Supper with Sylvia #3 Mohammad Salehi, Owner of Heray Spice

Top chefs use top quality ingredients, that's the premise Mohammad Salehi is counting on in building his growing Chicago business, Heray Spice. Salehi comes from a long line of Afghani farmers who have spent generations cultivating delicate saffron threads that add distinct flavor, aroma and color to the finest dishes.  It's a long road from the saffron fields of war weary Afghanistan to Chicago, but so far Mohammed Salehi is proving that adversity and perseverance is the perfect combination for success.

The Show Notes:
Heray Spice
For recipes and more information see herayspice.com

The information discussed on this podcast does not constitute medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment and should not be relied upon to treat ailments and illnesses.  Listeners should consult a doctor or other medical professionals for medical advice.

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Transcript

Supper with Sylvia (00:07.918)

Everyone has a story. It's the first thing I learned as a journalist. today, wait until you hear the incredible story of Mohammad Salehi and the long-

that's taken him from the mountains of Afghanistan to the city of Chicago. He is a successful businessman, the owner of Heray Spice, a Chicago company supplying the world's finest fresh saffron to top restaurants here and all over the country. These delicate threads are cultivated with the greatest care in a region of the world blessed with the perfect climate, but cursed by war and uncertainty. Today Heray Spice is a company committed to ensuring saffron farmers

In his homeland they receive fair wages for their crops so they can build a better future. Welcome to this episode of Supper with Sylvia.

Mohammad, your story is incredible. Full disclosure, I have already interviewed Mohammad. He came into the station and I was blown away by your story. And I thought we have got to delve into this even more because, know, for TV, we only get what? Three or four minutes, Mohammad. So today I really get to have a good time with you and tell us about how you got started. So it's Heray Spice, correct? That is correct. Tell me how Heray Spice came about.

Fantastic. First of all, thank you for having me. I'm really excited to be here. Here by the name it stands for Heray, which is a city in Afghanistan where I grew up. My family has been farming. As you may know, in Afghanistan, the entire income, almost 85 %, depends on farming and agriculture. So my family is no exception. We have been farming. When I was a child, I was helping my family, you as you do with your parents and

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But my family always had something about education. You have to finish your college, you have to finish high school. So right out of high school, I joined the United States Army inside Afghanistan as a local military linguist. So I worked for the Army for two years and I worked for Marines for another year. And I was a military linguist. So we would have logistics, different types of missions. We would have turning missions, war, whatever would come up. That's how I was contracted to work with. And in 2014, when the American

the government withdrew the soldiers out of Afghanistan, and I lost my job. So I was released by the army. And then I applied for a visa back in 2012 to get an asylum visa to come to the US. And there was a visa set up, it's still, think, it's around this called SIV, Special Immigration Visa for Afghan interpreters. So I applied for that visa. I got approved. And then I came to the US at the end of 2014. And end of 2014,

I am going to shop for something, some saffron to create a tahdig, which is a very traditional Persian-inspired dish. It's a crispy rice, which is like at the bottom of the pot. So I went to buy some saffron because that's the main ingredient to make it yellow and taste very well. When I brought the saffron home, it didn't taste the way that I grew up and I tasted the saffron and I knew the flavor and the aroma.

So I was like, this is not saffron, this has to be some sort of tobacco or chemicals. And I did some research, and I was back in school as well, so I did some research, I found out that there's a lot of fake saffron in the US market, a lot of safflower and corn silk, which are herbs, they are not saffron, they are being labeled as saffron by first dyeing them with food coloring, like red food coloring, and they look very similar to saffron. And then I was like, wow, this is crazy. So I called my mom.

We had to farm for almost a few generations. And I said, I want to bring some saffron to US. So she mailed me some saffron, few ounces, five, six ounces. And then I went to Gibson Italia, Gibson Group restaurants, a lot of restaurants on Rush Street in Chicago. And I sampled with the chefs. They loved it. They were like, wow, this is really different. So we did some tests like, you know, let's put some of them in the water and put some of the fake ones, see how the color changes, how the smell changes.

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And they loved it. So they were like, we want to place an order. Now we have the challenge. We don't have saffron because we only had enough to sample with so many chefs. And then I went back to Afghanistan in 2017. I brought a few pounds. I think I brought three pounds of saffron to the U.S. in my suitcase. And then I started sampling, giving gifts, and selling a little bit of it. And I just had my company in 2017. And now, well, we did a lot of work, which we discussed during the call.

