BEST Honors Food Industry Pioneer Drake Sadler of Traditional Medicinals

On November 3rd, Sonoma County BEST’s Food Industry Group (FIG) hosted the 2015 Food Industry Pioneer Awards where over 170 guests honored Traditional Medicinals co-founder Drake Sadler for his work in establishing and supporting the specialty food and ag industry in the North Bay. In accepting the award, Drake gave a heartfelt presentation on the responsible way companies should be doing business, which can be boiled down to a single point – don’t do harm.

In the early 1970’s, Drake Sadler was a community activist who believed that empowered people could change the world for the better. His mission was to promote the knowledge of Traditional Herbal Medicine, while creating fair and equitable trading relationships with the mostly impoverished people around the globe who collect and grow medicinal plants. For the past four decades, Drake has guided Traditional Medicinals through a time of incredible change, leading people to a newfound respect for herbalism.

As Drake said recently, “With the support of our health conscious consumers and the introduction of organic agriculture, we have developed a unique business strategy which reduces poverty and hunger, rebuilds families and restores their self-sufficiency, and provides economic stability in the rural indigenous communities where our herbs come from. Herbal experts from Traditional Medicinals are constantly working to improve herb quality and social conditions in these communities, but it isn’t necessary to travel to distant native villages to see that the entire planet desperately needs new social business models which are non-exploitive, free from discrimination, environmentally sustainable, nurture our spirits and serve humanity.”

Traditional Medicinals has pursued the rigorous process of getting nearly every product certified organic, and many also certified Fair Trade and now Fairwild. They have also built strong relationships with supply partners that effect real change.

For Drake, Traditional Medicinals is a vision realized, and after all these years, the ideals he started out with remain fundamental to the core values of the company.

Sonoma County BEST's Food Industry Group

The Food Industry Group (FIG) group was formed in 2013 by Sonoma County BEST (Building Economic Success Together), a public/private partnership formed in 2011 to promote economic development in Sonoma County. As a strategy to promote and support the expansion of the specialty food and beverage industries, BEST created the FIG.

The FIG consists of local food and beverage companies that come together to discuss industry-wide issues and utilize collaboration, combined experiences, best practices and resource sharing to help overcome these issues and add value to the participating companies. The FIG has proven to be a strategy that improves business retention, expansion, attraction, and job creation within the Sonoma County food and beverage industry.

Within the FIG are four subcommittees that focus on particular needs within the food industry:
Human Resources
Marketing
Quality Assurance
Growth (support for small to mid-sized companies in a growth phase).