Dried Fruit

Company History and Background

Founded: 1993

Atilla Sevilmis (founder of Yaban Food) was a businessman based in Istanbul. Over time, his health deteriorated on account of the adverse consequences brought about by urban life, thus driving him to look for alternative ways of life. He decided to regain his health by altering the way he ate. He started a macrobiotic diet laden with organic food. However, he often failed to find the essential organic foods in the city. To make matters worse, a life full of stress in the city was causing him to feel unwell. For this reason, he rented an area of land in south-western Turkey in 1993 with the intention of changing his whole lifestyle. He restored an old house there and started to live in it. Soon, he began to accommodate groups of natural life devotees in his house. He fed his guests with naturally-grown products. In the meantime, he kept renting new areas of land on which he grew products with the long-lost seeds of Anatolia. Before long, he began exporting, if in small amounts, bulgur, chickpeas, whole grains, sesame, tahini, dried mulberries, pepper paste and pomegranate syrup to the United States of America.