When Derin Raji peruses the grocery store aisles, she doesn’t see the foods and flavors that reflect her family’s Nigerian heritage.
Raji aims to change that with Green Sahara, a new premium potato chip brand that features African flavors, such as West African sweet peanut, the North African savory spices, and the East African barbecue chili.
Green Sahara is a brand with both a cultural mission and proud legacy to carry forth. Raji, who was born in Oklahoma City but mostly grew up in Nigeria, comes from a long line of women entrepreneurs. Her great-grandmother was one of the top traders in the open markets of Lagos, Nigeria, inspiring generations to follow.
“I really want to bring African foods and flavors to the mainstream American consumer,” said Raji, who is now based in the Dallas, Texas area. “If you think about it, when you walk into a grocery store, you will find foods from literally every other continent.”
Advantage Solutions aims to help her achieve that goal.
Launched in January 2023, Green Sahara is one of the emerging brands supported by FDM Sales, a division of Advantage Solutions that specializes in helping CPG start-ups like Green Sahara break through and find success. With FDM’s help, the plan is to “stay home and go deep” by growing distribution and building loyalty in Texas stores, Raji said.
Supporting diverse founders is crucial to bringing new flavors and ideas to the marketplace, said Ben Peters, vice president of operations for FDM. Green Sahara is also perfectly on trend with rising appetite among consumers for global flavors that pack heat.
“If we truly want to have innovation out in the marketplace, you have to have different founders to bring you that innovation,” Peters said. “Derin is bringing African-inspired flavors to the United States within a salty snack, which helps expose people to flavors that they would have never likely never encountered on their own.”
Innovation and global flavors also are a draw for consumers, helping retailers differentiate and drive loyalty in a grocery landscape that grows more competitive by the day.
Start-up to success
For Green Sahara — and, indeed, any other emerging brand — there’s no guarantee of success.
Advantage Solutions supports brands all along the spectrum of growth — from pre-revenue start-ups to massive CPG brands that have become household staples. Under the guidance of FDM, emerging brands can tap into the added benefit and heft of Advantage’s interconnected suite of solutions as they grow through challenges — whether it be help with warehousing, transportation, marketing, sampling and more.
“I don’t think there’s another agency in America that has all of that connectivity and can help solve all of those problems along their process,” Peters said. “We can support them all the way through.”
FDM is discerning in which emerging brands it supports, assessing viability in different ways — such as the uniqueness of the brand offering within a category, the savvy of its leadership, the capital needed to grow — before forging a partnership, he said.
FDM provides headquarter sales, strategically connecting brands to retailers and distributors, planning promotions and brand management, and providing critical data and insights that help brands pivot and adjust along the path to revenue growth.
Though Green Sahara is still early in its journey, there’s reason to believe in its eventual success.
“The branding and the story get people to buy the product for the first time, but then the quality and the taste still have to deliver, right?” Peters said. “And so I think that Derin has done a great job of getting both right — the story and also the quality of the product.”
Green Sahara chips are available in select Kroger stores in the Dallas-Fort Worth area and in independent stores across Texas, Raji said. The chips also are being showcased for a limited time in select Kroger stores in Illinois, Indiana and Ohio.
In May, Green Sahara will begin a regional innovation set with Sprouts Farmers Market stores in Texas. From there, the plan is to expand distribution to other Texas retailers.
“FDM within Advantage is helping us really push our brand forward,” Raji said. “I’m excited to continue forward and see how we can grow together.”
A family legacy
Raji’s path to launching a CPG brand is every bit as unique as her potato chip flavors.
She worked as an engineer in the oil and gas industry before later earning two earning separate master’s degrees in business and public policy at Harvard University. Subsequently, she founded and closed her own tech company before going to work at IBM.
Then the pandemic hit. As “a little bit of sanity therapy” during the pandemic, Raji began exploring the dream of Green Sahara, which had been percolating among her family members for years.
In 2023, she decided to quit her job at IBM and made her passion project her full-time job.
“The way I see it, whatever you’re doing in life, you’re always taking a risk,” said the fourth-generation woman entrepreneur. “For me, this is a little less scary because I’m betting on myself.”
Four months after launching Green Sahara, Raji and her husband, Seth, who is also an entrepreneur, found out they were going to have their first baby.
As she nurtures both, Raji draws inspiration from her family, and specifically, her great-grandmother who was a market leader in Lagos some 100 years ago, a rarity for a woman then.
She also looks to the future. Someday, she’d like her son Samuel to be able to walk into a grocery store and see his Nigerian heritage represented on the shelves.
“So being a part of a movement to bring those flavors forward — if that’s my legacy, I’d be incredibly excited,” Raji said.
