COVER STORY
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A family of nuts
Tropical Hawaii, sunny California, the Amazon rainforest in Peru: These locations are more than vacation destinations—they are a few of the growing areas around the world where Costco's Kirkland Signature™ nuts are sourced.
by Christina Guerrero
The U.S. for almonds, macadamia nuts, pistachios and walnuts; Mexico for pecans; and more than 20 different countries for mixed nuts are among the places near and far where Costco's corporate buying team searches for the perfect nuts.
"The sheer volume of cashews that we [sell] requires us to be sourcing from multiple countries in order to be able to supply our members," says Justin Knapp, corporate foods buyer. The additional benefit of sourcing nuts from multiple countries is redundancy in supply. "If you have one country that goes through a massive drought and the yield [of] cashews drops dramatically, if we didn't have that redundancy of other countries that could supply us, we would not be able to offer that nut to the member," Knapp says.
A woman from an African farming community; workers sort through cashews in a processing facility in Africa.
PHOTOS COURTESY OF JUSTIN KNAPP