The FlipFresh Approach to Dried Spices

FlipFresh provides amazing artisan spices, at their flavor peak, for about the same price you pay for average spices at the grocery store.

Chances are your spices are old. And even if they were great to begin with (and most weren’t), their flavor, right now, is some fraction of what it was when they were fresh. Exactly what fraction is hard to know. Spices aren’t like fish or milk. They don’t spoil all at once. They lose flavor at rates that can vary wildly depending on things like light exposure, container quality, temperature and the type of spice. Changes are difficult to track, but if you compare an older spice of questionable quality with a great spice at peak flavor, the difference is startling; the color is brighter the aroma is richer and the flavor is deeper, more potent and complex. 

Does it really matter?  If you’re the kind of person who keeps your knives sharp and cares about choosing the best organic tomato or the most perfectly ripe avocado, then exceptional spices make sense. But keeping spices fresh is not easy or cheap. We all use different spices at different rates. You may burn through two jars of ancho chili powder and only two teaspoons of marjoram per year. How many of us (really) keep track of every expiration date? Who really throws away that 2 year old, $5.00 jar of marjoram that is still 9/10 full?

Our solution is simple. We ship you a complete set of new, fresh spices every 12 months, no matter what. Since spices remain at peak flavor, on average, about two years, this provides an ample buffer to ensure that all your spices remain fresh. And, just in case you run out in between, we provide refills (within reason) for a nominal cost to cover the shipping - currently $2.00 per spice.

But freshness is only half the problem. The other half is finding amazing spices to begin with. I learned through experience that it is impossible to source great spices from traditional distributors. Most of them are tied to the same long supply chain of middlemen and it is difficult to determine their quality and age. 

After a long search, I was able to find a truly unique supplier for most of our spices. Burlap and Barrel was started a few years ago by a few young guys who didn’t realize what “couldn’t be done” - so they did it. They travel around the world to individual farms and pay a fair price for their very best crops; paprika harvested in northern Spain and smoked over open fires; wild mountain cumin picked by hand in the foothills of the Atlas Mountains; turmeric grown in the shade of the jungle canopy in Indonesia.. Without exception their spices are amazing, the best of the best. They get rave reviews from  a who’s who list of experts from the New York Times to Bon Appetit to Food and Wine and many more.

Unfortunately, their selection is limited and so is ours. Instead of a choice between hundreds of spices, we offer about 40 - an eclectic mix of the most commonly used spices and other, less common spices that are so unique and flavorful that we can’t pass them up. We only sell them in complete sets of 12 or 24 jars and we give you the choice of which spices you to include in your set. We offer a choice between two sizes of jars - 1/4 oz (about 1/3 the size of an average spice jar) and 1/2 oz (about 2/3 the size of an average spice jar) at a flat price, no matter which spices you select.

Our reusable jars are 100% unique and (in my biased opinion) beautiful. They are the result of hundreds of prototypes I built over a span of two years. The main thing that sets them apart, is their ability to attach to each other magnetically, at the base, in perfect alignment. That means that any jar effortlessly clicks together with any other jar in only one correct configuration; the labels on both jars line up perfectly to create a unified design whether or not they are together or apart, no matter which jar is on top. The magnetic bond is strong enough to keep the jars attached, even if you shake them hard, yet they still separate easily when you twist them in either direction. These jars are incredibly versatile and they will help you:

* Free up half your spice cabinet space because two of our connected spice jars fit into the footprint of one.