Why I made Avine

— Emma, founder

I started Avine after a Saturday morning when I opened my fridge and realized my problem wasn't cooking badly. It was storing badly.

The avocado I bought on Monday was already black. The half bag of spinach — slimy. The queso panela, separated. The ground beef I thawed for that night, gray at the edges. The fresh berries I ordered for smoothies, with a visible layer of white mold. Adding up just that, I threw away close to 380 pesos' worth of food that weekend — food I had carefully picked out at the store the week before.

It wasn't the first time. It was the rule. Every week I threw something away. Every couple of weeks I did meal prep, and by Thursday half of it had gone bad. I worked hard, earned well, cooked well — but my fridge was a slow money leak that no one in my family had ever named.

I started looking. I saw vacuum sealers, and they all had one problem: they used disposable plastic rolls. Sealing a bag meant throwing plastic away. Buying more rolls meant a recurring expense that wasn't much smaller than the waste I was trying to avoid. It was trading one leak for another.

The other problem: they were huge. A box the size of a toaster. On the counter forever, because unplugging it and putting it away each time was a chore. Most ended up shoved in the back drawer by month two.

Avine was born from wanting to solve that properly. A sealer that fits in a normal drawer. No cord, because the cord is what makes you lazy. And with bags you wash and reuse — not disposable rolls disguised as an eco-friendly solution.

It took more than two years to land the design we had in our heads. The one-way valve on the bags went through five versions. The device's motor through three. The battery through two. I didn't want to launch another pretty gadget that would end up in a drawer; I wanted something that lives out in the open, within reach, because that's the only way it actually gets used.

Today Avine lives in the utensil drawer of thousands of kitchens across Mexico, the United States, Chile, and Colombia. People buy from us for one simple reason and come back for more bags for another: they stopped throwing food away and started looking at their fridge with affection again.

I answer the DMs. I read the emails. If something breaks, you talk to me — not a call center. It's a small brand made with the attention of a small brand, and we plan to keep it that way.

If you're reading this and you don't have one yet: the day your fridge finally makes sense, you'll remember this page.

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Questions? hola@avinestyle.com

— Emma