A North Monterey County trail mix company is turning out organic snacks on a massive scale.

A conversation with Morty Cohen, the co-founder, CEO and president of SunRidge Farms, is not like a conversation with most food industry executives. While he covers some of the standard points – what distinguishes his company’s products from the competition, and how proud he is of the staff who work in the Royal Oaks plant – he prefers to talk about other things. First and foremost, he wants to talk about protecting the Earth. “It’s about how we make our commitment to all living beings on this planet,” Cohen says. “We all deserve clean air, clean water, clean food.”

He goes on to talk about SunRidge initiatives like the 3,052 solar panels on the company’s buildings, which was once a Smuckers plant before being repurposed into a trail mix manufacturing facility in 2005.

But the conversation diverges even further from there. Cohen readily quotes the German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, about how to coalesce competing ideas. He talks about quantum physics and what it reveals about interconnectedness. He’s interested in both tiny particles and big ideas, and the activity happening just on the other side of the conference room wall is somewhere in between those things. There, sensors are measuring out roasted cashews, then dropping them into bags; conveyor belts move the bags along to be weighed, pass through a metal detector and the eyes of a human quality assurance worker before they are boxed.

These cases of cashews, like SunRidge’s trail mixes, confections, dried fruits and granola, will be shipped from North Monterey County to points all over the U.S. (Locally, you can find SunRidge products at Star Market, Cornucopia Market, Nob Hill and Safeway, among others.)

Cohen estimates SunRidge has sold millions of pounds of organic and natural foods. While consumer packaged products feature a range of nuts, seeds, trail mixes and sweets, the company’s biggest sector is bulk, which Cohen prefers, for its environmental impact.

“We began with bulk, then at some point the market commanded: We needed a packaged analog,” Cohen says.

During the pandemic, bulk sections shut down and individually packaged goods became a bigger portion of sales. “Bulk is our preference [because it minimizes packaging],” says Greg Koenig, marketing director. “The good news is bulk is coming back, and coming back strong.”

The company also improved its e-commerce platform to make it easier for customers to order direct, but Koenig is hopeful that post-pandemic habits will shift away from that, due to the carbon footprint associated with household delivery.

There is also, of course, an ingredient component to SunRidge’s eco-conscious mission. “We are fiercely devoted to eliminating GMOs in our world,” Cohen says. “We want to support and provide foods grown without poisons. We want everyone to be as healthy as possible.”

That extends to all sorts of specific ingredients. Besides a range of organic offerings, there is no corn syrup; the no-GMO rule means no beet sugar, just cane sugar; and instead of dyes, you’ll find concentrated apple, carrot, pumpkin, or black currant in sweets.

Popular items like the Hit The Trail Mix, even the non-organic option, feature almonds roasted in an organic tamari shoyu sauce – to avoid GMO soybeans. SunRidge uses expeller-pressed oil only, and no hydrogenated oils. The flavor-packed chile-lime cashews are made with organic lime juice and New Mexico red chiles.

Cohen has seen the natural foods industry go through a major transformation. What was once hippie crunchy granola fare is now mainstream, and he has succeeded at transitioning. SunRidge started in 1982 with Cohen selling bulk organic oranges out of a station wagon. He got his start in the industry when he met a couple of natural foods store owners on a backpacking trip, and they offered him a job.

Even today, Cohen seems surprised by his own success. “We’re sort of an experiment,” he says. “How do we learn to get along with and honor and respect each other? We’re not trying to set an example – we’re just trying to do the right thing.”

For more about SunRidge Farms, visit sunridgefarms.com or call 786-7000.