Our Story
Hi! I am Shelby Smith, aka, Mother of Crickets. I am originally from Ames, Iowa where I grew up on the family farm, doing anything but farming. I was an incredibly active kid, playing soccer, basketball, swimming, diving, power tumbling.
I moved back home to Iowa in October 2017 where I hit the ground running and helped my dad out with the harvest. After harvest, my dad encouraged me to explore a niche rather than the traditional farming markets of corn and soybeans. On January 1, 2018, I landed on crickets. By January 10th, I had ordered my first 10,000 crickets, and the rest is history.
When I’m not tending to daily cricket chores, trying out new flavors of protein bars, or wrangling free-range crickets that have escaped, you can find me hiking, biking, running, and lifting heavy weights.
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I played basketball in college at Saint Joseph's University in Philadelphia. Afterwards, I went to Ireland to be part of a program called Sport Changes Life where I played for local clubs and coached the community for 4 years. I extended my stay for another season, received my MSC of Finance at Trinity College Dublin, and worked with the National Bank of Canada for 3 years but found myself really unsatisfied in the banking world.
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Our
Mission
Our mission is to deliver a high-quality, highly sustainable source of protein from start-to-finish. By raising every cricket that goes in our products, we can ensure that proper consideration is taken with the most ethical and efficient practices to maximize nutritional benefit while minimizing negative environmental impact. We aim to produce finished products that not only taste delicious, but that are packed with wholesome nutrition. We believe in simple ingredients, not junk.