June 6, 2025 • 51 mins
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How do you know what’s actually in your protein bar? Could sweet potato be the secret ingredient that changes the game?
I had a conversation with Tony and Lori, the husband-and-wife team behind Muscle Up Bars, the protein bars born from a dream and built for real performance. We talk about what sets their bars apart in a crowded market: a clean ingredient list, balanced macros, and the power of simplicity.
Whether you’re a CrossFitter, busy parent, or just someone trying to fuel smarter, this will help you understand what to look for in your supplements and why quality matters.
Today, you’ll learn all about:
2:29 – Dreaming the first recipe
5:00 – Why sweet potato is the star
9:11 – Breaking down the sugar-to-protein ratio
13:16 – Why texture makes it taste real
20:32 – Disrupting the market with simplicity
23:02 – When and how people use the bars
26:28 – Scaling up without selling out
39:15 – Handwritten notes and customer love
49:32 – Outro
Episode resources:
- Website: muscleupbars.com
- Instagram: @muscleupbars
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Philip Pape (00:01):
If you're trying to build muscle and build that
strong, lean physique, proteinbars can be a hugely convenient
tool in your nutrition arsenal.
But there are tons of optionson the market, so how do you
choose ones that actuallysupport your training goals as
well as your values?
Today I'm talking to twoathletes who turned their quest
for better nutrition, a betterprotein bar, into a business.
You'll discover the sciencebehind protein quality and
(00:24):
absorption, why thoughtfulingredients and sources matter
for performance, and how toevaluate macro ratios to align
with your fitness goals.
You're going to walk awayunderstanding how to make more
informed choices about theprotein supplements you use to
fuel your training and recoveryand recovery.
(00:44):
Welcome to Wits and Weights,the show that helps you build a
strong, healthy physique usingevidence, engineering and
efficiency.
I'm your host, philip Pape, andtoday's going to be a lot of
fun because we are discussingprotein bars and the
supplementation industry.
We're talking ingredients,macros, quality, flavor, how to
(01:07):
choose all of it, and my gueststoday are Tony and Lori, the
founders of Muscle Up Bars righthere in Connecticut.
I am a personal consumer oftheir bars I just crushed one
chocolate chip right before thisinterview and I've been a
customer since pretty much, Ithink the first year they
launched, and Tony is acertified financial planner by
day.
(01:27):
He's a dedicated CrossFitathlete, an Olympic lifter in
his free time, and Lori is adoctor of audiology who's also a
certified personal trainer, orwas a certified personal trainer
, is currently a coach, andtogether they've created protein
bars designed with athletes andlifters in mind that are
focused on the optimal macroratios, I'll say, but also, and
(01:47):
maybe more importantly, qualityingredients, and, from my
personal experience, they'revery delicious and my wife and
kids agree as well.
So today we're going to getinto that.
We're going to discuss thescience behind effective protein
supplements, how to evaluateingredient quality when you're
looking at a label because thisis the bar for people who read
labels and some tips toincorporate convenient foods
like protein bars into your diet.
(02:08):
Enough talking, tony, lori.
Welcome to the show.
Tony (02:11):
Thank you.
Philip Pape (02:12):
Thanks for having us.
All right, I hope I goteverything right in the intro,
but I just want to let peopleget to know you and really get
to the root of the story behindyour success and the bar that
you create.
What made you think way backwhen, when we can make a better
protein bar there's so many onthe market, but we can do
something different.
Tony (02:29):
Well, I think it all started out of frustration.
I'm a little bit picky aboutwhat I eat and I like to read
labels, even going back a numberof years.
So I couldn't find a bar that Iliked because I was reading the
labels and I was finding eithertoo much sugar or too many
chemicals or a lot of weirdingredients.
So you know, I just knew I hadthis, this frustration about
(02:55):
finding one that I liked.
So I literally one night had adream that I was making protein
bars in my kitchen with theingredients I had in my pantry
sweet potatoes, protein powder,chocolate chips, almond flour.
And I woke up and I said, lori,I just had a very strange dream
.
I was making protein bars and Isaw all the ingredients and she
(03:18):
said that's weird.
Lori (03:20):
Yeah.
Tony (03:21):
I said, yeah, I don't know why I'm having this dream, but
I couldn't get the idea out ofmy head and I literally saw all
the ingredients and I saw myselfmaking it.
So after about a month ofthinking about it, I said you
know what?
I'm just going to try this.
And I tried the recipe that Idreamt of, with the sweet
potatoes and the whey powder andthe almond flour, and threw
some bars together and theytasted delicious.
(03:42):
I brought them to our localCrossFit gym for people to try
and they said these are great.
Where'd you get them?
I said, well, I made them athome and that's really how it
started.
And I thought well, you know,if I'm frustrated, other people
must be frustrated, and I know Ican make a good bar.
I made one first try.
Maybe we can turn this into alittle business.
(04:02):
And we didn't really have anyaspirations about becoming a big
brand or anything.
We just really I want bars formyself that I was comfortable
eating.
Philip Pape (04:13):
Yeah, so I'm curious more about that, because
I don't know if you'renaturally impulsive and just the
type of person just doessomething, or this was very
different for you.
Start there, because that's thefirst question.
Tony (04:24):
I don't know.
Am I impulsive?
I do.
I like to do things.
I like to cook, like to tinkerin the kitchen, I like to do
projects.
I'm a bit of a do-it-yourselferand I do like to cook.
So I think all that togetherjust spurred me on and gave me
the inspiration to give it a try.
Why not try it?
Philip Pape (04:44):
So I mean sweet potato.
We can get into some of theingredients that are fairly
unique and, I'll say, unusual.
As far as protein bars go, andsome of the things I love about
it, Was there like one thing yousaid look, no protein bar that
I ever eat has this.
Was it the taste?
Was it the ingredients?
What was it for you?
Lori (05:00):
Well, most of the protein bars that were out there, you
know they, oh, this is greatprotein.
And we'd look at the back andit would really be a candy bar.
There would be more sugar thanprotein.
At the time we were reallyinvolved in CrossFit and sweet
potato and protein was just whatwe ate.
So we didn't see any other barsout there that had sweet potato
(05:24):
and we thought this is a greatbinder, a great carb.
I mean, it's nature's bestcarbohydrate, I think.
So there was nothing like thatand we decided that we wanted to
always have at least twice asmuch protein than sugar, and if
there was any sugar, it wasgoing to come from something
natural.
But yeah, there just wasn'tanything out there like that.
(05:46):
And bad ingredients, bad tastea lot of sugar.
Tony (05:52):
I don't know if we're trying to be different with the
sweet potato.
It was just the magicingredient that allowed us to
have some natural sweetnesswithout adding a lot of sugar
and without having to use sugarsubstitutes, without having to
use sugar alcohols.
A lot of bars have sugaralcohols.
In fact, when we, when we founda manufacturer to make the bars
(06:15):
for us because we couldn't domass production in our little
kitchen we told them what wewanted and they came back with
us to us with a recipe that hadall kinds of fake sweeteners in
it and we said what is thisstuff?
Why?
Why is this in here?
Do we have to have this?
They said, no, you don't haveto have it.
It's just the way we do things.
It was for everybody else yeahand we said laurie kept saying,
well, take this out, take thatout.
(06:36):
We went through probably adozen different recipes,
eliminating, yeah, ingredientsthat the manufacturer wanted us
to put in but we didn't want,and we ended up with something
that's just very simple, minimalnumber of ingredients.
It's not super sweet, which Ithink most consumers are used to
, it's just naturally lightlysweet, and that's what we wanted
(07:00):
.
It's not a dessert, it's aprotein bar.
Philip Pape (07:04):
Oh yeah, but you can eat this for dessert, let me
tell you.
Let me tell you Okay.
So let me give my personalthing, cause this is just so the
listener knows.
I invited Tony and Lori on.
I love the protein bars.
They always send these reallysweet, like personal notes with
their packages.
There was actually a little Idon't know if it was a
manufacturing defect or somebodyhad opened the package, it
(07:26):
doesn't matter and they sent mea new box because there was one
small bar in there that was alittle bit off and that's like
the kind of stuff that goodbusiness owners do.
But I wanted to bring you onbecause literally, the bar
itself is just so tasty.
It does have a great sweetness.
My kids will say you know, ittastes like real food.
It doesn't taste chemically andI'll admit I have.
I have six different brands ofprotein bars in my pantry and
(07:48):
I'm sure a lot of your customersdo, because they.
It depends on what you'relooking for.
Are you trying to get superprotein dense?
Are you trying to have you know, very sugary candy bar style?
You know we do it right, butbut this is the only one that I.
I eat it and I'm like wow, it's, it's like, it's like you just
made it in your kitchen and itreminds me you talked about the
sweet potato.
I used to be big into paleo.
