Hi there! We are Mark and Rebekah Stogsdill, the husband and wife team that started Happy Pantry. We began selling pickles and other tasty fermented goods at farmers markets in and around San Diego County in 2010. We saw something missing in the local food system and wanted to give our community access to the wonderfully delicious and incredibly healthy world of fermented products that we had become accustomed to enjoying at home. As fermentation became more and more mainstream, health practitioners and wellness gurus alike started using a new term that we hadn’t really heard before, “gut health”. As it turns out, not only are fermented foods (like sauerkraut and kimchi) and beverages (like kombucha and kvass) delicious, but they are also incredibly good for you. As a collective, we have learned over the last 20 years that a healthy gut is the key to a strong immune system, and one way to promote a healthy gut is to consume probiotic rich unpasteurized fermented foods, beverages, and tonics.

 

These are trying times that we live in. The world seems like it’s changing daily as I write this. But one thing that hasn’t changed is that a healthy gut is the key to a strong immune system. Our products are not proven to cure or prevent anything, but these traditional foods are how our ancestors stayed healthy. “Let food be thy medicine” is a quote by Hippocrates that I am sure you have read at some point, but here we are some 2,500 years after he said that and those words ring more true now than ever before. We want you to thrive, and we feel that our products will help you to maintain your overall good health, even in the days we find ourselves in now. Be well, and take care of one another. The world needs that right now.