Movers & Makers: Anne Bunn and Jill Forney of Urban Pharm

Anne Bunn and Jill Forney

Friends, Community Builders, Founders of Urban Pharm, Happiness Makers

What’s some music you could play over and over and never tire of? 

Anne: I always listen to the Grateful Dead. My older brother was a real Deadhead and then I went to college in Oregon—just always surrounded by Grateful Dead lovers. I'm the least Deadhead of all my friends, but I do like to play the Dead all the time. I find it calms me down.

Jill: For me, it’s some mix tapes—some version of a collection of songs that either I put together or somebody else put together that puts me into a time and a place with a particular person.

What's the weirdest thing in your (Urban Pharm) tote? 

Anne: I have some weird things in my bag, but most consistently I have a needlepoint project in my bag. Over the course of my life, I've done big pillows and whatever, but now I just do small things. I always have one that I'm working on in my bag.

Jill: I just looked and there are two really old Band-Aids; I think they are from the winter when my hands get dry and drumming can crack them. I also have a tiny little flower from the Angelica plant that I found on a recent trip to Iceland. And then there is a bobber for fishing that my son left in the car.

Movers & Makers: Reinventing the Shrub

Did you have an early concept of what you wanted to be when you grew up? What career did you end up pursuing?

 Anne: When I was a little girl, I spent a lot of time at the bank where my grandfather and my dad worked, and a lot of time with their secretaries, so I always wanted to be a secretary. I really loved them and I thought, "That's what I'm going to be when I grow older." I remember drawing pictures of me at my desk when I was a secretary. But, of course, as I grew up, I realized I could do anything I wanted. 

When I was in college, I realized I wanted to be in book publishing and did internships at small publishers in Portland and then started my career right out of college in publishing. I knew I really loved people, so it was important to me to have a high emotional IQ, to become a good manager.

Jill: When I was really little, I wanted to be Laura Ingalls Wilder, one of the Von Trapp family, and/or an Olympic gymnast. Ideally, all three things at the same time. At some point I decided I was also definitely going to be a lawyer.

I've been to more schools than most people. I went to divinity school, law school, social work school. All of these were super interesting. I was a lawyer for about two seconds, and then jumped ship to be at the beginning of something new — a bakery cafe my then husband was starting up. I was always a Mom. Now, I am a psychotherapist and entrepreneur, which I never thought I’d be.

Tell us how Urban Pharm came to be.

Jill: January 2021, in the depths of COVID winter, everything is gray and virtualized and isolated, and Anne and I were with some other friends in a COVID pod. The exceptions to that gray, isolated, virtualized COVID situation were when we were getting together around fires and food in snow pants with that crew, and the pops of vitality that came from that community of laughter and eating and drinking, actually being with other human beings, was a total lifesaver.

Anne and I share a love of taking care and creating community around food and drink. We don't remember the moment when we came up with the idea, but at some point we said, “What if we were to extend this to people outside of our little circle? What if we were to do a sort of happy-making CSA, a good-for-you CSA?” We had no expectation or idea of where the idea was going or what it was going to be, we just knew it was incredibly fun and inspiring to put together a wooden box of homemade treats and deliver them. And people really loved it, and felt really taken care of. People had been making three meals a day for seven or eight months and to receive something that felt just for them in some cases made them teary eyed. They would say, "I feel so taken care of.” We did another pilot from there, adding 15 more people. We asked them to gift it to another 15 people. We were off and running.

What is a shrub and how is it used?

A shrub in the most basic form is a vinegar plus a sweetener, fruit and botanicals. Historically, it was a way to preserve ripening fruit and also to make water potable and palatable. Maybe 15 years ago it started showing up in craft cocktail land, as a way to complexify the cocktail. More recently there’s been an explosion of grab-and-go, non-soda beverages. We feel like we were a little bit ahead of the curve on this trend in concept.