And then now we are helping more than 300 restaurants and hotels and companies, different sizes, as well as probably more than a thousand or two thousand customers online every year on Amazon on our website. So, and that's what we do. we now we, you know, extended and now we create a farmers cooperative, which I'll talk about later on. And that's how the story of Hiraeuswise started. Wow. So I love that you said the first time you came back with three pounds of saffron.

So saffron, three pounds doesn't seem like that much to me, but I understand saffron is the most expensive spice in the world. Tell us why. Talk about farming and what goes into it. So just to give you a perspective of that, three pounds was my family, my mom and my siblings and my cousin's entire year harvest. It was like the entire year's full harvest was three pounds. And I grabbed it. I was like, I want to bring this to the U.S.

Roughly a pound of saffron cost anywhere between 1500 to 3000 dollars So that was like five thousand dollars the reason it's expensive. There are few reasons number one: The environment or the weather saffron needs a very dry climate. So think of Chicago. There's too much rain saffron doesn't need too much rain It's a very delicate crocus flower a rain well will kill it So you need rain you need some water, but not too much So you need a very dry climate in the summer and the fall

That's one aspect. It needs a dry climate. Second, saffron is very labor intensive. Economically speaking, it does not make sense to even produce it in the US because when you pick the flowers off, so the saffron itself is a flower. So it's a flower of crocus. When you pick the flower, then you pick the three or four threads that are coming from the flower. Those are the genitalia part of the flower. Then those are handpicked. There's no mechanical way because you pick up a flower by hand.

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Now you have to pick each thread, you know, and every flower has some sort of thread. Now you pick one or two or three threads out of the flower. And now picking the flowers from the farm, you have to do it early in the morning. That's the third reason. They are very delicate. So it has to be like almost between 5 a.m. to 7 a.m. in the morning. You have to rush to bring it to a facility, then pick up the threads out of the flower. And that creates so much challenge. It's very laborious.

and it became expensive. Imagine if you were to do it in the US, we would have to pay more than $150 per gram of saffron, which is what we sell for $15 because the labor is cheaper in Afghanistan. So those are two main reasons. And third, saffron doesn't grow very well in countries like the US. I don't know how it really grows very well in India, in Kashmir, Iran, Afghanistan. Those countries are mainly the, and it's also traditional, right?

People grew with that tradition of cultivating saffron. It's a culture. It's so laborious. It's so intense, delicate that the knowledge is very hard to transfer to another environment. So those are, I think, the reasons why it's expensive. So I heard that Iran controls 85 % of the entire saffron industry, obviously Iran borders Afghanistan. So the quality of the saffron there, would you say that's some of the best in the world?

We did the analysis. It's almost hand to hand. However, there is a non-for-profit in Europe. It's called the International Taste and Quality of Bruxelles. I think it's in Belgium or Brussels. And that non-for-profit every year releases the top best product in every ingredient category of the food. Afghanistan has been recognized as number one best quality by color, smell, and taste.

for the last, which they call it, crucine, picrocrucine and saffron from scientific names for the last nine years in a row. So we beat Iran. However, when you really look into it, it's by a few points. So the ISO category creates a standard. The standard is let's say 180 points of color. Afghanistan, Safran is 290. Iran is 287. So they're both already above and beyond the expectation of the ISO, the International Standard Organization.

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But that part of the world grows some of the best saffron you can find. some of the best. OK. you don't produce, right. Quantity-wise, Iran is number one. Quality-wise, we have been number one for the last nine years. OK, I got to ask you this, because when it comes to production, there have been a lot of limitations put on Iran on what they can export. And I want you to tell me your story of how difficult it was for your family in years past, growing up.

being able to harvest something like saffron. I understand there was a time when the Taliban was trying to get everyone to grow poppy for obvious reasons. How has that impacted what you and your family did over the years? Because you are in a situation that you can share with us as Americans. We don't know a lot about this. I mean, we still are learning about saffron. How do you want to address that?

So at the first cycle, the Taliban had power back in 1991 to 1996, I think, or 1996 to 2001, I think. That's when they hold the power in Afghanistan. Because they were completely banned from the international society. They were still almost banned or somehow not recognized. Not banned fully, but not recognized. So poppy seeds were a good, basically, replacement of income. There's a market for it, and an opium and drugs market, even pharmaceutical market. So that was a lot of the money that was coming.

When the US invaded Afghanistan back in 2001 and 2002, they faced the challenge. saw the challenge. One idea was how we can replace a better crop. That's also one of our missions, to persuade more farmers to stop cultivating poppy seeds and cultivate more saffron. So it was a NATO type of mission to replace poppy seeds with something that's a good replacement and in value. Saffron really competes, if you compare it from an economic point of view.

