Forget skincare: This wellness brand’s superfood supplements promise to deliver beauty from the inside out
March 29, 2021
Trinity Mouzon Wofford planned to be a doctor. She went to New York University to study medicine with a holistic lens, inspired by a lifetime of education and care for her mother’s severe autoimmune disease. But when insurance stood in the way of her mother’s ability to see her doctor of choice, Wofford decided to pivot.
[Photo: courtesy Golde]
“It made me consider what I wanted to do in wellness and how much accessibility played into it,” she says. The result was Golde, a superfood-driven line of wellness ingestibles and topicals that Wofford launched in 2017.
Her hero product is a collection of powdered superfood lattes, which contain blends of turmeric, matcha, and cacao—ingredients said to support skin, immunity, metabolism, and other crucial bodily functions. The superfood latte line ranges from $22 to $42, with a directive to blend a scoop of powder—there are 29 servings for a 4.2-ounce bag—with hot liquid before adding your milk of choice.
(I like drinking the Original Turmeric superfood latte blend iced with oat milk and honey—it’s lovely: one teaspoon powder, 1/4 cup hot water, froth, and then add honey, milk, and ice.)
“I got into turmeric from my mom,” Wofford explains. “She was using it as an anti-inflammatory. It was affordable but effective. I found it to be so good for my skin, gut, immunity . . . but I thought we could make it a little more consumer-friendly, at least to the Western customer who wasn’t already super familiar.”
Wofford launched Golde out of her Brooklyn apartment with her partner in business (and life), Issey Kobori. The two maintained full-time jobs in the early days, and took on packaging, design, product photography, and more themselves. “We did everything,” Wofford says.
In 2019, she became the youngest Black founder to ever launch at Sephora. In January, Target began carrying Golde’s ingestible health and beauty aids after the brand participated in its accelerator last year. In 2020, the brand quintupled its revenue, year over year.
Golde’s arrival has coincided with consumers’ rising awareness of and interest in superfoods. The International Food Information Council, a nonprofit that surveys the food and nutritional industries, found herbal and botanical supplement sales to be at an all-time high, estimating turmeric’s sales to reach $500 million in 2021. “Any superfood that we launch is paired with an understanding of where our customer is today—and when she gets to the point that she’s comfortable using this product,” Wofford says.
Meanwhile, the brand’s experimentations continue. Earlier this year, Golde launched Super-Ades: fruity powdered beverages that showcase ingredients like magnesium and lemon balm for stress relief and hyaluronic acid for skin hydration, blended with coconut water.
Now, Wofford is betting on fungi with her newest release: Shroom Shield. “It’s boosted with two functional mushrooms: reishi and turkey tail, and is designed for immunity and stress defense,” she says. “It tastes like a hot chocolate and you can add it to coffee with milk. I do an iced shroom latte.”
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