Issue #1: The Pink Linen Shirt
WELCOME UNDER THE CANOPY
THE PINK LINEN SHIRT ISSUE
This is a space we want to create intentionally with you, and for you. If you care about healthy people and a healthy planet, then we hope this will be a place of refuge. A 7-minute read to get energized, armed with good info, and maybe have a little chuckle. Above all, our goal here is to help you make better, healthier choices for yourself, your loved ones, and the planet. Please, enjoy!
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A year ago, if you'd told us we'd be standing under a white tent in Miami, wearing matching pink linen shirts, sweating through 100-degree heat with 80% humidity while selling fruit snacks together, we wouldn't have believed you. This wasn't on either of our 2026 bingo cards.
Honestly, we would have been more likely to believe we'd become professional bingo players, complete with the funny hats and oversized senior glasses. But making—and hawking—a healthier fruit roll-up? Not a chance. Neither of us had ever worked in food. We'd never started a CPG company. Until recently, we'd never even heard the term fibermaxxing.
Yet there we were. Handing out samples. Talking to strangers. Learning how to sell fruit snacks. Trying not to melt.
Every once in a while, someone would ask, "So... how did you two get into this?" The answer isn't simple. It certainly wasn't planned. And it began long before those pink linen shirts ever saw the light of day.
After decades of building businesses from the ground up, we decided to hit pause in 2025. Not because we were burned out. Not because we had some grand life plan. Mostly because our three kids were growing up faster than either of us was ready to admit.
We pulled the kids out of their routines. We packed up our Airstream. And started driving north. The destination was Alaska. The goal was to see as many threatened creatures as we could in the wild. But also, we wanted more breakfasts together. More nights by the campfire staring at the night sky. More unforgettable hikes.
Some people called it a sabbatical. We're not sure that's the right word. Five people sharing one tiny bathroom while driving thousands of miles isn't exactly relaxing. There were endless meals to cook, dishes to wash, laundry to fold, campsites to book, tires to inflate, and a thousand invisible jobs that somehow kept our little family moving.
Then life happened.
Somewhere along the journey, our kids began struggling with digestive issues. One became severely constipated after months on the road, too much sitting in the car in long driving days, and not enough nutritious food. Energy disappeared. Sleep suffered. Moods followed. As every parent knows, when your kids aren't okay, nobody's okay.
We began searching for healthier fruit snacks at grocery stores across the United States and Canada. Every aisle seemed to offer the same compromise: too much sugar, artificial dyes, ingredients we couldn't pronounce, or "healthy" products that simply didn't taste very good and weren't actually very fibrous.
Then one afternoon, while hiking through Hatcher Pass, Alaska, we stumbled onto hillsides covered in wild blueberries. Our eyes lit up.
"So..." we said. "Today we're not humans." "We're bears."
"Eat as many berries as you can... and bring back even more." Within minutes, everyone had stained fingers, purple lips, and plastic containers overflowing with blueberries.
Seeing all this fruit made us think of something we'd experimented with years earlier in Miami, when our mango tree decided to produce hundreds more fruit than we could possibly eat one summer. We preserved it by making homemade mango fruit roll-ups, blending the fresh fruit with a handful of simple ingredients and dehydrating them.
That evening we wondered...What if we tried the same thing with these wild blueberries?
We had no idea we were about to make something that would change the direction of our lives.
MEMES AND MEANING
ARE YOU FIBERMAXXING?
Be honest: Do these AI-generated people chopping salad with perfect smiles make you uncomfortable? What about made-up italicized Gen Z words with two x's? It's hard being in our 40's and having to confront this new world. So we are taking one for the team and doing a tiny bit of doomscrolling on your behalf. Thank us later.
The New Yorker calls it a "Fibre Fad" and gave a strange hat and a toilet plunger to a medjoul date, but in time we will see that A. Fibre or fiber (or however you spell it) is not a fad but a pretty core, enduring part of human diets and B. If humans or dates eat enough fiber, there really should be no need for a plunger.
Here are some of our favorite TikTok takes on fibermaxxing.
You are very welcome.
BLUEBERRY FIELDS FOREVER
Freshly picked wild blueberries in our plastic bucket in Dana's outstretched arm, pointing at the mountains and sky, feels like an expression of our gratitude for this gift from nature.
Did you know?
🫐 Indigenous peoples of North America mixed dried wild blueberries (Vaccinium angustifolium) with lean meat and rendered fat to make pemmican—a remarkably nutritious and shelf-stable food that lasted through the winter.
🫐 Blueberries are a tiny, but mighty SUPERFOOD! They are naturally rich in anthocyanins—the plant compounds behind their vibrant blue color—and support brain function, healthy circulation, and protect cells from everyday oxidative stress.
🫐 Pro tip: If you are lucky enough to go wild blueberry picking this summer, don't wash off the dusty, waxy coating until you're ready to eat your blueberries! That silvery "dust" is called the bloom—a natural protective layer that keeps your berries fresh.
REAL TALK
ON BEGINNING
The image above is proof that we really have no business starting a new CPG snack company. We were then, and now we're even more so, a couple of worn-out parents and home cooks trying to do something positive for our family. This is the actual first batch of scrolls we made on the Airstream in Palmer, Alaska. Looking back now, many thousands of scrolls later, they were imbalanced, dry, and, a bit, meh. But they were good enough, fun enough, and healthy enough for us to try again.
Why did we keep making them?
Our kids were suffering from digestive issues (read: constipation), and they made them feel better. We suspect any parent would have done what we did: keep making the thing that made our kids feel better. What surprised us was how much people of all ages loved our scrolls and begged us for more.
Why did we start a company, against our better judgment?
Because we learned 9 out of 10 Americans are getting too little fiber. We joked about fiber and fibermaxxing above, but the truth is it's something we should all take pretty seriously. Fiber deficiency contributes to cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, and colorectal cancer, which is rising precipitously for young adults. We've seen in our own family the gut-mind axis at work when we saw the many moods of our child battling constipation.
Nobody else seems to be really trying to provide super delicious, high-fiber fruit snacks to every human being on Earth, so why not us?
We've got a long way to go, but one thing we are sure about is that we want to do more than just operate sustainably and in alignment with local communities and natural ecosystems. We want to give back. To support. To leave the world a better place. We are still figuring out how this will work in practice, and we will keep you updated.
We are not delusional about the path ahead. Like a pink rose, there will be many thorny moments on this journey and hopefully, some sweet ones too. We are here for it. And this newsletter will be a window into it all. A view under the canopy.
For now, we are very much in the beginning, feeling the raw energy of creation. It is the absolute worst time. And the best time. Swinging on a pendulum between doom and hope. Revolving in a shopping center door between panic and faith. Straddling the border of Suckland and the Garden of Eden. We wouldn't want to be anywhere else.
So why did we choose long-sleeve, pink linen shirts as our farmers' market uniform? To survive a brutally hot, sunny Florida day while complementing our Strawberry sunrise scrolls. Yes, for sure. But also to symbolize freshness and newness, to celebrate a colorful, unexpected life choice.
We will end this inaugural issue of our newsletter with a thought exercise: If you decided to change your life in some way next week and wear a totally different uniform to represent it, what would your new outfit look like?
Until next time...
Keep looking up,
Team Toocan