Now I have more flexible dietbut and CrossFit as well.
(08:11):
I was in CrossFit and I.
One of my favorite recipes wasa pumpkin pie type custard.
We did them in these ramekinsand pumpkin puree was the base.
It wasn't the sugary pumpkinpie mix, it was just pumpkin
puree and it's like my wifemakes butternut squash, doesn't
have to add much to it, not evenadd butter, and it just has a
great taste.
So I'm just kind of promotingyou guys and the bar for making
(08:33):
that choice, even if it wasunintentional.
And why don't more?
Why don't more bars have thesekinds of ingredients?
Is it the taste profile?
Is it cheaper?
Lori (08:42):
they didn't even have it.
Yeah, they had to order it infor us.
You know here this was thismanufacturer that all they do
was make bars.
Tony (08:50):
So they had never heard of it.
They had to source it for usspecifically.
As far as we know, no one elseuses it at this point.
I don't know why, because to usit just seemed to make a lot of
sense.
I'm always staying on top ofwhat's new in the bar market.
As a matter of fact, I have acouple of our competitor bars
right here.
Philip Pape (09:07):
Oh, I see David there.
I know you posted about David,yeah, yeah, and even today.
Tony (09:11):
I mean, these are relatively new to the
marketplace and if you look atthe ingredients list they are
loaded with all kinds ofdifferent weird sweeteners.
Lori (09:20):
And the artificial colors too, which is just crazy, you
would think, with all the talk,now this one is even has a
laxative warning on the back.
Tony (09:28):
Yeah, yeah, I wouldn't want to eat before you work out
hey, what was popular when yourscame out?
Philip Pape (09:33):
it was quest bars, right wasn't that rx bars and
quest has like definitely givespeople some digestive issues
right.
Tony (09:40):
Rx bars were interesting because they didn't have the
sugar alcohol.
But when you look at the sugarto protein ratio, they have more
sugar than protein yeah, yeah,you're right.
Philip Pape (09:51):
They call them a protein.
That's the other thing is youcall it a protein bar.
It's got to have at least atleast 10 grams of protein, in my
opinion, if it has more sugarthan protein.
Tony (09:59):
To me that's a candy bar, it's not a protein bar.
So we want, we wanted our ratioto be at least twice as much
protein as sugar, and the sugarhas to be natural and just a
light, light amount just to makeit a pleasant bar to eat, not a
candy bar or dessert.
Philip Pape (10:13):
Yeah, and I would hope you know again those
listening.
We talk about shifting yourdiet toward mostly whole foods
with some indulgences in there.
You generally, in my experience, your sweet tooth gets
resensitized when you're eatingmore fruit and when you're
eating more whole foods andsweet potato, like you said.
So it actually does taste, tomy opinion, rather sweet in a
good way, like in a good naturalway, or you could eat it for
(10:34):
dessert, just so people know.
This one bar, at least what Ihave a chocolate chip.
It's 230 calories.
It's 12 grams of fat, includingonly three grams saturated.
It is 22 grams of carbs and 3of those are fiber, probably
from the sweet potato, and maybeI think you might add some
probiotics or something elsethat has fiber.
We can talk about it.
And then 7 grams of sugar, butonly 4 grams added.
(10:55):
So that's mostly from the fruitright or from the vegetable,
from the sweet potato.
Tony (11:00):
Sweet potato and coconut nectar.
Philip Pape (11:02):
And coconut.
Coconut nectar oh cool, yes, Iused to drink that stuff and 15
grams of protein, so that, likethe, I was teasing everybody.
How much protein does it have?
So, while there are bars thathave like a lot more density of
protein, I would call this amore balanced, good source of,
like overall energy and that's agood thing.
(11:23):
I think that's a good thing.
So, but the two to one proteinto sugar ratio tell us about
that.
Where did that?
Was that just your challenging?
Lori (11:32):
yourself versus what was out there.
I, you know I had found ayogurt that was on the market um
cities and they used to promotethat when it was right on top.
I think they ended up having tochange that.
Maybe someone else hadcopyrighted that, but it just
really made me think that's agood way of doing things.
(11:54):
We need to have at least twiceas much protein than sugar.
If we could have the sugar evenlower, we would, but we really
hate to change anything becausethey are super delicious and it
is natural sugar when we firstmade the bar, my number one
priority was good ingredientsand clean.
Tony (12:17):
My priority wasn't a great taste, right?
So I said, even if the sugar islow, if it doesn't taste great,
I'm gonna eat it because it'sgood and it has good ingredients
.
Turns out they they taste greatand they have good ingredients
as well.
But we were really trying topush the sugar down.
Philip Pape (12:33):
It's a good combo, yeah yeah, where I think most.
Tony (12:36):
most bar companies probably design their bars for
taste first, because that's howconsumers evaluate the bars if,
if you read a bar review,they're always talking about oh,
this one tastes great.
But to me it's more importantwhat are the ingredients and
what are the macros?
That's the taste good, but ithas to have good macros first.
Lori (12:54):
They definitely do.
I mean this one here isbirthday cake.
Philip Pape (13:00):
Natural.
Why would I want to do?
Lori (13:01):
all this working out and turn around and eat birthday
cake what's?
Tony (13:04):
funny is, this one is called cake batter.
They go after taste first.
Philip Pape (13:10):
And you know what's sad is.
I know the difference betweenthose flavors.
That's funny.
Lori (13:16):
You talked about really eating whole foods and not
having a lot of packaged things,and that was another thing.
We both were so busy and on thego.
You know, at the time I wasrunning around seeing clients
coaching at different gyms andyou know, when you stop
somewhere you're starvingbecause you've been going all
(13:38):
day long.
What are you going to grab?
If you walk in a conveniencestore, it's going to have all
the sugar, alcohols and all that.
That was another reason we justneeded something.
Tony (13:48):
That was good if we had to grab and go yeah, and 100 when
you're starving, I mean you'regoing to grab whatever you can
and we had young kids that wewere taking to sporting events
and the kids, you know, neededsomething quick and you don't
want to feel guilty as a parentgiving your kids something
that's not healthy, you know.
So we have this as an optionfor our kids as well.
(14:08):
And, like you said, kids it'samazing.
Kids love these bars.
We have kids two years old,five years old, right, and the
parents have to hide the barsfrom their kids because the kids
just love them.
Philip Pape (14:19):
That's true, and I my favorite is the chocolate
chip.
But they're all good, butthat's just.
I'm a huge chocolate fiend andjust having it broken up by that
occasional chip, that surprisesyou, You're like oh, it's so
good.
Lori (14:29):
Also kind of took the philosophy, you know, like Ben
and Jerry's, in regards totexture.
We wanted a bar that hadtexture.
So you know, you've got thecacao nibs, you've got the
chunks of chocolate, all that.
It's just like a nice littlesurprise each time you take a
bite.
Philip Pape (14:47):
It is, it is.
And again, I like people areprobably listening like wow,
you're going to have a wholeepisode about protein bars but
we're going to get into somemore of the ingredients and
science behind it.
But sometimes when you findsomething, it's just unique.
The texture is not to beunderrated.
It's like how do I describe it?
It's got a little bit of um Idon't want to say graininess,
cause that sounds bad.
It's like uh.
It's like uh how do I?
(15:09):
How do I describe it?
Like almost like cookie dough,a little bit texture right when
there's a little bit ofroughness in there and it feels
good on your tongue, and thenit's smooth at the same time.
You know what I mean yeah, andit sort of melts in your mouth.
Tony (15:20):
Yes, texture mouth.
Yes, texture is reallyimportant when it comes to food.
People don't realize, but youknow, even when you're eating a
meal, texture in a restaurant isvery important.
You want you have some crispy,some crunchy, some?
Philip Pape (15:32):
salt and sprinkle the mouthfeel from the fat, like
the fat, I imagine the mct oiland some of the things in there.
Give it that mouthfeel.
Are there like?
When we look at some of theseseparate things, we some of
these strike me as back in theday with keto and paleo.
When I see MCT oil, for example, is that bulletproof coffee
right, which I don't do thatanymore, but still is it a
(15:54):
hangover from that, or is therea benefit to it?
Lori (15:56):
It is because that's how we started.
We really started thinkingabout everything in 2015, 16.
That was still really big Right.
So you know that helped us kindof craft it in the beginning
and then, like I said, we hateto change too much.
Tony (16:14):
It's in there.
It's going to stay there, yeah.
Philip Pape (16:17):
Yeah, and then the whey protein itself, of course,
that's.
You know, people are generallythinking protein bar, so what
does it have?
And it's just whey protein andwhey protein concentrate.
Is there anything you look forthere in terms of sourcing, in
terms of how it's filtered orprocessed, anything like that?
Tony (16:33):
We work with again a co-packer who produces the bar
for us and we do rely on them tomake sure they're sourcing good
, clean ingredients for us.
