We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Anne Bunn And Jill Forney. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Anne Bunn and below.
Hi Anne Bunn and, you’ve got such an interesting story, but before we jump into that, let’s first talk about a topic near and dear to us – generosity. We think success, happiness and wellbeing depends on authentic generosity and empathy and so we’d love to hear about how you become such a generous person – where do you think your generosity comes from?
Generosity is the foundation of Urban Pharm. We started during the gray winter days of Covid, podded up with our best friends, deeply aware of the isolation so many were feeling. We wanted to extend to others what was nourishing us. So, we started delivering care packages to a small group. A drinking vinegar, some bone broth, a sweet treat, and a savory treat, along with a note of what we were listening to, reading, and enjoying. It was a small gesture with big impact. Our friends felt loved and cared for, and we felt reconnected and fulfilled.
Urban Pharm is, at its heart, about creating something infused with care, heart, and humanity to be extended with generosity. We believe that, fundamentally, what is “good for you” has a lot to do with participating in generosity, on both the receiving and offering end.
We think of generosity less as grand gestures and more as everyday acts of care and connection. It’s built into how we treat our customers, our community, and our partners. We want Urban Pharm to feel abundant in flavor and spirit, and warm in how it shows up in the world.
Let’s take a small detour – maybe you can share a bit about yourself before we dive back into some of the other questions we had for you?
Urban Pharm is about fostering connection through everyday offerings of generosity and care. We believe in taking small, everyday moments (mixing a drink, sharing a meal, giving a gift) and making them a little brighter.
Our first product is Urban Pharm shrub. Bright, flavorful drinking vinegars that bring together raw apple cider vinegar, raw honey, fresh fruit & herbs, and botanicals. We have five flavors in addition to limited editions each season, all in many sizes. Shrub can turn sparkling water into a gut-healthy treat, elevate a mocktail or cocktail, and add brightness to a simple salad. There’s something deeply satisfying about seeing something you made become part of someone’s daily rhythm.
Urban Pharm started small, selling online and at local markets and pop-ups. We are now on shelves across New England and the US, in beautiful stores that share our values. We also love collaborating with other makers, like our limited-edition flavors with Curio Spice and Land’s Sake Farm.
What we’re most excited about right now is the growing community around Urban Pharm: the makers, the shop owners, and the people who bring our shrubs into their homes. We’re excited to keep experimenting with new flavors and collaborations, and finding new ways to bring more good-for-you, happy-making products into the world.
There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?
Three qualities have been most impactful in our journey with Urban Pharm.
Relationship: Every meaningful step forward for Urban Pharm has come through people—collaborators, mentors, customers, friends. Our advice: be generous, be genuine, and stay in touch. The relationships you cultivate will shape everything. Generosity and authenticity are more powerful than any strategy on its own.
Curiosity in the kitchen: We both love playing around in the kitchen. Testing new ingredients, cooking from our pantries, experimenting with flavors. Our advice: play around. There’s no wrong way to explore. Experimentation is a form of expansion. It teaches you what works, what doesn’t, and often leads to unexpected discoveries.
Persistence: Building something from scratch is never linear. There are long stretches of uncertainty, moments that test your patience and resolve. Our advice: keep showing up. Keep refining, keep learning, keep putting one foot in front of the other. The progress you make may feel small day to day, but it compounds.
Together, these three qualities—relationship, curiosity, and persistence—have guided our work and continue to shape Urban Pharm. For anyone starting out: ground yourself and your business in relationship, embrace experimentation, and keep showing up even when it’s hard.
One of our goals is to help like-minded folks with similar goals connect and so before we go we want to ask if you are looking to partner or collab with others – and if so, what would make the ideal collaborator or partner?
Absolutely. We love working with people who care about what they do, how they do it, and their customer and client experience.
We’re looking for independent retailers—specialty food shops, home stores, places that emphasize quality and craft. The kind of stores where the staff genuinely connect with their customers and get excited about introducing them to something new. Those relationships are where Urban Pharm really thrives.
We’d also love to work with cafes, bars, and restaurants interested in adding shrubs to their menus in creative ways.
We also welcome opportunities to co-create products with other food makers (imagine a shrub-based vinaigrette with the right olive oil company!), partner with gifting companies on beautiful pairings, anything where we can make something together that’s better than what we’d create alone.
We can be reached most directly by email [email protected] and Instagram @urbanpharmshrub. We’d love to hear from you!
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.urban-pharm.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/urbanpharmshrub/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/urbanpharmshrub/
Image Credits
Photos by Basha Burwell
so if you or someone you know deserves recognition please let us know here.
