Our Story
It started with my own stomach.
I'm Ketan. I started Gourmend because I refused to believe that eating gently had to mean eating boring.
How it began
No one could tell me what was wrong.
For years, no one could. I was a teenager when the stomach issues started, and it took a long stretch of doctor visits before anyone could name the cause: FODMAPs, a group of carbohydrates a lot of us have trouble digesting.
Going low FODMAP meant giving up garlic and onions, the base of half the recipes I loved and hiding in most packaged food. For a cook, that was sad news to swallow.
The workaround
The answer was in the same plant.
Then I found garlic scapes at a farmers market in New York. A scape tastes like garlic with the sharp edges sanded off, green and faintly sweet, and none of the fructans that were making me sick. Garlic chives and scallion tops worked the same way. You just have to know which part to use.
The allium family had been hiding a workaround the whole time.
You're not imagining it
2 out of 3 Americans have weekly digestive challenges.1
And 1 in 10 people worldwide live with IBS.2 Many have never gotten a real answer. Others were told to cut out gluten only to have it not work, because they're actually reacting to the fructan (a FODMAP) in wheat.3
Garlic and onion are in nearly everything, and they're two of the biggest culprits. Cut them and the list gets very short, very fast.
1. Weekly digestive symptoms, U.S. · 2. IBS global prevalence · 3. Fructans vs. gluten sensitivity study
What we make
Delicious first, gentle always.
I started Gourmend in 2020, leaning on the dietitians whose research I'd read for years and the organic farmers who could grow the greens. What came out of it were broths, seasonings, and salts built on scapes, chives, leek greens, and scallion tops. Gourmet, and mend. That's where the name came from. Certified FODMAP Friendly, and made to taste like something you'd choose, not something you'd settle for.
A pot of the chicken broth on the stove smells like a stock pot that's been going since morning, deep and savory, with the sweet green top-notes of leek and scallion.
They turned out too good to keep to myself.
A legal commitment
Four commitments, written into our certificate of incorporation.
In 2026 we became a Public Benefit Corporation. It means these aren't marketing lines, they're obligations in our founding documents, and they hold no matter what.
01
Truly gut friendly
Plenty of brands say “gut-friendly.” We mean it. Everything we make is certified low FODMAP, with none of the onion or garlic bulbs, or the hidden high-FODMAP ingredients like inulin, agave, and -tol sugars.
02
Labels you can take at face value
Saying plainly what's in the jar and what it does, and pushing for a system where health claims can be backed by science instead of buried. Read why we're suing the government for honest labels.
03
Ingredients over shortcuts
Certified organic, farm-sourced, and grown by people we know, even when a cheaper substitute would pass unnoticed.
04
Nothing hiding behind "natural flavor"
No fillers, no masking agents, no natural flavors. If it's in the food, it's on the label.
A Public Benefit Corporation is legally required to weigh its stated public benefit alongside profit, and to report on it publicly.