We wanted a whey protein bar.
A lot of bars will use wheyprotein but then supplement with
other proteins egg whites orsoy or pea.
(16:54):
They try to get the proteinnumbers up, but correct me if
I'm wrong.
I believe whey is a fullprotein.
Philip Pape (17:02):
It's complete protein.
It's the highest quality interms of like leucine content.
Tony (17:05):
Yeah, Right, so we can maybe on our label, boost our
protein gram number up by addingsome supplemental proteins.
But to me, what's the point?
Philip Pape (17:15):
I agree, and the sneakiest one is collagen.
When they add collagen, I meansometimes it's in the form of
gelatin, which makes sense.
You might even have I don'tknow if you have gelatin, but
you don't have gelatin.
No, gelatin, I mean that I canget it, I can get as a binding
or whatever.
But when they just add collagento get the numbers up, I'm like
, oh, collagen is like two aminoacids, you know.
So that's good, okay.
So I mean some of the evidenceis still out on whether any of
(17:36):
that is is, um, actuallycorrelated.
I do know collagen is good forjoint health and connective
tissue, with its specific type,which if you don't have that
type in your bar, it's still notthat it's kind of useless.
Go back to the sweet potato.
Are there specific benefits?
You like to tout about havingthat in there, like the fiber or
the nutrients or anything likethat.
Tony (17:57):
Again, we didn't put the sweet potato in.
Lori (18:00):
On purpose.
On purpose because we thoughtit was a I know what you mean.
It was in your dream.
Tony (18:04):
It was in my dream.
But you know, in doing researchwe know that sweet potato is.
It's a great carbohydrate.
It has some sweetness to it,some sugar, lots of vitamins and
minerals.
It's just a.
It's just a great overall carband vegetable to eat.
It works really well in our bar.
You know, there's really nomore science behind it than that
(18:24):
.
Philip Pape (18:25):
Yeah, yeah.
And you know, when I think ofpotatoes and sweet potatoes,
there's the carb sources, thefiber, and there's also the
satiety.
Lori (18:32):
So between, like, the fat and the carbs, yeah, Fun fact I
don't like sweet potatoes, so Idon't want people to think that
the bars even taste like sweetpotatoes.
Philip Pape (18:42):
True, true.
Lori (18:43):
I mean, I've had a few people that say I can taste that
and I'm thinking, no, that'spsychological.
Tony (18:50):
And we also go back and forth on should we be promoting
the sweet potato or not?
Because you have people likeLouie, who don't like sweet
potatoes, and say I don't wantthat bar because I don't want
something that's going to tastelike sweet potato.
Interesting, yeah, so tasteslike sweet potato.
Uh, interesting, yeah, so it's.
It's sort of a catch-22.
It's, you know, adds a lot ofpositives to the bar but also
may turn some people away, whichwe don't want to do.
(19:11):
But again, it doesn't.
You can, you can vouch for thisyou don't taste sweet potato no
, you don't.
Philip Pape (19:17):
It's not like the.
Uh, what is it?
Larabars with the dates.
Where you like, taste rightyeah you know.
so if you don't like dates,you're not gonna going to like
it, all right.
So I know your protein sourcesor protein types have changed
over time.
I mean, how does the marketdrive some of your decisions?
I know you mentioned the DavidBarr.
Maybe you didn't mention it,but it was.
You were showing it.
I don't know if you like tomention competitors, but
(19:37):
everybody knows, and theyrecently changed, I think they
went from some sort of naturalto artificial sweetener in there
, which, again, as part of youroverall diet, you can have a
Diet Coke, you can have this andthat, but if you're going to be
pounding protein bars a lot,you may want different
ingredients, especially whenthey don't taste great.
So how does the market drivethese decisions for you?
Lori (19:58):
Yeah, I'm going to be perfectly honest.
I mean, for us we've kind ofsteadfast in trying to stay with
the ingredients that we have.
The more natural things are,the more expensive they are.
Philip Pape (20:10):
Yeah.
Lori (20:13):
So I think there are companies that say we want to
save money and make more, sowe're going to use cheaper
ingredients.
I mean, it's just a fact.
Tony (20:25):
I think, rather than reacting to the market, I think
we're in a position where we'retrying to influence the market,
maybe change the market andupend the market and be a little
bit of a disruptor in the barmarket.
I think we're in a positionwhere we're trying to influence
the market, maybe change themarket and upend the market and
be a little bit of a disruptorin the bar market.
I think we've been sort ofahead of the whole make America
healthy again movement.
I think people are starting tocatch up with us.
So, rather than adjusting towhat the market wants, we're
(20:46):
trying to educate the market onwhat they should be eating.
So we do funny little posts.
We take some shots at the otherbars that are out there because
we read the ingredients andunfortunately we know that a lot
of people don't turn the barover and read what's on the back
.
They read what's on the frontof the label.
So we're out there trying toeducate the marketplace and drag
(21:08):
people along with us, and Ithink educating a marketplace is
difficult and it takes a lot oftime, but we're in it for the
long haul.
Philip Pape (21:15):
Yeah, I love it and hopefully this podcast does its
tiny piece pimple on the whaletoward doing that.
But yeah, so that's interesting.
You met, yeah, you mentionedthe mom movement and the
politics of it.
I just spoke to a analcohol-free lifestyle gentleman
, james Swanick uh, who probablybe on the show right before,
right after, this episode, and,um, he's talking about how
(21:37):
alcohol free has is becomingmore and more acceptable.
Right, and I do see a healthylifestyle and lifting weights
and quality food.
It's great Like that's awonderful move direction that
we're going in.
Tony (21:48):
Yeah, it is.
Yeah, we haven't gone analcohol free yet.
Philip Pape (21:51):
Well, you know, I just it's one thing at a time,
you know.
Whatever's important to you,all right, so like, what's your
favorite way to actuallyincorporate these, either
yourself or like your typicalcustomer?
I'm sure you post these onstories too, but how do people
incorporate them in their, theirdiet?
Tony (22:09):
Well, again, when I started doing this and
incorporate them in their dietAgain, when I started doing this
, I was working in an officenine to five.
I'd have lunch at noon, Iworked till five-ish, drive an
hour home, go to the gym at sixor 6.30.
That's six hours since I hadanything to eat and I would
always stop and say I needsomething in my stomach before I
work out and I'd go to theconvenience store, the CVS, the
(22:31):
gas station, where I'm trying tofind something quick to eat and
that's where my frustrationjust kept building.
So for me, you know I eat oneif I've worked all day on my way
to the gym, so I have someenergy to work out.
Lori, you might use them alittle bit differently.
Lori (22:47):
Yeah, I had one this morning driving to work.
I wanted to get there early.
I didn't want to spend any time.
You know, um didn't have a lotof time to make breakfast, so I
had her on the way to work.
Once I got to work I was ableto make a little more to eat.
Tony (23:02):
She didn't have one for lunch.
Lori (23:03):
I didn't have one for lunch too, but also for me.
A lot of times I will eat halfbefore, like a lifting session,
kind of halfway through thesession, eat the other half
Right To keep myself going, butbecause they're filling.
But you know when, when you'relifting heavy, you want that.
Tony (23:25):
So I think you know people can eat them as a quick,
convenient source of energy forworking out, but they're also
either protein're protein bars,right, so we are.
We're always looking tosupplement our protein.
We can never get all theprotein that we need.
So for me, you know, middaysnack, if I'm looking for
something to grab real quickwhile I'm working, you know I'll
grab a protein bar, cause Iknow I need extra protein
(23:47):
because I'm not getting all theprotein.
Philip Pape (23:49):
Love it, okay, yeah .
No, I just want to give peopleoptions.
I mean pre-post-workoutconvenience option you talked
about the convenience storeoption Mid-afternoon snack
that's my favorite use of it.
It is a dessert.
Let me just give it to you guys.
A dessert Now granted you couldmaybe.
Tony (24:03):
People often ask us can we use this as a meal replacement,
can we?
This is a meal replacement.
I always say no.
I say eat your meals, take athird of them and eat this in
between.
Lori (24:15):
But I know a lot of you know, women people are looking
to lose weight or or you're juston the go with the kids right
and you know, a lot of peoplearen't going to do what I used
to do, where I would just take,you know, grab a chicken breast
put.
You knew that it would driveyou crazy, put in a ziploc and
off.
I'd go and just munch on mychicken breast, you know, um,
but a lot of people don't wantto do that.
(24:36):
Um, yeah.
Philip Pape (24:39):
So what about adding to recipes?
Do you guys?
I like I haven't looked toointo it.
I'm not a big recipe guy.
There's some people, includingsomeone on my team she's the
opposite.
She like loves planning herwhole week out with like fancy
recipes.
