Arla's Puck lends its jars and shelves to women entrepreneurs

Lebanon's currency collapse drove unemployment among women up 63%. Many responded by making mouneh, traditional handmade preserved foods, but they had no packaging, no hygiene certification and no route into a supermarket - the first three barriers any small food business needs to cross.

Puck, the cream cheese brand from Arla, had exactly those assets in spare capacity: thousands of blue-lidded glass jars, a professional kitchen, shelf space in Carrefour and e-commerce, and a distribution fleet. It cleaned and re-labelled its jars, gave them to five women artisans to fill and sign, and put the finished products on Puck's own shelves, using the brand's trucks to move them from villages to stores.

The mass-market shelf, normally a wall of branded product, became a showcase for people the consumer would never otherwise meet. Each jar carried the maker's handwritten signature and story, and a series of documentary webisodes traced the journey. For Puck the shelter became a shareholder-facing demonstration of purpose; for the women it was a real channel they could not have afforded to build.