It does compete with poppy seeds. So they contracted countries like Finland, Netherlands that had the crocus flower and even Greece, they bought some more corn or they call it a bull, saffron bull or saffron onions, imported to the US and then funded that by USID. They funded that to a lot of farmers, which was great. Also farmers knew how to cultivate it. The culture was still there. Iran also somehow even it's illegal to import

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saffron inside Afghanistan from Iran and it's illegal specifically by Iran government to export the bulbs or the corns or the what do you call they basically the saffron onions but it's so because there was a market they brought the onions back into the country and then a lot of the knowledge also came from Iran to give credit even though a lot of afghan people has this pride don't say that we own it no it's not true Iran did help us in in in terms of knowledge and and this flow of

bringing saffron by NATO and people buying from Iran, this created a new spark in the minds of the farmers. there's a market for it. Let's cultivate again. And that was really good. By 2014, we started almost from one ton, which is 1000 kg of saffron. And right now we are almost, I think, 27 tons, which is 27,000 kilos of saffron. That's roughly 60,000 pounds of saffron, which is a lot of saffron.

But there's still the problem. The problem where I grew up is in the West. Cultivation of poppy seed was a culture in the past in the first cycle of Taliban regime, but not now. However, the biggest problem that Afghanistan has is in the East and the South portion of Afghanistan. That's where a lot of the border with Pakistan, that the tribal region, that's where a lot of the poppy seeds cultivation is happening. And one idea was by the previous government, even the current government in the regime, the Taliban,

They also say by the media they are, you know, trying to replace the poppy seeds. I can't believe them enough. I don't trust them as much. However, I do see in their media that they are trying to promote the cultivation of saffron and the destruction of the poppy seeds. For my family, it was always saffron. I don't remember my family ever cultivating poppy seeds. However, it's beyond my family. Right now we have 176 farmers in our cooperative.

So because we are a cooperative of farmers in Afghanistan, so we pay, we are a fair trade company. My idea is that we should help more farmers cultivate saffron and pay them better wages, fair wages, because I'm not in the drug business, I'm not in the opium business, I can't help farmers that way. And the best way would be to replace it with saffron so that we can legally pay them very well and help them make a better society for themselves.

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I love that. That's one of the things that really attracted me to what you're doing because you are really trying to give back. I mean, obviously this is your country. You still have this connection. You have this love. But here you are in the States and you can help them back there. So tell us what you're doing with the farmers. You said you have 176 that you're working with. That is correct. So last year we had 20, 22, we had 55. Last year we had 85.

This year, this cycle of harvest, we are already surveyed and we already have our contacts and our farms. And we know each farmer by name that we work with. have 176 farmers in our cooperative. the reason is when I started the company back in 2017, it was me and my mom and my siblings. And then we were like, okay, let's buy cousin saffron. It's a family farm. And then when I saw the market picking up, people are buying more saffron. And then the saffron also sort of became a

cultural thing in the US. People tend to use it a little bit more compared to the past, especially after COVID, people saw the benefits of it. Because believe it or not, scientifically, studies show that saffron is anti-depressant medicine. It's like a medicine for anti-depression. So it's really good. It has corusinia, which is a chemical in the saffron that is basically relaxing you, giving you a good mood and good vibes. So it's a very, that's why traditionally speaking, it's a medicine.

If you notice in Indian culture, and this is fascinating, when a woman gets pregnant in India, even in Afghanistan, they give her this one glass of saffron, a little small, you know, saffron every day by end of the pregnancy. And the fascinating thing is there's not a lot of post-pregnancy, there is not too much in that society, post-pregnancy depression in India and in Afghanistan.

And I believe, there's research that's one of the reasons is these herbs, not only saffron, there's other herbs that they use during this cycle of pregnancy that keeps the woman basically healthier and in a good mood. So my wife uses it pretty much every day, even when there are two boys, she was taking it every day. So culturally there's that belief as well. Wow, that's fascinating. Thank you. The 176 farmers. So we sort of, we have a big facility in Afghanistan because

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A lot of food contamination happens in the spices specifically. When you harvest a spice, are you sure the farmers washed their hands? Is the environment clean? Where is it being sun-dried? Is the cloth clean? And those are all questions that from a food science point of view, they matter. Otherwise, the FDA will hold on to them at the border. Then the lab results will not come good. So then you will have a big disaster in the business world. So what we did was we sort of started doing that.

by creating a facility in Afghanistan, turning these farmers on food safety and food science, and buying their crops at the flower level, not at the treads. So we buy flowers, and then we ourselves, our employees, are picking up the treads. So we basically reduce the contamination of the saffron. But you're giving back in that you're helping not only the farmers, you're helping with education. It's really probably life-changing for a lot of people. That is very true. Some of the farmers, this is their only source of income.