I opposite, she like lovesplanning her whole week out with
like fancy recipes.
I have a ninja creamy, though Icould see potentially adding
this somehow.
But uh like, maybe as the thingthe mix in afterward.
(25:02):
But yeah, do you guys?
Lori (25:02):
do recipes where people like break these up and put them
in something.
Not necessarily, but we we hadsomeone that took little pieces
and put them in her oven andturn them into little cookies.
You know, just kind of melts itall a little bit, yeah, but we
used to do that with quest barscause they turned into cardboard
and you have to stick them inthe microwave.
Tony (25:19):
Yeah yeah, I don't know.
I've actually ever eaten aquest bar.
I was a two.
I was too afraid.
Philip Pape (25:23):
After reading the label, it's it's yeah, yeah, I
used to eat them just like itwas.
It was.
You didn't have a lot ofoptions back then.
Yeah, exactly, so now we've gotoptions.
So you guys are.
Obviously.
You have day jobs, and this isnot the only thing you do.
How does that work?
Just give us a peek into yourlife.
Tony (25:41):
How does it work?
It's pretty difficult.
We're up early in the morningwriting notes and fulfilling
orders.
We're up late at nightpreparing for orders for the
next day.
Um, I was out at lunchtime, um,restocking our inventory, you
know.
So it's wherever we can squeezein it was.
You know, it started off assort of a um, a weekend side gig
(26:03):
, but it's, it's almost become asecond job.
Um, yeah, so you know we wedefinitely have to squeeze it in
where we can.
I work from home so I have alittle bit more flexibility.
But, yeah, we're in the we'remaking it work.
We're making it work, yeah.
Philip Pape (26:20):
Yeah.
So I hope people listening trythese out.
Just buy a few boxes.
Try them out because you won'tbe disappointed.
Get you some new clients.
Tony (26:28):
I have some interesting statistics if you're interested.
I've been doing some research,please do.
We're actually looking atbringing on some investors, so
I'm putting some decks together.
What's interesting about ourbar is that if you come back for
a second order means you likethe first order.
You come back for a secondorder.
The average person buys ninetimes.
Philip Pape (26:49):
Awesome, awesome.
They do that on like asubscription.
The average person buys threetimes because they Awesome.
They do that on like asubscription.
Tony (26:52):
The average person buys three times because they just
get sick of the bars.
Nice Right.
So we have a very high returncustomer rate.
Our retention rate is super.
We have a subscription program.
We have a lot of clients onsubscription where they give us
a box or two or threeautomatically every month.
That's a great piece ofbusiness for us and really
(27:14):
convenient for the consumers.
Philip Pape (27:18):
So with the investors, are you looking to
scale or go to physicallocations, things like that?
Tony (27:24):
We're looking to scale.
I mean, we sell bars all overthe country.
We've hit every one of the 50states and we've also hit puerto
rico, uh, yeah, um, and hawaii.
It's kind of one of the 50states.
We don't ship outside of theunited states at this point
because of sorry, friends inaustralia yeah, just to get them
(27:47):
we have people asking fromcanada all the time we get them
in canada.
We have people from Europeasking if they can get them in
Europe.
So we haven't gone that routeyet, but we're looking to scale
the business.
The thing about the protein barbusiness is it's really a
volume business.
There's not a lot of profit,there's not a lot of margin in
the bars.
People are very price sensitive, so we have to keep our prices
(28:08):
as competitive as possible, andthe only way to make a real
living off of this is to scaleand drive your unit costs down.
So that's our next move, Ithink.
Philip Pape (28:18):
Yeah, and I don't know how price sensitive I am.
I definitely shop around for alot of things, but I will say
this is one of those that I'vesubscribed to and I honestly
didn't care what the price wasbecause I love them so much, so
that's a great product to have.
Seriously, because there aresome things I'm like do I still
need this?
Oh, and the price just went upagain.
Uh, yeah, I'm going to put youon the spot a little bit, but
(28:39):
what's like the biggestcomplaint you get, even today
that maybe you're working onwhat it what keeps you up at
night that you're trying toimprove?
Complaint from customers orCustomers or, yeah, customers.
Tony (28:49):
We don't get any.
Okay, okay, every once in awhile, like you said earlier,
maybe someone gets a bar wherethe wrapper is open, so the bar
dried out.
That's a manufacturing thing ora wrapper, so we'll replace the
bars.
Someone got like a half a barfor some reason in their box, so
we send them a new box of bars.
No one ever complains about thetaste, the, the, uh it's very
(29:14):
it's very rare.
Lori (29:15):
I think we could.
Since 2016, we definitely couldcount on just one hand how many
like low star reviews we'vegotten, and when we get them, we
actually put them on ourinstagram because we want to be
very transparent.
Tony (29:33):
But it's almost kind of funny you know, because when
someone said all these barsdon't taste good, so we posted
that, and someone said well,I'll take them, she doesn't want
them.
Philip Pape (29:40):
I love them.
Lori (29:41):
That's great yeah, so we really is remarkable people want
more flavors.
Tony (29:46):
We've had.
We have two flavors.
Right now, with the peanutbutter, we have the chocolate
chip.
Yeah.
Lori (29:50):
Yeah, so more requests than complaints.
Tony (29:52):
Yeah, looking for different flavors.
People want us to makesomething that's dairy-free.
Philip Pape (30:00):
Oh, yeah, okay.
Tony (30:02):
Probably fruity too right.
Philip Pape (30:03):
They want something fruity yeah something fruity.
Tony (30:09):
Sometimes someone will say , oh, oh, the bar has too many
calories.
Lori (30:14):
Well, I know, I know so, but so you know actually, you
know what, you know what.
Philip Pape (30:18):
That is an interesting one.
Let's, let's, let's head onthat just real quickly, because
I suspect it's the fat that'sgiving the most calorie impact,
right, because fat's so dense.
Is that something you'vethought about of like stripping
that back and have a lower fat,higher protein, carb version?
No?
Tony (30:34):
No, we're happy with the balanced macros, and if you
don't like a balanced macro bar,there are other bars that you
can purchase.
Lori (30:41):
Or you can do like me and have half or half half.
Have the other half later.
Philip Pape (30:45):
And you know what?
200 calories is only 10% ofyour day.
So guess what, folks?
You get the rest of the day tochoose what you want.
It's not that hard.
Lori (30:52):
You know, it's kind of like you're only eating it at
home because of the convenience.
Um, you know, hopefully you areeating real foods the rest of
the day.
So you know, and you're goingto feel nice and full.
Philip Pape (31:05):
So yeah, I like it.
For that reason I will say that, of all the years, now that
I've had protein bars, proteinpowders, you know things like
that like, unless you're goingto go with a whey protein powder
, which is pretty efficient,you're not trying to get a bar
to give you all your protein.
It's like, well, I need proteinand you know I need to get a
lot of it every day, so why nothave something that has more
(31:26):
protein than other things and ithappens to be great in all
these other ways?
I mean, that's just kind of mylogic on it, right, yeah, I
agree.
Okay, so, and we talked aboutthe consumer awareness, about
ingredient quality.
I mean, how do you think that'sgoing to?
I know you're trying to informthe market, but then you're also
trying to meet the market whereit's evolving.
What are, like, the top two orthree things?
Are they related to specificingredients, like when people
(31:48):
got all upset about red dyes fora while and, of course, seed
oils has always been a villainand things like that.
Is it that or is it more justgeneral quality?
Tony (31:59):
Well, we've never had any of those things in our products,
so we never had to worry aboutthose things.
But as those become moreprevalent in the news, then
we'll promote those as well.
So we did a post recently aboutthe birthday cake bar that had
all the different red dyes andso forth in it.
Um, you know we do posts aboutsugar, alcohol all the time.
So again, we're.
(32:20):
The market is evolving and Ithink they're catching up with
us and we're trying to educatethem at the same time.
Philip Pape (32:25):
So, um, yeah, I'm just curious, it's fine, yeah,
I'm, I'm.
I asked lots of questions, guys, so don't you know what I mean?
Um, I'm just very curious.
So, all right, it sounds likeyou know.
It started with a dream, whichI love.
I like when.
When I said impulsive, you knowI meant that almost as a
compliment, cause I tend toempathize with that idea of the
(32:48):
more you do, the more you hustle, the more movement you make in
your life, the more serendipityfinds you, and you're not going
to know until you put yourselfout there.
Lori (33:02):
So is there something along the way you've tried and
didn't work out regarding eitherthe bar specifically or just
business in general?
Yeah, yeah, yeah, you knowespresso bar.
Yeah, so we did try to cater tothe non-dairy folks and used
collagen.
We actually had a doublechocolate espresso bar Delicious
, but you either loved it orhated it.
(33:27):
So it was definitely it was ourleast sold.
We still have people that willask are you going to bring that
back?
