A Passion For Provenance

We chat with SASHA CONLAN about sourcing clean food from sustainable suppliers – the fundamental principle behind her popular food import business, Sasha’s Fine Foods.

- Amy Greenburg

When she moved from London to Singapore 10 years ago, Sasha found it extremely tricky to find clean and healthy essentials like chicken, fish and meat. Discovering that most supermarket offerings contained antibiotics and hormones, she decided to contact farmers in New Zealand and Australia, whom she’d met during her travels, to see about importing lamb meat for her family.

When friends started adding requests each month, Sasha saw a prime opportunity to bring together her passion for cooking and eating with the growing demand for “cleaner” food in Singapore. In 2011, she set up The Barbie Girls, which presented food-conscious shoppers with a real choice in how they bought their weekly supplies of chicken, fish and meat – a first in the Singapore market at the time.

“I could see there was an increasing awareness and concern about food quality, sourcing and sustainability, which led me to take the leap in setting up The Barbie Girls,” Sasha says. “That was six years ago and, thankfully, demand has never been stronger from both new and long-standing customers who value our ethos and approach.”

From day one, Sasha’s approach to business has been rooted in two core values: transparency and quality. “I really want my customers to know as much about our products and where they come from as I do. I focus heavily on telling the story about each and every producer – who they are, why I source from them, how they farm or fish, what the animals are fed – I have a whole ‘provenance’ section dedicated to this on our website. This reassures consumers, which is critical in building trust, and I think it also humanises the story of what we eat.”