How Yolélé is bringing “super grain” fonio to the world

From where Yolélé co-founder and CEO Philip Teverow sits in his Brooklyn apartment, he’s nearly 4,000 miles from Senegal, a country that lies at the western reaches of Africa’s Sahel region. In El Cerrito, California, Philip’s co-founder and Yolélé president Pierre Thiam sits even further away from the place he was born and raised–almost 8,000 miles. 

But together, they’re looking to shrink that gap.

When Pierre and Philip went into business together in 2017, they started small–or so they thought. They launched one product (a bag of “super grain” fonio) with one store, a new Harlem location for Whole Foods Market, and the flood gates opened. Coverage from the likes of Bloomberg and The New York Times touting the benefits of this “new” climate-friendly and gluten-free grain earned the attention of major food manufacturers looking to build more sustainable supply chains.

At the time, fonio production wasn’t ready for the world stage. But to Philip and Pierre, it had become crystal clear that there was an appetite. It was time to get to work.

Wait, what is fonio?

Fonio has earned the nickname “super grain” for a long list of benefits it provides for both people and the planet. 

For the planet, fonio:

• Is a rain-fed crop that produces a reliable harvest without irrigation in drought-like conditions.
• Contributes to soil health with its deep and extensive root system that helps prevent soil erosion, especially in areas prone to land degradation.
• Can thrive in poor, sandy, and rocky soils where other crops might struggle, reducing the need for chemical fertilizers.
• Has a short growing cycle, allowing for multiple harvests per year and potentially helping to improve soil structure and water retention. 
• Can help prevent desertification due to its ground-covering growth habit. 

Fonio grows in the semi-arid climate of Africa’s Sahel region

For people, fonio is low calorie and nutrient-dense, rich in nutrients like iron, protein, B-vitamins, zinc, potassium, and magnesium. It’s an excellent source of fiber, an important dietary need that nutritionists say the average American isn’t getting enough of. Its low glycemic index makes it a valuable source of nourishment for people living with diabetes or other blood sugar issues, and for athletes. And it is strong in methionine and cysteine, amino acids which are important for cellular growth (hair, nails, skin), but which are deficient in most grains. 

While fonio might be new to most American consumers, it’s the oldest cultivated grain in Africa, dating back over 5,000 years. Fonio has even been found entombed in ancient Egyptian pyramids. (Learn more about fonio on Yolélé’s consumer website and its B2B website, which features details on supply chain.)

Cooking with fonio

As the team at Yolele put it, fonio loves company. Like rice, couscous or quinoa, it’s a versatile foundation for a dish that soaks up the flavors it’s paired with, making it ideal for all the sauces and juices of meats, fish, and veggies–and it cooks up in less than five minutes.

Yolélé’s consumer website contains an entire section dedicated to recipes for everything from fonio cheesy grits to fonio plum torte. You’ve been warned–you will leave hungry.

Curried fonio pilaf, anyone?

Bringing fonio to pantries across the US

Since Yolélé’s debut in 2017, Philip and Pierre have been hard at work to commercialize the fonio supply chain. While consumers can enjoy Yolélé products from merchants like Whole Foods and Fresh Direct, Philip and Pierre have also since founded Yolélé West Africa, a processing and distribution hub built to supply food and beverage manufacturers with the sustainable ingredients they need at scale.  

“We've worked for years with a major grain milling equipment manufacturer on a technical solution that will transform fonio from a crop into an ingredient at a rate of two tons an hour instead of one ton a day,” said Philip of their immense progress.

In doing so, they’re reducing cost and post-harvest losses, and they’re already selling fonio to multinational beer brewers across three continents. But they’re only just getting started. The Yolélé team is talking to major manufacturers operating across categories like nutritional bars, snacks like veggie sticks and puffs, chocolate, and even plant-based milk. (A recent trial with Tetrapak verified fonio functions much the same way as oat milk does!) 

Testing for consumer awareness

Key testing metrics:

• 326 respondents from Highlight’s nationwide community

• 5 days from data collection to survey completion

• 19 words long for the average open-ended response

Major manufacturers around the world are eager to build more climate change-resilient supply chains as material volatility is leading to unpredictable costs and slower innovation cycles. (The price of cocoa, for example, has risen an astonishing 500% in recent years, from about $2,000 per metric ton in 2022 to $12,000 by 2025–in large part due to climate change.)

Manufacturers are already dealing with the impacts of climate change, and they’re eager to futureproof their supply chains. But how much of an appetite do consumers have for underused but densely nutritious and climate-resilient traditional African ingredients like fonio? 

To find out more, Yolélé ran a concept test with Highlight. Respondents were shown three possible applications of fonio-based products to gauge key metrics like appeal and purchase intent. Consumers were asked to respond to one of three different stimuli: fonio cheese puffs, plant-based milk made from allergen-free African superfoods, and fonio & chocolate energy bars.

The results revealed three major findings:

• Both the fonio energy bar with chocolate and the fonio cheese puffs scored highly on consumer appeal in a quantitative monadic assessment. In qualitative (open end) responses, consumers gave positive feedback on the products for being allergen-free, nutrient-dense, and culturally unique.
• Consumers conveyed more skepticism for African superfood milk, wondering what taste profile a product like that may offer. (“I don't like not knowing what the ‘milk’ is made of, plant based or otherwise,” said one respondent.)
• While on-pack messaging like “ancient African grain” caught consumer attention, concept testing revealed a clear need to give consumers more information on fonio, especially when it came to the fonio milk. As expressed in qualitative responses, respondents gave feedback like, “It’s hard to tell what’s in it from the label,” and “The simple design of the packaging doesn’t tell me what the ingredients are, what makes it special, [or] why being from Africa is unique or valuable.” 

Future prototype testing and pack testing will be an excellent way to ensure product-concept fit and effective consumer education, as well as to measure key sensory metrics like taste and texture.

When it comes to overall appeal, the fonio cheese puffs (in pink) and the fonio & chocolate energy bar (in yellow) ranked highly, with the energy bar edging out cheese puffs for the most 4 & 5 ratings (on a scale of 1 to 5). 

Yolélé’s concept test respondents were particularly articulate in their open-ended responses. Highlight’s AI-summary of responses and ability to search by the most commonly mentioned keywords make it quick and easy to peruse qualitative feedback and select the most representative testimonials.

Yolélé’s plans for the future

In the short-term, these concept test findings will help support Yolélé’s plans for securing manufacturing partners in the snacks, energy bars, non-dairy milk space and beyond. But these plans are just the beginning.

The potential for fonio to supply the CPG world with a more sustainable and widely applicable ingredient is evident. But of course, the benefit is not just to the manufacturers and their consumers enjoying fonio and fonio-based products–it’s tremendously important to the communities and economies that produce fonio. 

“Fonio’s transformative potential for the communities that produce this ingredient is at the core of everything we’re doing,” explains Philip. “These communities are already practicing sustainable agriculture. They just don’t make a livelihood from it–yet. We want to make the practice of sustainable agriculture economically attractive and reject environmentally destructive practices like planting corn everywhere and dousing it with chemical fertilizers or irrigating it and using up all the groundwater. We’d love to see that all change.” 

We would, too. Learn more about the change Yolélé is forging on their B2B website.

Test your ideas BEFORE investing a cent in material development with concept testing by Highlight.