But, um, perhaps if we had madeit not double chocolate
espresso, because we had, it hadespresso beans in it, like it
was delicious.
Tony (33:43):
So, again, that texture that I love salsa covered
espresso beans and, at the time,like actual bean that's crunchy
and everything.
Yeah, yeah we actually hadthose in the bar.
So you know, I guess that wascatering to a certain, uh, taste
bud yeah plus collagen is verydifficult to work with, as you
know.
It's sort of gluey.
Yeah, yeah, for sure, it's hardto get the right texture for us
(34:04):
.
We worked really hard ongetting the right texture.
I thought we had it.
You know we hit it pretty well,but it was still a little gluey
.
So yeah, we had that part forlike a year or a year and a half
, and we had to discontinue itbecause it just wasn't selling
fast enough it.
Lori (34:18):
Yeah, it was a lot like the um rx bars, where you felt
like it kind of got stuck inyour teeth oh, you know what
like built bars too.
Maybe you know you haven't eventried it.
Philip Pape (34:30):
No no okay, there's a whole thing there because
built bars.
They're very gluey, some peoplehate them, some people don't
protein.
Lori (34:37):
You know we just couldn't.
So you know it would kind ofseep out.
And if the oil is seeping outand then it's coming through the
(35:01):
, we don't want you to that wasthe collagen yeah, like it would
.
It was oily, yeah, so I say,yeah, it was kind of a no,
that's good, but the conceptjust didn't work.
Tony (35:11):
So we got really lucky with our first two, and the
third one was kind of a dud, butthat happens.
Philip Pape (35:16):
Keith, are you still experimenting with some
things, even if you can't talkabout them Always?
Tony (35:22):
Well, we can talk about it , okay, I don't know what he's
going to say.
I have grand visions for thiscompany being more than just a
protein bar company.
I don't think that there is atrusted protein supplier out
there where I can go and feelgood about what I'm buying in
(35:43):
terms of all the different waysthat we eat protein other than
meat, so I make my own yogurt athome.
I would love to have a proteinyogurt that people can trust
that has great ingredients.
I'd love to have a, a, um, aprotein powder that people can
trust even maybe a protein drinkand be like the trusted protein
company I don't think that'swhere you're going?
I don't think that, uh, yeah, isuh.
(36:05):
That doesn't exist in themarketplace at this point.
Philip Pape (36:08):
Yeah, what do you think of companies like um, like
Fairlife, like fair life.
You know who has the, thefiltered milk.
I'm thinking of a couple thatpeople tend to find are cleaner.
Tony (36:20):
Ish, right, because they're mainly milk, but they
have other stuff in there thereare good companies in each silo,
but there's no company thatsays we're we're covering all
the protein sources proteinstuff.
Philip Pape (36:29):
Yeah, be your trusted protein company yeah,
you're right, because some thecompanies like first form, which
I'm an affiliate for them, buthonestly, a lot of their stuff
has tons and tons of you knowthese ingredients and they they
spend a lot of time trying toeducate on protein and how it's
filtered, but not really talkingso much about all the other
ingredients in there.
So you know, cool.
Yeah, now what about a?
(36:49):
What about a vegan option?
And again, I don't I eat meat,but I do have a lot of clients
that are vegetarian, vegan, andthey're always asking for that
kind of stuff.
So, on the whey protein side,pea and rice is a great option.
Are you ever looking to that?
Tony (37:01):
We've had people ask for that.
I'm just not sure that thevegan consumer is a large enough
percentage of the entirepopulation to make it worth it
for us at this point.
We still have 300 million plusnon-vegans that we have to sell
to and convince before we try togo out to the vegan market, and
(37:21):
that's not really where ourexpertise lies.
So after having the lack ofsuccess with the collagen bar,
I'm probably a little hesitantto try something unusual again,
not having any expertise in thatarea.
Stephanie (37:37):
The most value that I got from this was the fact that
I had someone that I could talkto about anything and that
there was going to be nojudgment.
It was just well, here are yourgoals, here's the best way that
you're going to achieve it, andthen let's work together to
help you feel inspired andmotivated to do that and there's
a lot of people out theretrying to be coaches and not all
(38:00):
of them have done the work andalso just be a genuine person
that is positive and coming fromthe heart in terms of wanting
to help, and Philip reallyembodied all of those qualities.
I would recommend him to justabout anyone that's looking to
achieve goals in that realm oftheir nutrition and building new
habits.
Philip Pape (38:23):
So do you have a way that people get to you with
feature requests or ingredientrequests or new product requests
?
Is it just on your website?
Lori (38:30):
Sometimes they'll just email us, you know, and ask.
Tony (38:33):
Email.
We have a lot of instagrammessages, facebook messages
through our website.
We have chat bot on our websitethat you know comes straight to
us.
Even though it's a chat bot, wecan answer.
We answer chats pretty much.
Philip Pape (38:48):
Almost feels like 24 7 yeah um yeah, no, I can
tell you guys have a feel of ofa.
You know the direct to consumer.
You care, you listen to people,you talk to people and again,
just for anybody watching thevideo, these notes are great and
I can't imagine how much timeyou put into them.
But what was the genesis ofthis?
Tony (39:15):
Delorey, I said you know, even though we're selling
protein bars, I believe thatwe're in the relationship
business, so we have to treatthis like we're building
relationships because, really,ultimately, that's what we all
do.
You do it, we do it asaudiologists and financial
planners.
That's what we do.
So why not do it with a food ora protein bar?
We're in the relationshipbusiness.
So Delore already startedwriting these handwritten notes
(39:36):
and it's just become like, uh,um, you know, a signature deal
for us.
Lori (39:41):
People always comment on the handwritten notes I just
think it's really important forpeople that it is a relationship
and we want people to know thatwe appreciate that they're
doing business with us.
So I feel like I can take thetime as long as I can take the
time to write the note, like Ilove writing the note that says
(40:01):
thanks for a second order.
Right, and I want people toknow that we know they're
getting a second order.
I just think it's important.
Tony (40:09):
Or thanks for your 20th order.
We got an order today fromsomeone.
I think it was their 109thorder.
Philip Pape (40:16):
Wow, is that like a record, or who did you?
Know, that's great.
That's great.
Um, yeah, no, this one saidPhillip, thanks again, Looking
forward to the podcast.
You know, just, it was great,you know it was nice.
Tony (40:28):
Um, I think that was me.
Philip Pape (40:31):
I haven't learned to distinguish your handwriting.
Yeah, yeah, you can tell, youcan see man it's handwriting.
Yeah, all right.
So I mean, what are you excitedabout now going into the future
?
Tony (40:42):
Well, this idea of scaling , of becoming a bigger brand, of
becoming the trusted proteinprovider I mean, again, I make
my own yogurt at home.
I love the idea of homemadeyogurt knowing exactly what's in
it, which is, you know,basically just one ingredient or
(41:05):
two ingredients milk and, anduh, the protein bacteria, if you
want to call it that.
You know, I just growing andbecoming.
You know, you know we havethese.
I have a grand vision, right, westarted as a mom and pop thing,
just so we can have somethingthat we trusted.
Um, and I want it to besomething, just so we can have
something that we trusted, and Iwant it to be something that
everyone can trust and somethingthat everyone can feel good
about.
I think that in the supplementspace, if you want to put us in
the supplement space, I think ifyou ask people what's the first
(41:28):
thing that comes to mind whenyou say supplements, they
probably say I don't reallytrust them, I don't know what
they are, what's in them,they're not regulated.
I don't you trust them.
I don't know what they are,what's in them, they're not
regulated, I don't know wherethey're coming from.
I want to be a trusted providerof good products for people and
then having that relationshipmindset as well, I think we can
take this and turn it into afairly large organization.
Philip Pape (41:54):
I mean there's tremendous value in that fairly
large organization.
I mean there's tremendous valuein that Is part of that
strategy connecting withathletes or influencers or
business owners or podcasters.
I'm just curious.
Tony (42:04):
Yeah, for sure We've.
You know, we've worked withathletes, We've worked with
Olympic weightlifters, we wereOlympic rower, we had an.
Olympic rower.
You know people are reachingout to us all the time from you
know, not with nil right.
A lot of college athletes arereaching out to us looking for
um products.
(42:25):
Um nascar reached out to usrecently.
So there's a lot of opportunityto partner, uh, with different
athletes.
But you know we're pretty picky.
We don't want just any athletejust for the name.
If we're going to partner withsomeone, we want it to be
someone who shared the samevalues as we do and can help us
(42:47):
grow the company, rather thanjust piggybacking on what we do.
Philip Pape (42:52):
It's a fascinating industry.
I don't envy you because Iunderstand how hard it is and it
sounds like quite the hustle,but you're also doing what you
can to really grow and make animpact.
