Seattle, since 1991
About India Tree
India Tree began with one woman selling spices at Seattle farmers markets. Gretchen Goehrend founded the company in 1991 and ran it out of her house with three employees, on the idea that ingredients most Americans couldn’t find should be easier to get.
Thirty-odd years later the premise hasn’t changed much. We still sell things that are hard to source, and we still care more about what’s in the jar than what’s on it.
How We Got Here
1991
Founded in Seattle. A woman-owned business, started at farmers markets with a team of three.
1995
Mauritius. We began importing unrefined cane sugars directly — dark and light muscovado, demerara — and became the sole importer of record for them in the United States. Most of what Americans knew as brown sugar at the time was white sugar with molasses added back. These weren’t.
2001
Nature’s Colors. The first plant-based food colorants, sprinkles, and decorating sugars available to consumers anywhere. Beets, spirulina, turmeric, annatto. Two decades before anyone was asking us for it.
Today
New leadership, same shelf. A new generation is running the company and refreshing how it looks. What we carry and where it comes from stays put.
Our Lines
Sugars
Unrefined cane from Mauritius, Fair Trade Certified, alongside superfine caster and 10x powdered from the US. Sugar cubes, and flavored sugars for finishing.
Nature’s Colors
Sprinkles, decorating sugars, and liquid color, all of it colored with vegetables rather than synthetic dye.
Spices & Pantry
Whole spices and herbs, dried chiles and mushrooms, beans, popcorn, salt, and peppercorns. Sold whole wherever whole matters.
You’ll find India Tree in specialty grocers in all fifty states, and in bakeries, ice cream shops, and manufacturing kitchens that buy from us by the pail.