The story of Diaspora Spice Co., a spice company that partners directly with farmers in South Asia, begins with turmeric.
In 2016, Sana Javeri Kadri was a recent college graduate living in San Francisco, and kept seeing golden milk lattes on cafe menus around town. She had grown up drinking warm turmeric milk in Mumbai, and was struck by the fact that all of a sudden, her grandmother’s go-to anti-inflammatory drink was becoming a wellness trend in the U.S. (and “being sold for $8”). She grew curious about who was growing the turmeric to feed the burgeoning craze, and set out to tell the story of the South Asian turmeric farmers behind the golden milk.
“I think the world should know where their turmeric comes from,” Kadri tells Vogue, thinking back to her goal at the time.
This led her to the Indian Institute of Spices Research, where she met the scientist Dr. Prasath, who introduced her to an heirloom varietal of turmeric called Pragati Turmeric—and it was the best she had ever tasted. He connected her with the Kasaraneni family in Andhra Pradesh, one of the farms that grow the varietal, and she visited soon after. She returned home with a suitcase full of turmeric and a dream to bring this stunning spice variety to market. In 2017, she founded Diaspora Spice Co.
“The hope with Diaspora was: How could we build the most idealistic, equitable, joyous, extremely gay pocket of the world, where we could sling really beautiful, delicious spices?” says Kadri. “It started with one human, one farmer, one spice.” Nearly nine years later, they’ve grown significantly. “It’s now about 30 humans, 140 farmers, about 40 spices,” Kadri says.
The turmeric also played a role in bringing recipe developer Asha Loupy into the fold. She found Diaspora’s turmeric through her work as a specialty food grocery buyer, and was stunned.
“Turmeric, to me, didn’t really have that much flavor until I tasted this. It was citrusy and earthy and bright and vibrant and truly shocking,” Loupy says. She started cooking dishes with the turmeric, and tagging Diaspora and Kadri on Instagram. Kadri noticed. “Asha made these cumin lamb dumplings with a homemade turmeric wrapper, so it was like bright marigold yellow and perfect little pleats. And I was just like, who’s that? Everything she’s making, I wanna eat.”