I don't know if you follow MikeMatthews right.
He's the owner of LegionAthletics.
They're a massive, massivesupplement company and he just
ended his podcast after manyyears because his supplement
company is finding success now,after getting to $65 million of
(43:16):
revenue.
You know what I mean.
Like it took that long beforeyou said okay, now I'm
independent.
And I'm not trying to make youguys put pressure on you guys.
I just think it's a fascinatingindustry for sure.
Very much like most of retailin the food industry, I imagine,
when it comes to thecompetitiveness and the margins
and things like that.
Lori (43:32):
Yeah.
Tony (43:33):
We used to work with a food group where we had we were
with a granola company, a yogurtcompany, a chocolate company,
all different, all different, um, direct-to-consumer types of
food companies and all smallstartups and they were, all you
know, all had the same issues.
So, um, yeah, it's, it's thefood industry, the supplement,
(43:56):
the protein.
They're very competitive,difficult businesses to survive
in.
Philip Pape (44:02):
I feel like you guys should be in Whole Foods,
you know, but I'm sure you hearthat a lot because that's a hard
business to get into.
Lori (44:07):
Yeah, and then there's and again, it's what you said, so
we're in our the local, all theyou know Carol Luzzi's around
here, big Y right.
Tony (44:17):
Yeah, we have a handful of local markets that we service
here in western Connecticut.
We decided not to expand thatas much and really focus more on
the direct-to-consumer throughour website, so we can just
reach more people.
Lori (44:37):
Yeah, higher margins, more scale.
Yeah, there's also the issue ofwe have a nine-month shelf life
because it's naturalingredients.
So if we try to do somethinglike a whole foods, it's just
constantly we'd be having toreplace bars if they didn't sell
out or whatever and, like yousaid, the, the margins and what
they want and you know how muchthey want to pay for something.
(44:59):
So, yeah, yeah, it just doesn'twork.
Philip Pape (45:03):
That's important Sticking to the values.
That's why.
That's why we buy the product.
So is there anything else, aswe wrap up, that you wish I had
asked that we didn't cover?
Lori (45:12):
I don't think so.
No, I can't think of anything.
Tony (45:20):
So, from your perspective, as someone who eats the bars,
who understands the ingredients,how would you describe this to
one of your clients?
How would you describe thebenefits of the ingredients, and
not so much the taste of thebar, but the benefits of the
ingredients, and not so much thetaste of the bar but the
benefits of the ingredients?
Philip Pape (45:38):
Well, I do lead from the taste, though.
Yeah, I mean I mean most, mostfolks I work with or listen to
podcasts.
You know they have bodycomposition goals, athletic
goals, performance goals and, um, pretty much understand energy,
balance and macros, or they'relearning about it.
So I'm going to start there andsay you know, you need protein
supplementation Great bar forthat.
(46:00):
It has a balance.
That a macro is great for that.
But it also is a source ofenergy.
As far as the ingredients, well,and it tastes great that you
guys can't discount that, let metell you.
And then, as far as ingredients, for sure, like I always
struggle to find, I don't evenuse the word clean.
I know you guys use it.
That's just me.
I just use like whole foods,like I almost think of this as a
whole foods bar.
You know what I mean.
(46:20):
Like a protein bar, energy bar.
A lot of people are looking forthat, and with 10, 20% of your
diet made up of some sort ofindulgences, you're probably
going to spend your processedfood budget on pizzas or donuts
or something like that, right?
Tony (46:36):
So we do pizza.
Philip Pape (46:38):
Yeah, you know, I mean, you know whatever, and so
this fits squarely in the.
This is nutrient dense, it's,it's delicious, it's got fiber
and it could actually fit inthat side of the equation rather
than be considered likeprocessed food.
So I think that's adifferentiator for you guys for
sure.
Yeah, I don't know if that wasa good explanation, think that's
a differentiator for you guysfor sure.
Lori (46:59):
Yeah, I don't know if that was a good explanation, but
that's what comes to mind.
Tony (47:02):
Yeah, yeah, it's good, thank you.
And we're so busy talking aboutthe bar all the times ourselves
.
It's nice to hear what otherpeople think about it,
especially people in theindustry.
You know, experts like you,like yourself.
Philip Pape (47:09):
Yeah, it's hard to find when people say okay.
I actually rely on clients andgroup members, people in the
Facebook group, to kind of tellme what are you finding out
there in the world?
That's what you consider cleanor minimal, and usually it's
fewer ingredients.
Lori (47:23):
Yeah, things you can pronounce.
Philip Pape (47:24):
Things you can pronounce.
Tony (47:26):
Things you can find in your pantry.
Philip Pape (47:27):
Yeah, it does it Pretty much.
Most people will find that ittastes good when it's like that,
in other words, like a bar likethis.
Unless you don't like aningredient, you're going to find
that it tastes good, whereasyou find that the bars with
artificial sweeteners and sugar,alcohols and what there's
always some segment that saylike something's off Taste
McTallick does something when Igo to the bathroom.
No thanks, right.
So you know.
(47:49):
And again, I eat those bars.
Other people do as well, we all.
We're not.
I don't want you to say perfectCause there's, there's no such
thing.
Tony (48:01):
We're not all eating a hundred percent whole foods, but
this is definitely a greatoption in my opinion.
Yeah, I appreciate that, soagain, and again for the
listeners I've.
Philip Pape (48:05):
I invited them on.
So this is not like aninfomercial paid, nothing like
that.
I'm paying them for the barsand there's no affiliate thing,
nothing like that, and I'm happyto do it and I hope everyone
looks you guys up and buys thebars.
So what is the best way to dothat?
Tony (48:18):
Let's check out our website muscleupbarscom.
It's, you know, really consumerfriendly website.
We have right on the front pagethe homepage.
If you don't want to dig in,you know it's all the different
pages behind.
You can buy our three box pack,which is two boxes of peanut
butter and one box of chocolatechip.
You get three boxes.
(48:38):
Or, if you just want to try thebars, we also have a what's
called a score for a four packsampler right on the homepage.
Just hit the buy button.
You don't have to dig throughthe website to find that.
So you want to try and get thefour pack.
If you want to jump right in,there's a three pack Well, three
boxes which is 36 bars, righton the homepage.
(48:58):
And you know we have blogs, wehave nutritional information.
If you want to check out ourlabel, our nutritional label,
it's in there on every productpage.
So all the information, we'revery transparent.
Everything's out there.
A lot of times when you go to aprotein bar webpage which I do
a lot to look for theingredients, I can't find them.
Really have to dig for them.
Right?
(49:18):
Ours are right there, you know.
Read the label.
It's there for you to read andif you like what you see.
Give them a try.
Phillip believes they tastegood.
I think they taste good.
Lori (49:31):
And I think most people think they do.
I do also want to say that wedo wholesale.
So if anybody's listening andthey have a gym or whatever a
small store, we do wholesale.
Tony (49:41):
We sell to gas.
We don't promote to the gasstations but we have gas station
scholars who want to sell ourbars.
We ship bars out to a gasstation in New Jersey and
Arizona recently.
So yeah, we do wholesale ondirect to consumer on our
website yeah, love it.
Philip Pape (50:00):
I mean, yeah, like you said, there's a, there's a
comparison table there, there'sa whole blog reviews, all of
that stuff, amazing.
Tony (50:07):
All right, muscle at barscom, I'll throw it in there
which we try to be better aboutdoing, and we're putting some
fun posts up on instagram.
Yep bars, you can find us thereas well.
Philip Pape (50:15):
Cool, I'll put the links in the show notes which we
try to be better about doing,and we're putting some fun posts
up on Instagram.
Yep, you can find us there aswell.
Cool, I'll put the links in theshow notes and thanks so much
for doing this.
It's been a pleasure to meetyou guys in person again, I
think again and um, share yourstory and talk about this, this
awesome food product that is, uh, going to help you make gains
while sticking to good qualityingredients and enjoying a snack
(50:36):
that really does taste great.
Thanks, Thanks, guys.
Tony (50:40):
We appreciate you inviting us.
Thank you, and I appreciate theopportunity to chat with your
listeners.
Philip Pape (50:46):
Thanks for coming on.
Tony (50:47):
Thanks, bill, appreciate it.
If you're trying to build muscle and build that
strong, lean physique, proteinbars can be a hugely convenient
tool in your nutrition arsenal.
But there are tons of optionson the market, so how do you
choose ones that actuallysupport your training goals as
well as your values?
Today I'm talking to twoathletes who turned their quest
for better nutrition, a betterprotein bar, into a business.
You'll discover the sciencebehind protein quality and
(00:24):
absorption, why thoughtfulingredients and sources matter
for performance, and how toevaluate macro ratios to align
with your fitness goals.
You're going to walk awayunderstanding how to make more
informed choices about theprotein supplements you use to
fuel your training and recoveryand recovery.
