.

“We have direct relationships with a lot of farmers and growers in the region, so we have a very, very short farm-to-bag supply chain. Within usually 24–36 hours, the product is harvested, cooked, and in a bag, ready to ship to the US. It’s incredibly fresh,” Juan said. 

During that foray into farming, the Guzmans discovered regenerative agriculture—a sustainable way of farming that uses techniques like cover cropping, no-till farming, and recycling plant waste to build the soil. When Juan left soccer and joined the company as CEO in 2021, they went all in on the model. 

Investing in Regenerative Agriculture

In 2021, Artisan Tropic partnered with regenerative agriculture consulting firm Terra Genesis International to learn what it would take to implement regenerative agricultural practices on their family farm. 

Since then, they’ve seen the farm’s soil, crops, and ecosystem flourish. They rented several other properties to expand their reach and now grow about 30 percent of their ingredients themselves. For the rest, they partner with local farmers, and in 2025, they joined forces with Acceso, a nonprofit that supports small farmers in the region, teaches them regenerative agriculture techniques, and connects them with business partners.

“It’s a really fantastic relationship that will allow us to scale our traceability and our transparency in sourcing, paying fair wages, and offering technical assistance and training for [the farmers] to employ more regenerative agriculture practices on their lands,” Juan said. 

‘Third Culture’ Snacks Bring Colombia & America Together

Artisan Tropic is truly a family business. Juan told us that fourteen members of the Guzman family currently work at the company, and in a way, he sees it as a celebration of their “third culture”—not Colombian, not American, but something beautiful in between. 

“[My sister and I] love our Colombian heritage, roots, food, language, people, and culture, but we’re also extremely thankful for America and the opportunities that it has given our family. And our goal and our aspiration with Artisan Tropic has always been to … honor the heritage of our Colombian roots and give American consumers a way of accessing that through a bag of plantain or cassava chips,” he said. 

Hispanic Heritage Month is the perfect time to take that first cross-cultural bite. 

Where to Buy Seed Oil-Free Snacks from Artisan Tropic

Artisan Tropic is one of The FruitGuys’ snack partners, so you can look for its strips in our office snack mixes. Those mixes rotate every week, but in honor of Hispanic Heritage Month in September 2025, we’ll add them to every Thoughtful Snack Box! 

You can also order Sea Salt Plantain Strips or Sea Salt Cassava Strips by the case to bring your whole team the snacks’ unique tropical flavor. 

*Note: The AIP diet is an elimination diet designed specifically for people with autoimmune disorders or chronic inflammation. The health benefits and potential risks of seed oils are nuanced, and what’s best for one person may not be best for everyone. Ask a registered dietitian (RD) or registered dietitian nutritionist (RDN) for guidance before making major changes to your diet.