Rancho Gordo, the California-based specialty heirloom bean company, is celebrating its 20th year in business this year. The resulting press has paid homage not only to founder Steve Sando and the unlikely founding of the company, but also to Rancho Gordo’s Bean Club, a subscription service treating members to a variety box of beans four times a year. More so than the beans, though, press about the Bean Club has featured another perk enjoyed by members – access to the club’s private Facebook group, described by some as “the happiest place on the Internet.“
Compared with other Facebook groups, the Bean Club group is refreshingly uncontroversial – people chiefly post about beans, and that’s it. Beans they’ve bought, beans they’ve just gotten in the box, beans they’ve cooked. Recipes get swapped. Comments are mainly just about how “that looks good!” or “Ooh, I’m going to try this.” Questions about beans are answered with patience, enthusiasm and encouragement. One of the few non-bean topics are pictures of pets – cats sitting in the bean club boxes, or dogs wearing paper hats fashioned out of the distinctive tissue paper stamped with the Bean Club logo.
Touchingly, members have also helped each other with basic cooking lessons as well – and provided more emotional and moral support. One member recently lamented how she was losing heart because of the pandemic, her husband’s ill health, and her brother’s cancer – she was looking for ways to make a single pot of beans and stretch it into a variety of simple meals. After the group flooded her with ideas, she started referring to that pot as “the beans of salvation” and told the group: “My house now smells amazing, and for the first time in way too long, I’m excited about a meal. Thank you for hauling me from the depths of despair!”
Sales at Rancho Gordo spiked during the onset of the pandemic – including subscriptions to the bean club, which now has a wait list several thousand names long. This hasn’t stopped some people – who are just hearing about the bean club now – from attempting to join; most notably, food celebrity Padma Lakshmi has made three separate pleas on Twitter trying to join the club. The attention also sparked one famous member – Andy Richter – to step forward.
Rancho Gordo previously
Beans previously recently and previously less recently