(00:44):
Welcome to Wits and Weights,the show that helps you build a
strong, healthy physique usingevidence, engineering and
efficiency.
I'm your host, philip Pape, andtoday's going to be a lot of
fun because we are discussingprotein bars and the
supplementation industry.
We're talking ingredients,macros, quality, flavor, how to
(01:07):
choose all of it, and my gueststoday are Tony and Lori, the
founders of Muscle Up Bars righthere in Connecticut.
I am a personal consumer oftheir bars I just crushed one
chocolate chip right before thisinterview and I've been a
customer since pretty much, Ithink the first year they
launched, and Tony is acertified financial planner by
day.
(01:27):
He's a dedicated CrossFitathlete, an Olympic lifter in
his free time, and Lori is adoctor of audiology who's also a
certified personal trainer, orwas a certified personal trainer
, is currently a coach, andtogether they've created protein
bars designed with athletes andlifters in mind that are
focused on the optimal macroratios, I'll say, but also, and
(01:47):
maybe more importantly, qualityingredients, and, from my
personal experience, they'revery delicious and my wife and
kids agree as well.
So today we're going to getinto that.
We're going to discuss thescience behind effective protein
supplements, how to evaluateingredient quality when you're
looking at a label because thisis the bar for people who read
labels and some tips toincorporate convenient foods
like protein bars into your diet.
(02:08):
Enough talking, tony, lori.
Welcome to the show.
Tony (02:11):
Thank you.
Philip Pape (02:12):
Thanks for having us.
All right, I hope I goteverything right in the intro,
but I just want to let peopleget to know you and really get
to the root of the story behindyour success and the bar that
you create.
What made you think way backwhen, when we can make a better
protein bar there's so many onthe market, but we can do
something different.
Tony (02:29):
Well, I think it all started out of frustration.
I'm a little bit picky aboutwhat I eat and I like to read
labels, even going back a numberof years.
So I couldn't find a bar that Iliked because I was reading the
labels and I was finding eithertoo much sugar or too many
chemicals or a lot of weirdingredients.
So you know, I just knew I hadthis, this frustration about
(02:55):
finding one that I liked.
So I literally one night had adream that I was making protein
bars in my kitchen with theingredients I had in my pantry
sweet potatoes, protein powder,chocolate chips, almond flour.
And I woke up and I said, lori,I just had a very strange dream
.
I was making protein bars and Isaw all the ingredients and she
(03:18):
said that's weird.
Lori (03:20):
Yeah.
Tony (03:21):
I said, yeah, I don't know why I'm having this dream, but
I couldn't get the idea out ofmy head and I literally saw all
the ingredients and I saw myselfmaking it.
So after about a month ofthinking about it, I said you
know what?
I'm just going to try this.
And I tried the recipe that Idreamt of, with the sweet
potatoes and the whey powder andthe almond flour, and threw
some bars together and theytasted delicious.
(03:42):
I brought them to our localCrossFit gym for people to try
and they said these are great.
Where'd you get them?
I said, well, I made them athome and that's really how it
started.
And I thought well, you know,if I'm frustrated, other people
must be frustrated, and I know Ican make a good bar.
I made one first try.
Maybe we can turn this into alittle business.
(04:02):
And we didn't really have anyaspirations about becoming a big
brand or anything.
We just really I want bars formyself that I was comfortable
eating.
Philip Pape (04:13):
Yeah, so I'm curious more about that, because
I don't know if you'renaturally impulsive and just the
type of person just doessomething, or this was very
different for you.
Start there, because that's thefirst question.
Tony (04:24):
I don't know.
Am I impulsive?
I do.
I like to do things.
I like to cook, like to tinkerin the kitchen, I like to do
projects.
I'm a bit of a do-it-yourselferand I do like to cook.
So I think all that togetherjust spurred me on and gave me
the inspiration to give it a try.
Why not try it?
Philip Pape (04:44):
So I mean sweet potato.
We can get into some of theingredients that are fairly
unique and, I'll say, unusual.
As far as protein bars go, andsome of the things I love about
it, Was there like one thing yousaid look, no protein bar that
I ever eat has this.
Was it the taste?
Was it the ingredients?
What was it for you?
Lori (05:00):
Well, most of the protein bars that were out there, you
know they, oh, this is greatprotein.
And we'd look at the back andit would really be a candy bar.
There would be more sugar thanprotein.
At the time we were reallyinvolved in CrossFit and sweet
potato and protein was just whatwe ate.
So we didn't see any other barsout there that had sweet potato
(05:24):
and we thought this is a greatbinder, a great carb.
I mean, it's nature's bestcarbohydrate, I think.
So there was nothing like thatand we decided that we wanted to
always have at least twice asmuch protein than sugar, and if
there was any sugar, it wasgoing to come from something
natural.
But yeah, there just wasn'tanything out there like that.
(05:46):
And bad ingredients, bad tastea lot of sugar.
Tony (05:52):
I don't know if we're trying to be different with the
sweet potato.
It was just the magicingredient that allowed us to
have some natural sweetnesswithout adding a lot of sugar
and without having to use sugarsubstitutes, without having to
use sugar alcohols.
A lot of bars have sugaralcohols.
In fact, when we, when we founda manufacturer to make the bars
(06:15):
for us because we couldn't domass production in our little
kitchen we told them what wewanted and they came back with
us to us with a recipe that hadall kinds of fake sweeteners in
it and we said what is thisstuff?
Why?
Why is this in here?
Do we have to have this?
They said, no, you don't haveto have it.
It's just the way we do things.
It was for everybody else yeahand we said laurie kept saying,
well, take this out, take thatout.
(06:36):
We went through probably adozen different recipes,
eliminating, yeah, ingredientsthat the manufacturer wanted us
to put in but we didn't want,and we ended up with something
that's just very simple, minimalnumber of ingredients.
It's not super sweet, which Ithink most consumers are used to
, it's just naturally lightlysweet, and that's what we wanted
(07:00):
.
It's not a dessert, it's aprotein bar.
Philip Pape (07:04):
Oh yeah, but you can eat this for dessert, let me
tell you.
Let me tell you Okay.
So let me give my personalthing, cause this is just so the
listener knows.
I invited Tony and Lori on.
I love the protein bars.
They always send these reallysweet, like personal notes with
their packages.
There was actually a little Idon't know if it was a
manufacturing defect or somebodyhad opened the package, it
(07:26):
doesn't matter and they sent mea new box because there was one
small bar in there that was alittle bit off and that's like
the kind of stuff that goodbusiness owners do.
But I wanted to bring you onbecause literally, the bar
itself is just so tasty.
It does have a great sweetness.
My kids will say you know, ittastes like real food.
It doesn't taste chemically andI'll admit I have.
I have six different brands ofprotein bars in my pantry and
(07:48):
I'm sure a lot of your customersdo, because they.
It depends on what you'relooking for.
Are you trying to get superprotein dense?
Are you trying to have you know, very sugary candy bar style?
You know we do it right, butbut this is the only one that I.
I eat it and I'm like wow, it's, it's like, it's like you just
made it in your kitchen and itreminds me you talked about the
sweet potato.
I used to be big into paleo.
Now I have more flexible dietbut and CrossFit as well.
(08:11):
I was in CrossFit and I.
One of my favorite recipes wasa pumpkin pie type custard.
We did them in these ramekinsand pumpkin puree was the base.
It wasn't the sugary pumpkinpie mix, it was just pumpkin
puree and it's like my wifemakes butternut squash, doesn't
have to add much to it, not evenadd butter, and it just has a
great taste.
So I'm just kind of promotingyou guys and the bar for making
(08:33):
that choice, even if it wasunintentional.
And why don't more?
Why don't more bars have thesekinds of ingredients?
Is it the taste profile?
Is it cheaper?
Lori (08:42):
they didn't even have it.
Yeah, they had to order it infor us.
You know here this was thismanufacturer that all they do
was make bars.
Tony (08:50):
So they had never heard of it.
They had to source it for usspecifically.
As far as we know, no one elseuses it at this point.
I don't know why, because to usit just seemed to make a lot of
sense.
I'm always staying on top ofwhat's new in the bar market.
As a matter of fact, I have acouple of our competitor bars
right here.
Philip Pape (09:07):
Oh, I see David there.
I know you posted about David,yeah, yeah, and even today.
Tony (09:11):
I mean, these are relatively new to the
marketplace and if you look atthe ingredients list they are
loaded with all kinds ofdifferent weird sweeteners.
Lori (09:20):
And the artificial colors too, which is just crazy, you
would think, with all the talk,now this one is even has a
laxative warning on the back.
Tony (09:28):
Yeah, yeah, I wouldn't want to eat before you work out
hey, what was popular when yourscame out?
