An Organic Pioneer

Forster is a pioneer in helping move our food systems away from industrial chemicals. A surfer from Santa Monica, he has always felt empowered to utilize the environment around him to improve his and others’ lives.

“We were one of those families doing veggie juices and eating lots of salad,” Forster says. “My brother got cancer when I was a teenager. My mom was really into figuring out how to use diet against that.”

When young Werner was 12, his parents sent him on a plane to Ecuador, where his mother was from, to stay with his aunts and uncles. While he went back to the States eventually, the country never left his heart. “I absolutely fell in love with everything about it…,” he says, “...the people, the family, just the way of living.”

Forster eventually entered the food industry with the major conglomerate, Sysco Foods, which in a funny way was a good first job for him because he learned exactly what he did not want to pursue. In fact, it made him realize exactly what he wanted to fix. “You get turned off from the food system,” he says. “It affected me a lot.”

So he started working backwards, joining a series of juice and supplement startups–bareboned and scrappy–but learning the operational side firsthand and creating valuable relationships. “It planted this idea that there can be a lot of purpose behind this,” Forster remembers.

He always felt a magnetic pull toward starting his own organic food company, and while figuring out exactly what kind of company that would be, looking for inspiration, he decided to move back to Ecuador. “It was that 12-year-old experience pulling me back. I wanted that again.”

In Ecuador with his wife, Maria, Forster created Quinta Organica, primarily selling organic bananas and mangoes. He became responsible for bringing the very first organic mangoes in South America to the market and got many banana farms Certified Organic. Whole Foods Market, which played a role in establishing the USDA Organic certification, became one of his primary buyers in the US as the organic movement began really taking off.

“We were one of the few doing organic bananas. Dole was just getting into it. Chiquita hadn’t even started yet,” he says. “I had no experience in farming. I had no idea how I would put it all together…But within a couple of months, we were already packing and shipping the first containers.”

Selling To Dole

Forster would quickly learn how difficult it is to ship produce in the tropics by boat to the States. It would take a month or so just for his products to hit the market, whereas bigger companies would take a fraction of that time, making it hard to compete against them. After about three years, he sold Quinta Organica to Dole.

Back in California, he consulted startups like Sambazon Acai and Evolution Fresh juices, helping formulate and launch into retail. But that urge to get back down to South America kept kicking in and became harder to ignore. Randomly, or perhaps by fate, he happened to begin learning about the delicacy of abalone and how Chile was a perfect growing environment for the striking sea snails. “We went for it,” Forster says. “We became abalone farmers.”

At the time, there weren’t any successful land-based aquaculture farms, and Forster worked to prioritize this sustainable way of farming fish and changed that. “It’s consistent, reliable, and produced without vaccines and antibiotics,” he says. “No other fish farming can do that because freshwater environments are so full of bacteria.”

For decades, Forster prioritized this industry and moved around the world with his family to chase similar opportunities, producing other fish like lumpsucker, Dover Sole, also moving to Wales and selling to Portugal’s largest grocery stores. Each of his aquaculture businesses are still running today after selling each of them.

“My way of managing something has always been that I have to understand everything,” he explains. “When you take on something so challenging in a foreign place, you build up the skin that you can do anything.”

Explaining Einkorn

Einkorn is understood as the first wheat that ever grew from this earth, playing a heavy role in the origins of agriculture itself during the Neolithic Period as the hunter-gatherer lifestyle began to phase out from society.

Maria is from Bulgaria, which is known to be one of the geographic origins of einkorn, helping kick off the Forsters’ journey with it and change their lives. “We visited my parents and went to a coffee shop that had all different kinds of products with einkorn,” she says, and remembers thinking, “Why is something so good, so unknown?”

The Forsters have integrated einkorn into every aspect of their kitchen since Maria began shipping einkorn flour from Bulgaria, baking with it every day since. Their son, Nico, born while Werner and Maria were living in Ecuador, is now a part of building the company alongside them, as someone who has been eating einkorn for as long as he can remember.

“It was always weird to see everybody else eating white bread...I never had to know about the dangers of gluten,” Nico tells me, reflecting on eating his mom’s einkorn bread and baked goods she would make him and his siblings growing up. “I wasn’t used to bread without flavor.”

The health benefits of einkorn are unrivaled. “Genetically pure einkorn averages about 40% more protein in any other wheat, even more than quinoa, and up to 300% more antioxidants,” Forster says based upon years of research he and scientists have compiled in Einkorn Explained.

Einkorn is anti-inflammatory and anecdotally, many people with some level of gluten intolerance have expressed how einkorn has never had any negative impact on their gut health. “Imagine wheat being one of the things to reduce inflammation,” Forster says. “We think about how gluten and other starches are so toxic today, but the first wheat actually didn’t present any of those issues.”

It’s hard to fathom why such a naturally powerful ingredient would largely fizzle out from our food system. Einkorn often grows to be very tall which can make it difficult to harvest, when it turns its yellowish-brown color. As our modern industrial farming system began to prioritize efficiency, other types of wheat became more profitable in the short-term.

