All Good Bananas

By the time All Good launched in 2008, Fairtrade was a sticker — sometimes seen on coffee, occasionally on chocolate, rarely on fresh produce, almost never on the country's most-bought piece of fruit. The brief was to change that, on the busiest shelf in the supermarket, against the cheapest competitors imaginable, without asking the shopper to pay more than they wanted to or read more than they had time for.

The hero was the wrap. A single yellow paper band around the bunch, doing the work of brand, claim and credential all at once. NZ's Greenest Bananas. Climate Neutral. Fairtrade. All Good. No carton, no plastic sleeve, no in-store theatre — the wrap travelled with the fruit from packhouse to shelf to fruit bowl, then composted. The label was the brand and the brand was the proof.

Behind it: a direct relationship with El Guabo, the Ecuadorian cooperative whose growers receive a guaranteed Fairtrade price for every bunch sold in New Zealand. The shopper picks up bananas. The grower keeps a fair share. Nothing in between is asked of either of them.

A decade and a half later, the shelf has moved. Fairtrade on bananas is now an expectation in New Zealand supermarkets — which is what success looks like when the work has been done quietly. The brand didn't disrupt the category. It re-set the floor of what the category was allowed to be.

Editorial — Simon's fill: the origin story — the trip to Ecuador, the moment of conviction. The credit due to the co-founders and early team. The retailers who took the bet first. And a current line on what proportion of NZ banana sales are now Fairtrade — that figure is the closing argument.