South Forty discontinuing their sunflower seeds

Received this email from South Forty this morning:

To our loyal customers,

In 2018, we started South Forty as a sunflower seed company, importing the biggest and best seeds in the world. As often goes in business — and in life — things don't always go as planned. After a wild ride of nearly a decade, we're discontinuing our sunflower seeds this summer as we shift our focus fully to our bar business. We have a lot of exciting bar updates to share soon, but for now, we want to focus on the seeds and the many of you who fell in love with them.

The seed business has been a strange paradox for us: an amazing product wrapped inside an exceedingly difficult business.

The seeds took us places we never could have imagined and introduced us to so many wonderful people, including many of you. They won industry awards. At one point, we were the fastest-growing sunflower seed brand in the country. We were (and still are) the only in-shell sunflower seed sold nationally in Whole Foods. But the most meaningful part of the journey has been you: the loyal following we built and the conversations we've had over the years. We heard from countless customers who turned to our seeds to quit smoking and drinking. We heard from folks who said our seeds reminded them of simpler times — cracking and spitting seeds with their parents and grandparents at baseball games or on road trips. During COVID, when we were out of stock at most retailers, we heard from customers who drove two-plus hours to the closest store that still had them. Your stories and the conversations we had over the years fueled our passion and made us push even harder. It's pretty special and rare to have a product that people connect with so deeply.

But on the flip side, the business itself has been brutal. And ultimately, unsustainable. We've weathered COVID, when global supply chains broke down and freight rates skyrocketed. Wars in the Middle East, where our seeds are grown. Tariffs. We switched co-manufacturers five times. We attempted plantings in Argentina, Bulgaria, and Arizona — none of which worked out. We went to great lengths to save the sunflower seed business, and we came up short. At the same time, our bar business is doing well, and we made the decision to focus there.

We know this will be disappointing to many of you, and we hope you can understand. Our sunflower seeds will forever be part of our journey, and while we're saying goodbye to seeds, South Forty isn't going anywhere. We hope our loyal seed customers will stick with us through the next chapter.

We have a limited amount of our 6-count sunflower seed cases remaining that we’ve held onto for our online customers. We may stock out temporarily in a few weeks, and then will be receiving one final shipment of seeds in July. After that, we’ll be out.

Select retailers may have inventory a little longer. Reach out if you want to know which stores near you might still be carrying them.

Below, we've included some of our favorite sunflower seed photos from over the years, and here is a funny video we submitted to Walmart a few years back as part of a product competition. Walmart wanted our seeds. We couldn't deliver due to supply chain issues. Pretty fitting, in retrospect.

One final note: the sunflower seed varietal we sold was grown specifically for South Forty and is no longer being produced, so once these final bags are gone, you won't be able to find this seed from any other brand.

While we're moving on from sunflower seeds, the values that built South Forty haven't changed. Our commitment to simple ingredients, great products, and treating customers right was shaped by the seeds and by all of you.

Thanks again for the years of support and for making our sunflower seed journey a special one.

-Josh & Jonas