That is why Forster and his family are working to revive einkorn in its most natural form: non-hybridized. “We’ve only found one wheat that's never been hybridized, and it remains to be einkorn,” he says. “It should have never left. We just didn't realize what hybridized wheat would do to us.”

Hybridization hasn’t always had negative connotations, as it was largely introduced industrially in order to feed a fast-growing population. But it increased the amount of starches more quickly than our bodies have evolved to adapt to those changes.

“Pretty much everything in your produce department has been hybridized,” Forster explains. “It forces plants to share their genetics…everything from the starches, proteins and peptides change significantly.”

Ancient grains like einkorn, particularly when they are farmed regeneratively and organically, have a more natural connection with the human body and nourish us the way nature intended.

“Eating a lot of refined starches and modern wheat in general is linked to diabetes,” Forster says. “Einkorn has a starch structure that allows a slow conversion into sugar, so insulin response to eating our crackers is considered a medium level, about 35 milligrams, where the others are typically around 60 or 70,” he continues. “It’s fascinating.”

Ancient Grains And Ancient Farming Today

Einkorn itself dates back many thousands of years, and the farming practices in which Revival grows its einkorn are just as ancient.

“It’s the same way they farmed in the Neolithic Period,” Forster says. “It’s the Revival story in every aspect possible.”

Forster searched many regions around Spain, where he and his family have been based now for many years, for the best conditions to grow einkorn for the company. They landed on a very specific region in Andalusia, in the South of Spain, near Arcos de la Frontera, and that decision recently proved to be the right one. Despite torrential flooding in early 2026 there, which is typically a very dry region in part due to strong African winds, the farm did not have much to recover from thanks to the regenerative organic practices it has implemented.

“It was able to adapt,” Forster says. “Einkorn is a survivor.”

Regenerative organic farming is farming the way the earth intends. The practices are ancient, but they are more simply the way farming has always been done pre-Industrialization.

“Einkorn is very convenient for regenerative organic farming,” says Luis Gonzaga Mateos Pomar, the Spanish grower who farms Revival’s einkorn. Given that Gonzaga does not use any synthetic pesticides, he must combat weeds in other ways. “Einkorn is a good natural competitor to weeds because after we harvest, the remaining straw fights off more weeds. It’s easier to farm this way.”

Naturally pest-resistant and drought-tolerant, einkorn is not appetizing to wild animals due to its hard shell, so there is no concern about them ravaging it. While yields are often smaller for einkorn compared to other grains, the yield is often more predictable and consistent, therefore more resilient against a growing number of extreme weather events. Other livestock, like organic beef cattle, do enjoy grazing weeds around the crop to act as another form of pesticides, and its manure also helps enrich the soil.

The part of the einkorn plant that is not harvested protects the soil during the off-season, which is particularly important because einkorn only takes a few months from seed to harvest. “There is also a lot of carbon left over in that straw,” Gonzaga says, further enriching the soil to create a stronger carbon sink, and more nutrient-rich and tasty einkorn.

“There is a deep root structure and just a little bit of nitrogen is enough for the einkorn,” Gonzaga adds. “Its dark green color is a result of seeding after having the legumes there in the nitrogen-rich ground.”

He’s referring to crop rotation, never sowing the same parcel with the same crop each year. Rather, he has implemented a permanent crop rotation system, typically between legumes and einkorn, to enrich the soil with each of their benefits, providing more biodiversity in the soil.

“When we went to certify our farms regenerative and organic, it turned out they were already doing it. That’s just the way it was done,” Nico says. “It was the cheapest way for them to do it.”

The Revival

On each box of Revival Einkorn, a matriarch stands front-and-center, looking straight into your eyes, powerfully carrying a bundle of einkorn grains. She is named Maria. She is the story of this revival.

“She is bringing einkorn back,” Forster says. “[The Neolithic Period] was a matriarchal society, which resonates with how we want to live today. It was a peaceful time focused on community development and fertility–of women and of the soil–which brings us back to the basics.”

Revival Einkorn enters the market first with crackers, an easily-explainable product that consumers understand using an ingredient that they may initially not. These crackers are robust–blank slates, slightly sweet with a nutty aftertaste, in flavors Toasted Sesame & Honey, Seeds & Sea Salt, Artisan’s Daily and Roasted Garlic and Chili. They are made just the way Maria would make them in the kitchen with 100% Spanish Extra Virgin Olive Oil. The Forsters wouldn’t have it any other way. “It’s the olive oil that we use at home.”

All einkorn that the brand processes is stone-milled. “It’s an ancient method,” Forster explains, “and it's the method that preserves the nutrients more than any other.”

Revival is about to have even more control of the product as it continues to reach full vertical integration. Nico is spearheading the effort to build out their own factory to create the einkorn products fully from farming and recipe development to production, marketing and educating consumers.

“Were doing the research, we’re teaching people about gluten, and we’re just being honest that the path leads to einkorn.” Nico says.

The next product to enter the market is Revival’s einkorn flour, which will enable the story of einkorn to be told even further–that this is a grain that can be turned into anything: breads, pastas, beer–all of which are future innovations the company has planned.

“Every one of the different experiences we’ve had, living all around the world and doing all these different types of adventurous food projects, has prepared us to be successful at this journey,” Forster says. “The world needs einkorn.”