Here at LittlePod, we have ambassadors and advocates all over the world, but none are more passionate about our products than Juta Raudnask. Having founded Umami – a gourmet food business with shops in Tartu and Tallin – just 12 months after LittlePod’s launch in 2010, Juta has long spearheaded our Campaign for Real Vanilla in Estonia and across the Baltic States. Keen to find out more, Paul gave Juta a call. These are her words:

Umami was founded in 2011. I’ve always travelled a lot with Henri, my husband, and we share a passion for authentic foods from around the world. We wanted to be able to cook our favourite dishes from our travels. But some of the rare ingredients couldn’t be bought in Estonia so we decided to make them available ourselves. We started online, but soon our clients wanted a place to visit, to talk to us and to see, smell and taste the products. Now we have shops in Tartu and Tallin, we supply all the Michelin-starred restaurants in Estonia and we work with the biggest supermarket chains. We have more than 1,000 products now – including LittlePod!

We have a personal approach at Umami. If a client is missing a certain ingredient from their favourite recipe, we’ll do our best to get it for them. This means that quite often, we’ll add products to our range based on the wishes of our clients and customers. We soon realised that we wanted to have a high quality vanilla paste in our range. We found LittlePod online, contacted Janet and it has all grown from there. LittlePod’s natural vanilla paste exceeded all our expectations. It is loved by all kinds of people here, from professional chefs at fine-dining restaurants to families who use it at home in their cakes, cookies, desserts and ice creams. Estonians love to bake!

We were delighted to meet Janet in person in 2017. We had been representing LittlePod in Estonia for some time when Janet emailed and told us that she was planning to visit Tallin and would like to get together. Janet is pure sunshine. I have a feeling that she is always smiling. She is a unique Managing Director. I soon realised how warm and friendly she is. LittlePod is as much a mission as it is a business and we are so happy to be playing our part in the Campaign for Real Vanilla in Estonia. Janet is so passionate about vanilla. We love what LittlePod has accomplished. Thank-you for trusting us to represent you in Estonia.

Our clients and customers love to cook and know the value of real ingredients. In this bubble, it sometimes feels as though no-one uses artificial vanillin these days. But in reality, I’m afraid that is not yet the case. I dream of the day when everyone will use real vanilla in Estonia and not chemical substitutes. But we’re not there yet. Food has such an important role to play in our lives, be it to our health, our mood, our relationships and our experiences. Synthetic and artificial ingredients, made in bulk at a low cost, don’t have a positive impact in these areas of our lives. It’s quite the contrary. It’s not just real vanilla, but real ingredients in general.

Umami and LittlePod are a good fit because we’re passionate about real food and we love what we do. You can always recognise a person who gets excited about real food – food that is made with pure ingredients and no artificial nonsense. We have built a community of people who appreciate high-quality ingredients of the kind that LittlePod create. The quality matters most, although we also love the convenience of the vanilla paste. There’s still something special about cooking with vanilla pods. I love the process of cutting a moist, fat vanilla pod in two and scraping out all the beautiful black seeds. But sometimes you just don’t have time!

Using real vanilla has a positive impact on the planet. Knowing this gives additional meaning and importance to LittlePod’s products. The work that the vanilla farmers are doing at the LittlePod orchard is so important. It is a proud feeling to be able to sell a product knowing that its production hasn’t harmed the workers or the environment. In LittlePod’s case, it is the opposite. It’s not good that the places where vanilla grows are being replaced by palm oil plantations. It is so important that we do what we can to spread the word about the importance of real vanilla in Estonia. If we can increase demand for real vanilla, I hope the situation will improve.

Our message for the vanilla farmers is ‘keep up the good work’. That’s also our message for Janet and the LittlePod team in the UK. We love the fruits of the farmers’ work in the Equatorial regions. And we love what LittlePod has accomplished over the years. Your products. Your plantation in Indonesia. LittlePod’s Campaign for Real Vanilla. We haven’t had a chance to visit yet. But Janet has mentioned an event next October for International Real Vanilla Day. I hope that we’re able to come along so that we can see LittlePod HQ and how everything works for ourselves, and spend a little more time together.

In the meantime, we will be continuing to support LittlePod and the Campaign for Real Vanilla. This doesn’t just mean selling LittlePod’s products or helping to spread the word about the importance of real vanilla in Estonia. It also means using the products in our own creations at home. In our family, we all have our favourite uses for LittlePod products. My daughters use it in smoothies and iced coffee. I love to add it to yoghurt with chopped nuts and honey. Panna cotta, crème brûlée, rhubarb cakes, cookies, pavlovas and banana bread – I even use vanilla with fish, scallops and prawns. LittlePod vanilla is a staple in our house. We love it!