Add Some Crickets to Your Diet
Add Some Crickets to Your Diet
Perfect Protein in Springville Provides Something to “Chirp” About
Perfect Protein customer Roberto Petrilli frequents the shop regularly, noting that he uses the powder in many of his cooking recipes. Photos / Rich Rumfola
While looking for an alternative source of high-quality protein to fuel his recovery from a back surgery gone very bad, Ellicottville native Nick Alexander happened to cross paths with crickets, and the tiny black creatures changed his diet - and his life - forever!
Now the owner/operator of Dalayla Cricket Farms and the CRKT Perfect Protein production/retail facility, Alexander grows crickets by the millions at his Springville, NY location for the production of a high-quality, cricket-based protein powder that can then be used to create protein-rich foods as varied and familiar as strawberry smoothies and chocolate cookies.
Alexander explained during a recent interview that his journey toward becoming the original ‘Cricket Cowboy’ in New York State began when life-altering complications arose from a back operation. “It really changed everything for me,” he said. “When you can’t walk, it really changes your perspective.”
For Alexander, it took a lot of perseverance, hard work and the healthiest diet he could come up with to push through the devastating negative effects of the surgery - a process which included learning how to walk again and progressing from a wheelchair to a walker and then cane before finally regaining his full ability.
“I needed another source of protein besides beef or chicken because I knew that with a high-protein diet like the one I wanted, there’s only so much beef or chicken you can eat,” he explained.
Having discovered for himself how the cricket has been recognized for centuries as a rich source of protein by cultures the whole world over, Alexander says he saw a functioning cricket farm for the first time on a trip to Colorado and returned to New York determined to make an operation like that work here at home.
As far as how he learned to raise healthy crickets in a farm-like setting, Alexander admits the information is all over the internet. “Once you see how the farm works, it’s pretty basic - and then it’s just a matter of time and totes.”
In reality, they’re just large plastic totes, much like the kind you’d store your Christmas decorations in, but industry insiders jokingly refer to them as ‘Cricket Condos,’ and with plenty of fresh food and water provided to condo occupants on a daily basis, the simple plastic tote plays home to one cricket and as many as 10,000 of its closest friends and relatives, as they grow from egg to adult in just under two months' time.
Alexander feeds the crickets with plant trimmings from a local greenhouse, uses less than 1 percent of the water that a beef or chicken facility would require to produce a comparable amount of protein, and houses nearly two million crickets at any one time in an incredibly minimal footprint of 300 square feet in his downtown Springville, NY facility. (As an observation, the room where Alexander’s crickets grow is far cleaner and much more neatly-organized than the kitchen of any fast food restaurant you might happen to walk into.)
Alexander gave a concise explanation of the cricket’s life cycle in this way: “From an egg to a tiny cricket is seven days. They’ll shed their exoskeleton seven times before they’re an adult and then they’ll start laying their eggs. Once they start laying their eggs, crickets generally won’t live much longer than another week.”
When it’s time for adult females to lay eggs near the end of their life cycle, Alexander puts out dishes full of moistened mulch that all the females will instinctively use to bury their eggs in. Dishes loaded with cricket eggs then get collected into containers filled with nothing but new eggs and each container full of eggs must be moistened daily to keep the youthful creatures from drying out as they transition into tiny crickets. Once that transformation is complete, young crickets get put into their own tubs to live what Alexander describes as “the best life possible for a cricket. They live in climate control, with fresh greens for food and a clean water source that’ll last throughout their entire life.”
He went on to explain the ethical nature of producing protein from crickets in that the creatures he grows will get to live their whole natural lifetime, unlike cows, chickens or most any other animal that ends up on our tables.
“When it comes time for their life cycle to be complete,” Alexander said, “we put them in a cold environment where they simply fall asleep and never wake up.”
Crickets will generally go dormant when the temperature drops below 50 degrees Fahrenheit and will die as the mercury continues to drop towards freezing. Once they’ve been chilled to the point of no return, the crickets are given a quick hot wash to remove any impurities, and then placed on trays to go in the dehydrating machine, where they’ll stay until they’ve “dried” to the optimum level of humidity for easily milling the creatures into a protein-rich powder.
Alexander says he can rotate one cricket condo every seven weeks and every tote harvested will yield 5-7 pounds of protein. He has as many as 200 totes in rotation at any given time and is limited in his production capability only by the amount of square footage he allocates to the growing room. In one year, the 12’ x 25’ growing room he currently operates in the back of a remodeled gas station will produce as much as 3,000 pounds of powdered protein - or as much protein as 20 beef cows!
Alexander happily admits to being a farmer unencumbered by traditional farm equipment and methods saying, “I have no fencing, no tractors, no nothing and I can produce as much protein as 20 beef cows in a year!”
An avid hunter and backpacker himself, Alexander designed his first cricket protein-based products to go along with him into the backcountry on solo hunting trips of 7-10 days, where his initial protein bars were more like a meal replacement than a quick snack, as they provided a satisfying 44 grams of protein, combined with a whopping 800 calories in a single package!
