José Leyton has worked as an irrigator for Westfalia Fruit in Naltagua, Chile for 35 years. His wife is unable to work due to arthritis but she enjoys baking, and Leyton’s dream is to give her an oven so she can comfortably bake from home. 

Leyton’s face and dream is one of many farmworker stories, just one scan away of a QR code plastered on packaged grapes and sold in U.S grocery stores. 

The company behind the codes, Thx!, is an organization created to bridge the gap between consumers and farmworkers, by highlighting the hands that tend to, pick and water our produce.

Hovering your phone over a fresh fruit packaging label can contribute to fulfilling a farmworker's dream, like receiving an essential appliance, keeping their kids in school, or renovating their home. 

After 20 years in the produce and logistics industry, the idea struck Thx! founder Martin Casanova as a way to create a positive social impact and differentiate the fruits he was importing to the United States.

Regardless of how each QR campaign performs, the Thx! brand guarantees farmworkers their dream in exchange for their story and face on the labels. 

“We make sure that every dream is achieved and we make sure that every person gets their dream and what was promised to them,” Casanova said.

Six years ago, he realized that produce brands lacked a human face that connected consumers to their product, and decided to develop an organization that focused on giving buyers an opportunity to help farmworkers fulfill their dreams by purchasing packaged produce in the supermarket. 

“We feature the pictures of real farm workers on our labels and each one has a dream that is, of course, related to the need that they have,” Casanova explained. “We also have a QR code in our labels where consumers scan that QR code and watch a one-minute video of that farmworker telling them where he works and what he does.”

Casanova says farmworkers often don’t get the recognition they deserve for doing the hard work of getting products in the market. 

“Sometimes, unfortunately, they are the ones who are getting the least,” he said. 

So, his way to address that problem has been to give consumers more information about the people behind the scenes. The concept also provides buyers insight into “where the fruit is coming from, who is the grower, [and] how that product was grown.” 

Certain goals like higher education might be out of reach for the typical farmworker. MIT’s Living Wage data found that the average salary to live comfortably in the U.S. is $68,499 dollars after taxes. Farmworkers make less than half of that number. 

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, farmworkers and crop laborers make an hourly median salary of $16.88, and those wages tend to lack benefits like health care or retirement contributions. Meanwhile, the food and agriculture industry makes up $1.420 trillion of the U.S. gross domestic product.  America’s farms contribute $222.5 billion to that, about 0.9% of the overall U.S. GDP. 

Marketing the human side of farming

Thx! started around seven years ago by partnering with Argentinian blueberry growers and highlighting the workers who harvested the fruit. The campaign resulted in increased consumer sales and demonstrated the potential for the concept. 

After the positive feedback, the organization started seeing interest from companies who wanted to introduce their own QR codes and worker stories to fruit packaging.

The level of corporate interest made Casanova and the team rethink their long term goals, and in 2022 they decided to rework the concept. 

“After a lot of thinking and of course learning about the concept, last year we decided to make a considerable change in our business model and we switched from being strictly a brand to being a program,” Casanova explained. 

The organization now manages a wide range of produce brands, featuring farmworkers in Argentina, Peru, Chile, Mexico, the United States, Canada and Morocco. 

The work of achieving farmworker dreams does not come without barriers, however. The seasonality of farm work can make it volatile for workers, so a big part of the work by Thx! is staying connected with them and setting clear goals. 

The company has established 33 dream categories, which include education, home improvements, and micro entrepreneurship.

Casanova says stay involved, as much as he can, with the farmworkers, as well as former workers they have helped. There is also the task of communicating with consumers from across the country, who Casanova says email the company every week to comment on the impact of the worker testimonials.

 “We were never able to promote our program with consumers because we were never in the same place, so we make sure we are showing our work in streaming channels and also in social media,” he said. 

Finally, the organization is able to keep their products year around in the same place during a whole season. 

In a recent partnership with the retailer Sam’s Club, located largely in Texas, Florida and California, the organization featured stories on every package of Pedregal’s Red Dragon® Grapes.

More than 40,000 shoppers scanned the QR code on the co-branded label to learn about the farmworkers’ dreams and lives. Casanova says one reason the campaign produced so many customer interactions is because of the human element and the diversity of stories to discover. The opportunity to learn farmworker stories, Casanova says, motivated shoppers to keep viewing videos.

“First they [farm workers] are very grateful that they are not invisible to their boss, to the grower or to their direct boss,” Casanova says. “They feel really very grateful when you say, hey, we want to invite you to be in the program … we have some stories that when we talk to them, they start crying.”

For Casanova, the Thx! concept is a unique opportunity for brands to distinguish themselves, beyond being a commodity in a store, while creating opportunities for their workers.

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