There's a non-for-profit in Afghanistan called Quotu Inspire. Since the Taliban closed post-secondary education or even after sixth grade education, after elementary, so the girls and students specifically don't have anywhere to study. There's a non-for-profit called Quotu Inspire. And if you're a partner with them, even from the first day we started the company, we're like, let's give 5 % of our income back to Afghanistan children and back to the Afghanistan education system. However, when Taliban took over,

This was always scattered here. This is called this school. Then we found this non-for-profit in by an African woman in New York. She's an African American woman and she started this non-for-profit to help educate girls online, teaching them coding, know different skills of English, teaching them how to draw, how to paint. And then a percentage of ourselves at the end of every year, we contribute to their non-for-profit so they can manage that funds and take care of Afghanistan.

education and the children. That's another contribution that my company and our farmers make. Okay, that is great. That is probably so fulfilling for you because it all comes full circle. So let's talk a little bit about saffron because I don't feel like it's a commonly used spice in the United States. You said people are starting to use it more. And I love the story you told about the chef.

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who tried your saffron and was like, wait a minute, this is not like any saffron I've ever used before, right? So if you can describe to people who aren't familiar with saffron, who don't necessarily cook with it on a regular basis, what is the taste like? And is it not so much the taste as it is what it does to whatever you're cooking? 100%. Saffron has a very earthy, floral taste. It's like this. The aroma is very floral. The taste is earthy and somehow honeyed.

with lemon so not too much savor and not too much sweet. The best thing that saffron adds is the aroma. Once you add it into your rice you will feel that floral aroma of the rice. Second, the flavor of the saffron completely will change the dish, specifically your seafood. Seafood sort of needs the saffron to get that beautiful color of gold and to get the aroma.

But the last thing and probably the most important thing is the color. It really changes the color of the dish from being like shrimp or seafood or even rice being so white and so blank to a beautiful, rich, creamy golden color, right? And with that also comes a lot of benefits. It's a huge antidepressant. I don't want to speak medically, but there are studies shown. And it's really good for

digestive system, it has some antioxidants and it's a very healthy herb to add in your dishes. It's expensive, but it's worth it to try and enjoy with your food. So tell me about some of the restaurants that you guys actually sell your saffron to in the Chicago restaurant world. We sell for Gibson Italia, Gibson Group, pretty much all of them. We sell Maple and Ash. We sell them to Elsky. We sell for

So we have two distributors in Chicago. One is the rare tea seller, which they sell for a lot of Michelin stars in Chicago. But also we direct sales. Like we sell for Ricardo Trattoria. We sell for Ricardo Austria. God, we have probably more than 80 restaurants in Chicago that are using it. And then we also have gourmet spice, where they also sell our saffron across Chicago and Milwaukee. So many restaurants are using our saffron in the city. Yeah, and you named some pretty critically acclaimed restaurants. So that says a lot about your product.

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Tell me about some of the other spices you sell because you have gone beyond saffron now. That is true. Even though we are still focused on our cells, roughly 80 % generated is by saffron, but the other 20 % is by wild mountain cumin, which is a black wild mountain cumin. It's foraged, so it's not cultivated. These are wild, grown in the mountains of Badakhshan in Afghanistan. Then the farmers go and basically harvest them or forage them. Then we buy it from the farmers directly.

whistle afghanis and coriander seeds or cilantro seeds, whistle herati mint, a beautiful, amazing aromatic peppermint. I think I gave you the sample of the mint if I'm not mistaken. yes. You gave me a sample of the mint, you gave me a sample of the cumin and it blew my mind. i mean, when you were with me and I just unscrewed the lid and smelled it, I could not believe just the difference in the smell from your product.

as opposed to what I buy at the grocery store. You have spoiled me, Mohamed. I don't think I'll ever be able to use their stuff again. Well, that's the point. We want to really bring fresh spices. That's one of our main focus. We do not want to buy any harvest set two years ago. So it has to be the latest harvest. And also we want to really bring from the source. There is no middleman. I go travel back and forth. I have a team there. have four basically

full-time employees that are traveling and seeing the farmers and sourcing. And also, they are not harvested in a very manufacturing or basically in a very ad-hoc society. They are very traditionally grown, sun-dried, taking their time. It's a very slow process that we cultivate and harvest. Which brings me to this question. What's the shelf life of the spices? Of course, generally speaking, any spice or any herb that does not have moisture, which is dry.

it's not gonna go bad after a while. However, it will lose aroma and flavor. So it's not gonna spoil to make you sick or food poisoning because there's no chemical, it's just a herb and it's dry. So we put, and the international society probably, that's how it's recognized for herbs and saffron specifically, we put two and a half years of our saffron life. That's what we put on most of our packaging. And we do not say expire, we say best by this date. So you gotta use it best before this date. And the same for all of our spices, basically two to three years.

