88 Acres settles into new Canton-based HQ

88 Acres co-owners Nicole Ledoux and Rob Dalton

Nicole Ledoux and Rob Dalton were on a date early in their relationship, enjoying dinner at a restaurant, when Dalton experienced an allergic reaction to the nuts that he didn’t realize were an ingredient in his pasta dish, necessitating a trip to the emergency room. That experience was the step that led Ledoux and Dalton to create 88 Acres, a food company that produces nut- and allergen-free bars and butters in their own on-site bakery. Ledoux founded 88 Acres and serves as CEO, while Dalton is the company’s president.

Following that dinner with Dalton, Ledoux, who does not have any food allergies, went home and cleaned out her kitchen cabinets and refrigerator. “I threw away anything in my apartment that would have made him sick,” she explained. “It made me a lot more mindful.”

At the time, Ledoux worked in finance and Dalton worked in clean tech. The couple was also training for a triathlon, riding bikes as part of their regular routine. Ledoux used to take granola bars on the rides as snacks, but realized that Dalton could not eat them because they contained nuts. She decided to come up with a new snack for their workouts.

“I started making him bars that had seeds,” she said. “Basically I was just trying to solve food issues.”

Friends who were training with them sampled the bars and asked for more. Ultimately, the couple, who are now married and have children, packaged some sample bars in resealable bags and headed to Whole Foods. The 88 Acres bars, which is named after the 88-acre farm in North Brookfield where Ledoux was raised, launched on store shelves in 2015.

The bars have a protein platform of seeds. Ledoux and Dalton began making the bars with pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds and flax seeds in dark chocolate and sea salt, triple berry, and apple ginger crisp flavors. They have since added cinnamon maple, oatmeal chocolate chip and blueberry lemon flavors to the seed bars. “Some of it came from messing around in the kitchen,” Ledoux said. “Can we make something better? Can we add a new flavor?”

Ledoux used that same curiosity and energy when it came to creating seed butters. Since Dalton could not eat peanut butter, Ledoux encouraged him to try sunflower butter. He didn’t like the smell of the butter, leading Ledoux to take on the challenge of creating a butter for him.

The challenge would prove successful, as Dalton soon “fell in love” with seed butter,” noted Ledoux.

88 Acres now offers a variety of seed butters, including dark chocolate sunflower seed butter, vanilla cinnamon sunflower seed butter, and both roasted and unsweetened pumpkin seed butters.

“The chocolate is a healthier version of Nutella, “ she said. “It tastes like heaven. You want to eat it straight from the jar.”

Ledoux and Dalton opened their first baking facility in Dorchester in 2015, a space that was 1,800 square feet in size. “It was really tiny,” Ledoux said.

They purchased adjacent space as it became available and in 2018 they bought a warehouse in Canton. Twice a day trucks traveled between Dorchester and Canton moving product, but as 88 Acres grew, there was less and less space for both work and storage purposes, so they began to search for a new location.

“Our goal was to bring the whole team together for the first time — warehouse, production, corporate,” Ledoux said.

They found the space they needed at 85 John Road in Canton and moved in March of this year. Their team comprises nearly 70 employees, including the entire staff from Dorchester as well as new hires from the local area. Ledoux and Dalton provide a van pool for employees who live in Boston. The team at 88 Acres is over 50 percent female and is minority majority.

Ledoux is thrilled with the new large space on John Road and the opportunity it provides for the entire team. “[Research and development] used to happen at my house,” she said. Now the entire team is involved, including Ledoux. “I’m on the floor every day. My office is 50 feet away from the floor.”

The 88 Acres team is constantly looking to improve and add to the brand, and plans to launch new products in 2024.

She stressed that the property is free of all of the top nine allergens identified by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration: eggs, fish, crustaceans, shellfish, tree nuts, peanuts, wheat, soybeans, and sesame.

Ledoux is very proud of the K-12 program that the company started when a representative from the Boston Public Schools contacted them to inquire about nut-fee and allergen-free products for their students. They have since forged partnerships with local schools as well as school districts across the country to ensure food equity for students. “We want students to have the same access to the same high-quality and delicious products they would find in their local Whole Foods,” Ledoux said.

She called the work that she and Dalton do a journey. “It’s been really exciting to see the brand growing,” she said. “We’re providing a solution for people like Rob, and people like me, who have to be careful around people like Rob.”

88 Acres products are sold at Whole Foods, Wegmans, Market Basket, Stop and Shop, Ward’s Berry Farm, and other nearby locations. For more information, go to 88acres.com.

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Posted by Mary Ann Price on Oct 13 2023. Filed under Business. Both comments and pings are currently closed.