Pecans grow in backyards across Jammu and Kashmir. Neighbours gift them to each other in winter. Yet India imports almost all of its pecans from other countries, and no one here had ever farmed our own for sale.
I came home to build this.
I grew up in Poonch eating these pecans without realising how rare they are in the rest of the country. They were just there, in the garden, every winter. I left for a design career in the United States, and the more distance I had from home, the clearer it became that the nut growing in our backyards deserved a brand of its own.
So I came back. Juniper is my way of taking something quietly extraordinary and giving it the care, the design and the story it has always deserved.
Made in Poonch, by Poonch.
We process here and we pack here. The pecans are shelled, conditioned and roasted in small batches, then hand-packed into glass jars by local women whose energy keeps this whole thing going. Nothing is shipped out half-made. The value stays with the people who grew it and made it.
Fair rates, real work.
We pay fair rates, direct to Poonch's growers, for a nut that until now never had a real market. And the shelling and packing is steady, paid work for the women of Poonch, in a place where opportunity is scarce.
Small batches, nothing hidden.
Everything is roasted to order and sealed fresh in glass, never plastic. No preservatives, no palm oil, nothing you can't pronounce. Just pecans, a little spice, and the place they come from. Because they are freshly roasted rather than engineered to sit on a shelf for a year, every jar is best enjoyed within 90 days.
What we're building.
Juniper starts with one small first batch and three flavours. The ambition is bigger: to build a pecan brand the region is proud of, that creates real work for women in Poonch, and that puts a Himalayan nut on tables across India and, one day, beyond.