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So tell me what your plans are for the future with your company expanding? Are you selling outside of the Chicagoland, Wisconsin, Milwaukee area? What are your plans for the future? So we were lucky enough to find Bon Appetit, which is a big magazine. Last year they came to our farm. They basically did a video on our farm in Afghanistan. And that really helped us a lot in the sales, talking about the sales.

So we are already in the New York market. We have a distributor in New York and we sell online to California. A lot of our orders come from California and we are promoting our business to focus on saffron because saffron brings the most revenue and profit for us. So we wanted to basically sell more saffron first. In the meantime, right now we are creating a latte. So saffron with few other herbs. We are making a saffron cardamom latte, saffron cardamom.

And then we are adding coconut milk, non-dairy milk basically, and then ready to use just put in the hot water and enjoy. So we have some plans to introduce a saffron cardamom latte, saffron golden latte, which is with turmeric, because there's a market for it. They have very good health benefits. And they're traditionally being used in Afghanistan, India, Sri Lanka for generations. So it's promoting that culture and the benefits of that medicine.

Plus also we are adding new spices too slowly. We are not in a rush to become the next McCormick. That's not our mission. Our mission is to only bring spices that we know the source of. We know the story. We know the farmer. And one by one, this very, very small one by one slow process. We are making a little bit of money. We can leave. So we are not in a rush. OK, if you could say anything to my listeners who maybe are a little shy about using saffron or saying it's way too expensive, it can't not be worth

Whatever flavor it might be adding to my recipe, what would you want to say to them? I'm telling them a little goes a long way. Understand that when you buy saffron for a company like us, which we are a cooperative, you're not only buying the saffron, you're contributing to a better society, to a better farmers cooperative overseas, which helps nutrition their life and their families. That's number one. Number two.

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Our saffron is very aromatic, very strong. So it's isocategory number one. You need a very small pinch. It's not like Spain or Morocco or Greece saffron. It has to be a big portion. Just put a few threads. Per serving, we recommend using between five to 10 per serving of one person. If you're using two people, 10 to 15 threads are enough for two persons. So use a very little. And also when you make some saffron tea, saffron tea is very good for you. It has health benefits. It's relaxing you.

It's also a better way of exploring the tea and how other people are using their saffron. Use very few trays, five or six trays is enough for a cup of eight ounces. Just enjoy it. Try it once. You will benefit. i will enjoy it. Yes. That's what you're saying. Just try it. Okay. Just try it. Finally, if you look down the road to the future, as I was asking you about, ideally, where would you like to see the company go? Ideally, I want to see the company helping at least a thousand farmers every year.

That's one of our goals. Ideally, I want to help more children get back to school. And that's not only by my company, but by my voice. Hopefully, this voice will be heard by the Taliban and the people who are having influence over them. We need to open schools for girls. We need to open schools for the education of women. It's brutal. It's cruelty against the women in Afghanistan. And even in Islam, it's not allowed. I don't know where they get these inspiration to close the schools.

My idea is we should help more women. So beyond this non-for-profit working in New York, I want to help support more non-for-profit that bring a change in the woman's life of Afghani son and the lives of an Afghani son. And third, but not the last one, we really want to have a mark in the US. So when people buy something, they're like, this is from He Ray. And we want to be in every home. I know it's a huge ambition and we have millions of homes, 100 million homes.

But I really want to be in everyone's home and not make enough money just to give a cultural transformation. This is coming from Afghanistan. This is in my, you know, in my kitchen cabinet. So I really, really feel good when I see that. So we are promoting home cooks and people who are cooking at home and restaurants. We are not very focused anymore in the wholesale, even though our big generation of income is coming from there. But, we really want to focus on the home cooks and people who are making a dish for their families.

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Mohammad Salehi with Heray Spice. What a beautiful story. What a great way, I think, to end this interview. I love what you guys are trying to do. And I can't wait to put saffron in my life more often because you've convinced me. It's a pretty powerful spice. before I met you, I probably would not have used it so much. So thank you for that. And you and I will talk again. Definitely. My pleasure. Thank you for having me. Have a wonderful rest of your day.

For more on Mohammad and his company, Heray Spice, check our show notes. Thanks for joining us for this episode of Supper with Sylvia. I'm Sylvia Perez. This podcast was produced by Jane Stephens with technical support and music by Donnie Cutting.