Alexander says that once he started making the protein products for himself, he was excited by the idea that he “really had something here.” He designed a cricket-based granola to go along with his first protein bar and sent both products to Rich Outdoors, a hunting outfitter in Montana which purchased 1,200 bars and praised Alexander’s business for having a sustainable nature and occupying a minimal footprint. Alexander admits it took almost three years to complete all the necessary paperwork and to convince all the necessary state officials and food inspectors that his methods and facilities were sound enough to consistently create a delicious and healthy product fit for human consumption. The first baked goods he created from his cricket-based protein powder were produced in a borrowed church facility in Ellicottville because it had a state-inspected kitchen.
Named after his daughter, Dalayla Cricket Farms is the first cricket farm to ever operate in New York State and believably enough, the first crop of crickets to ever be grown on Dalayla’s Farm were raised in Alexander’s own basement. As for the department of health, if you can imagine the red tape and hoops that must be jumped through in order to bring any new food product to market in New York State, then you can probably begin to understand how the difficulty level might ratchet up exponentially with the fact that Alexander’s new food product was going to be made from a wholly non-traditional food source (in this part of the world).
Alexander says ultimately the state helped to work through myriad difficulties and roadblocks along with him and in the end, his cricket farm and production facility have become the Gold Standard for every similar operation hoping to open anywhere else in New York in the future. It also seemed to be a particular point of pride with the appropriate health department officials that the inspector assigned to Alexander’s application would be the first person to ever inspect a cricket facility in New York.
Since launching his own food production facility nearly two years ago, Alexander caters to a mostly online base of customers who are from all over the country, while also attempting to serve the needs of cancer patients whose doctors have advised a high-protein diet to combat weight loss and maintain strength after chemotherapy treatments.
With heartfelt enthusiasm, Alexander explained the limitless possibilities for those using his protein powder in their daily diets. “With the powder, they can do anything with it,” he said. “They can do the waffles, they can do pancakes and cookies and bake it into bread. They can mix it into their yogurt. It’s shelf-stable and has more protein than beef or chicken.”
For those people who are sensitive to dairy and can’t use whey protein, Alexander’s cricket protein powder could be the answer to their dietary needs. “The thing is, you can’t beat a cricket,” he said. “It’s got more calcium than milk. It’s got more iron than spinach and more potassium than a banana.”
Alexander explained that his goal was never to get into making food recipes, but just to provide the cricket protein powder and let folks make with it whatever their imaginations might call for.“We’ve done breads, we’ve done pasta… there’s nothing you can’t do with it! For every ten grams of powder, you get seven grams of protein. What else can you eat with that much protein in it?”
Although Alexander offers his protein powder in a chocolate-flavored format for his friends at the gym, he says he would prefer that people be creative and explore all the ways they can use the straight, unflavored protein powder in all their favorite recipes. Marketed under the ‘Perfect Protein’ brand name, Alexander’s line of cricket protein products includes protein bars, granola, cookies and crackers, but he also admits, somewhat to his own amazement, that bags of whole, roasted crickets (in jalapeño-garlic and barbecue flavors) are among his best-sellers, especially at all the outdoor shows and events he attends.
“We really didn’t want to do anything like selling (whole crickets), but people want them,” he said. “When we go to the Elmwood Farmer’s Market in Buffalo, we sell out of these things every time we go!”
Along with appearances at outdoor living shows from Buffalo to Utah, Alexander has appeared as a guest speaker at local high schools like Frontier and also at local colleges like Buffalo State College, where he was amazed to find how very few educators had ever heard of the practice of farming crickets for protein.
Having worked the last six years to create and then build his brand, Alexander says his biggest challenge in the business thus far has come from defeating the stigma attached to the idea of “eating an insect.” The truth of the matter is that once crickets are milled into a powder, they become an unrefined whole food (not a supplement), which takes on the taste and texture of however it is prepared. Just like all-purpose flour is generally not consumed without first combining it with other ingredients, Alexander’s high-quality, all-natural cricket protein powder tastes best as part of any of your favorite recipes - from cookies to smoothies to breads and whatever else your culinary creativity might manage to conjure.
During our interview for this story, Italian-born Roberto Petrilli, now a Springville resident, stopped in to Alexander’s Perfect Protein shop (located at 70 Franklin Street in Springville) for his “usual order” - a coconut-flavored cricket protein bar to-go.
While paying for his purchase, Petrilli shared how he had been experimenting with Alexander’s protein powder in some of his favorite recipes at home and then raved about the great-tasting, high-protein, fresh pasta he created using a simple combination of cricket powder, all-purpose flour, eggs and olive oil.
Having opened the doors on his retail location in Springville nearly two years ago, Alexander hopes to franchise his Perfect Protein brand one day and maybe see a production facility (like Dalayla Cricket Farms) in cities and towns throughout the region.