In our shrubs, the vinegar is raw Apple cider vinegar, and the sweetener is honey, as opposed to cane sugar. Both of these were really intentional choices in service of bringing as many “good for you” choices into the mix as we could. We also really wanted to create something beautiful, delicious and a tad unexpected. We chose to make a concentrate instead of a grab-and-go, pre-mixed something for a bunch of reasons, including minimizing waste and encouraging creativity. We want to let you decide what tastes good to you. 

We really want to encourage people to get playful and creative and make up their own stuff, instead of having it prescribed by the fact that it's already mixed in a can. So, add it to sparkling water, add it to sparkling wine, add it to a salad dressing, a marinade, soup, stew. The honey amplifies flavors, the vinegar sharpens things and complexifies AND brings a spash of good for your gut. The possibilities are endless.

What convinced you this could become a business?

Anne: There wasn't exactly a moment per se that we were convinced that it could be a business, but we had space and time to talk about it during COVID and we knew that it could be something. We knew we brought a certain sensibility that could translate into a product or a group of products and be taken out into the world. It was a leap of faith for us to do it because I've been in a very traditional, even antiquated industry forever, and Jill has her background, and neither of us has been involved in a startup, but we thought, let's try it. We can figure this out. And it has been fun doing that, actually.

Jill: Urban Farm has been very spacious. By that, I mean it has a lot of room to go where it wants to go. I feel proud of Anne and me for allowing that to be. We, and the business, have definitely not followed a straight and narrow path. We looked at everything from owning a physical storefront to potentially buying an existing business. Again, we have created this spaciousness and share a commitment to letting something evolve as opposed to knowing exactly what we're doing.

What was it like starting something new during COVID times? What was hard? What was perhaps easier because of it?

There were pros and cons. On the one hand, we had this space to be talking about and thinking about our own lives, what brought us happiness and didn't bring us happiness. I think COVID brought out a question of purpose: What am I supposed to be doing here? Then of course, with COVID we ran into all the obstacles of like, let's do it. We're going to do it. Oh shit, we can't get any bottles. Bottles are sold out until 2024. All these logistical hiccups that we hadn't thought through.

We ran into obstacles, but it really was finding that we had all these people who were excited and willing to help us. We had a friend who owns a restaurant. She's like, "We'll do an event." Or a friend who owns a store, "We'll do an event." People were totally game to introduce us to their friends who would have insights into the market. And it's just amazing to see the generosity of spirit across the board. 

What is your hope for the business?

There are innumerable hopes, but a few things pop up every day. One is creating something that takes the current definition of wellness, which feels all about restriction and limitation and control, and turn that on its head and get people to think of wellness as something that is good for you, something that feels good. Apple cider vinegar is a good example of that, that it's good for your health, good for your gut health, and people take a daily shot of it because it's good for you, but it's also really painful to take that shot. So incorporating shrubs, for example, into the everyday reaches that same end while also being happy-making. It tastes good and it feels good. It's not about restriction. It's about expansiveness and good for you in a different way. So that's one piece of it. 

Another is this invitation to celebrate what's around us by getting creative and playing in the kitchen, feeling comfortable mixing ingredients. Pouring shrub on ice cream. People want things that are so prescriptive; they want to be told what to do. We want to help people intuitively know what is good for them, what feels good to them, it could be a non-alcoholic drink every night, or it could be shrub on your ice cream, or it could be a Negroni made with shrub or whatever, but what feels good in your own body?

And the last thing that is vital is growing Urban Farm into the business that it wants to be, but staying true, both in feel and fact to the quiet backyard beginnings of the business, where it's about human touch and connection, and about deliciousness and community. We want the business to still have those components while also scaling it. 

What would you tell someone who is similarly thinking about launching something new into the world?

If you love something, chances are someone else will too. Not everyone, maybe, but someone will love it too. Be generous and assume generosity on the part of other people. Don't wait until you know everything to leap. 

Pay really close attention and care a lot about who you work with, how you do things, —how you communicate. If you're going to go and do something new in the world, choose your partners intentionally and treat them with transparency and honesty, appreciation and gratitude.

Want to try Urban Pharm shrubs for yourself? Order here.