In a world of snacks laden with sugar, Hannah Dunbar offers a refreshingly simple alternative: dried fruit.

As founder of A Fruitful Place, Dunbar has built a business rooted in purity, turning nature’s bounty into colorful sweets with no added sugars or chemicals. “I call them nature’s candy,” Dunbar said. “They are so sweet that you don’t need anything, just how God gave it.”

But Dunbar’s journey to fruit preservation wasn’t born here in South Florida, it was cultivated across continents. Born and raised in Liberia, Dunbar grew up baking and crafting fruit preserves with her grandmother. Here is where she said her culinary muscles developed.

In the mid-1990s, Dunbar’s travels deepened that passion. In Morocco, the sun-soaked markets in Marrakesh filled with arrays of dried fruits she’d never seen captivated her.  “It was one of the most wonderful and exciting trips I have made,” Dunbar said. “The best market I have visited in my travels.”

Later, she spent two years in Calabria, Southern Italy, learning the art of canning and drying fruits. “That was the height, all they do is store for the winter,” Dunbar said of living in Calabria. “Everything was canned or dried. This is my niche.”

Dunbar, despite not knowing Italian, used cookbooks and dictionaries to transcribe recipes for canning, fruit dehydrating and other exquisite Italian dishes.

But Dunbar’s life took a dramatic turn amid violent political unrest in Liberia. While her two children were evacuated to the U.S., she stayed behind, later fleeing to Ghana, living in a refugee camp before moving to Accra, and eventually returning to the US.

Throughout her travels, Dunbar’s passion for preservation and culinary never wavered. When life landed her in New York, she supplied cookies, cakes, and her grandmother’s “honey butter biscuits” to restaurants in Harlem. “Everywhere I went, I tried to do something,” she said.

Her ultimate move to South Florida added prestigious kitchens such as Nobu and Marriott Eden Roc, Miami Intercontinental, and the Fisher Island Club to her resume – all with no formal training.

In these renowned spaces, Dunbar’s expertise in fruit reservation shone through in her custom charcuterie boards and dried grapes for cheese platters. When these became a hit amongst friends and guests alike, a fellow chef connected her with local Miami farmer markets, sparking the birth of A Fruitful Place.

By 2019, Dunbar opened the doors of her business, offering dried creations like mango, coconut, dragon fruit, and much more, quickly winning over the same local farmers’ markets.

“Now that I look back, it was training for what I’m doing right now,” Dunbar reflected on her culinary journey. “I have always loved how food was preserved. Being from Africa, we don’t waste things. We dry them.”

Dunbar runs her business alongside her eldest son, Gregory, who she hopes to soon pass the reins to. She prefers to keep the business family-run, in-house, and natural, ensuring she never compromises on quality. “I try to source as much as I can locally,” she shared. “South Florida has such unique and exotic fruits that I’ve never had.”

These days she thrives on developing new preservation ideas and cherishes face-to-face interactions with customers at farmers’ markets. “It’s the old-fashioned way of doing business,” the fruit preservationist said, emphasizing her commitment to customer feedback. “I let customers sample and see if they like it. I’m not doing this just for me, I’m doing it for them.”

Her toughest and most valuable critics? The kiddos, Dunbar said.

“Children are brutally honest,” she remarks laughingly. “I always include them in my marketing.”  She encourages parents to bring their children to sample the newest creations and one of her dreams is to have her fruits in school cafeterias.

Dunbar is also expanding A Fruitful Place to include teas such as Soursop and Cerasee Bush for their health benefits.

“I am doing what I love. This is my retirement,” Dunbar said. “For me, it’s not just work, it’s pure pleasure.”

Find A Fruitful Place online and at markets in Legion Park on Saturdays, and the Coconut Grove Vizcaya marketplace on Sundays.