Philip Pape (09:33):
it was quest bars, right wasn't that rx bars and
quest has like definitely givespeople some digestive issues
right.
Tony (09:40):
Rx bars were interesting because they didn't have the
sugar alcohol.
But when you look at the sugarto protein ratio, they have more
sugar than protein yeah, yeah,you're right.
Philip Pape (09:51):
They call them a protein.
That's the other thing is youcall it a protein bar.
It's got to have at least atleast 10 grams of protein, in my
opinion, if it has more sugarthan protein.
Tony (09:59):
To me that's a candy bar, it's not a protein bar.
So we want, we wanted our ratioto be at least twice as much
protein as sugar, and the sugarhas to be natural and just a
light, light amount just to makeit a pleasant bar to eat, not a
candy bar or dessert.
Philip Pape (10:13):
Yeah, and I would hope you know again those
listening.
We talk about shifting yourdiet toward mostly whole foods
with some indulgences in there.
You generally, in my experience, your sweet tooth gets
resensitized when you're eatingmore fruit and when you're
eating more whole foods andsweet potato, like you said.
So it actually does taste, tomy opinion, rather sweet in a
good way, like in a good naturalway, or you could eat it for
(10:34):
dessert, just so people know.
This one bar, at least what Ihave a chocolate chip.
It's 230 calories.
It's 12 grams of fat, includingonly three grams saturated.
It is 22 grams of carbs and 3of those are fiber, probably
from the sweet potato, and maybeI think you might add some
probiotics or something elsethat has fiber.
We can talk about it.
And then 7 grams of sugar, butonly 4 grams added.
(10:55):
So that's mostly from the fruitright or from the vegetable,
from the sweet potato.
Tony (11:00):
Sweet potato and coconut nectar.
Philip Pape (11:02):
And coconut.
Coconut nectar oh cool, yes, Iused to drink that stuff and 15
grams of protein, so that, likethe, I was teasing everybody.
How much protein does it have?
So, while there are bars thathave like a lot more density of
protein, I would call this amore balanced, good source of,
like overall energy and that's agood thing.
(11:23):
I think that's a good thing.
So, but the two to one proteinto sugar ratio tell us about
that.
Where did that?
Was that just your challenging?
Lori (11:32):
yourself versus what was out there.
I, you know I had found ayogurt that was on the market um
cities and they used to promotethat when it was right on top.
I think they ended up having tochange that.
Maybe someone else hadcopyrighted that, but it just
really made me think that's agood way of doing things.
(11:54):
We need to have at least twiceas much protein than sugar.
If we could have the sugar evenlower, we would, but we really
hate to change anything becausethey are super delicious and it
is natural sugar when we firstmade the bar, my number one
priority was good ingredientsand clean.
Tony (12:17):
My priority wasn't a great taste, right?
So I said, even if the sugar islow, if it doesn't taste great,
I'm gonna eat it because it'sgood and it has good ingredients
.
Turns out they they taste greatand they have good ingredients
as well.
But we were really trying topush the sugar down.
Philip Pape (12:33):
It's a good combo, yeah yeah, where I think most.
Tony (12:36):
most bar companies probably design their bars for
taste first, because that's howconsumers evaluate the bars if,
if you read a bar review,they're always talking about oh,
this one tastes great.
But to me it's more importantwhat are the ingredients and
what are the macros?
That's the taste good, but ithas to have good macros first.
Lori (12:54):
They definitely do.
I mean this one here isbirthday cake.
Philip Pape (13:00):
Natural.
Why would I want to do?
Lori (13:01):
all this working out and turn around and eat birthday
cake what's?
Tony (13:04):
funny is, this one is called cake batter.
They go after taste first.
Philip Pape (13:10):
And you know what's sad is.
I know the difference betweenthose flavors.
That's funny.
Lori (13:16):
You talked about really eating whole foods and not
having a lot of packaged things,and that was another thing.
We both were so busy and on thego.
You know, at the time I wasrunning around seeing clients
coaching at different gyms andyou know, when you stop
somewhere you're starvingbecause you've been going all
(13:38):
day long.
What are you going to grab?
If you walk in a conveniencestore, it's going to have all
the sugar, alcohols and all that.
That was another reason we justneeded something.
Tony (13:48):
That was good if we had to grab and go yeah, and 100 when
you're starving, I mean you'regoing to grab whatever you can
and we had young kids that wewere taking to sporting events
and the kids, you know, neededsomething quick and you don't
want to feel guilty as a parentgiving your kids something
that's not healthy, you know.
So we have this as an optionfor our kids as well.
(14:08):
And, like you said, kids it'samazing.
Kids love these bars.
We have kids two years old,five years old, right, and the
parents have to hide the barsfrom their kids because the kids
just love them.
Philip Pape (14:19):
That's true, and I my favorite is the chocolate
chip.
But they're all good, butthat's just.
I'm a huge chocolate fiend andjust having it broken up by that
occasional chip, that surprisesyou, You're like oh, it's so
good.
Lori (14:29):
Also kind of took the philosophy, you know, like Ben
and Jerry's, in regards totexture.
We wanted a bar that hadtexture.
So you know, you've got thecacao nibs, you've got the
chunks of chocolate, all that.
It's just like a nice littlesurprise each time you take a
bite.
Philip Pape (14:47):
It is, it is.
And again, I like people areprobably listening like wow,
you're going to have a wholeepisode about protein bars but
we're going to get into somemore of the ingredients and
science behind it.
But sometimes when you findsomething, it's just unique.
The texture is not to beunderrated.
It's like how do I describe it?
It's got a little bit of um Idon't want to say graininess,
cause that sounds bad.
It's like uh.
It's like uh how do I?
(15:09):
How do I describe it?
Like almost like cookie dough,a little bit texture right when
there's a little bit ofroughness in there and it feels
good on your tongue, and thenit's smooth at the same time.
You know what I mean yeah, andit sort of melts in your mouth.
Tony (15:20):
Yes, texture mouth.
Yes, texture is reallyimportant when it comes to food.
People don't realize, but youknow, even when you're eating a
meal, texture in a restaurant isvery important.
You want you have some crispy,some crunchy, some?
Philip Pape (15:32):
salt and sprinkle the mouthfeel from the fat, like
the fat, I imagine the mct oiland some of the things in there.
Give it that mouthfeel.
Are there like?
When we look at some of theseseparate things, we some of
these strike me as back in theday with keto and paleo.
When I see MCT oil, for example, is that bulletproof coffee
right, which I don't do thatanymore, but still is it a
(15:54):
hangover from that, or is therea benefit to it?
Lori (15:56):
It is because that's how we started.
We really started thinkingabout everything in 2015, 16.
That was still really big Right.
So you know that helped us kindof craft it in the beginning
and then, like I said, we hateto change too much.
Tony (16:14):
It's in there.
It's going to stay there, yeah.
Philip Pape (16:17):
Yeah, and then the whey protein itself, of course,
that's.
You know, people are generallythinking protein bar, so what
does it have?
And it's just whey protein andwhey protein concentrate.
Is there anything you look forthere in terms of sourcing, in
terms of how it's filtered orprocessed, anything like that?
Tony (16:33):
We work with again a co-packer who produces the bar
for us and we do rely on them tomake sure they're sourcing good
, clean ingredients for us.
We wanted a whey protein bar.
A lot of bars will use wheyprotein but then supplement with
other proteins egg whites orsoy or pea.
(16:54):
They try to get the proteinnumbers up, but correct me if
I'm wrong.
I believe whey is a fullprotein.
Philip Pape (17:02):
It's complete protein.
It's the highest quality interms of like leucine content.
Tony (17:05):
Yeah, Right, so we can maybe on our label, boost our
protein gram number up by addingsome supplemental proteins.
But to me, what's the point?
Philip Pape (17:15):
I agree, and the sneakiest one is collagen.
When they add collagen, I meansometimes it's in the form of
gelatin, which makes sense.
You might even have I don'tknow if you have gelatin, but
you don't have gelatin.
No, gelatin, I mean that I canget it, I can get as a binding
or whatever.
But when they just add collagento get the numbers up, I'm like
, oh, collagen is like two aminoacids, you know.
So that's good, okay.
So I mean some of the evidenceis still out on whether any of
(17:36):
that is is, um, actuallycorrelated.
I do know collagen is good forjoint health and connective
tissue, with its specific type,which if you don't have that
type in your bar, it's still notthat it's kind of useless.
Go back to the sweet potato.
Are there specific benefits?
You like to tout about havingthat in there, like the fiber or
the nutrients or anything likethat.
Tony (17:57):
Again, we didn't put the sweet potato in.
Lori (18:00):
On purpose.
On purpose because we thoughtit was a I know what you mean.
It was in your dream.
Tony (18:04):
It was in my dream.
But you know, in doing researchwe know that sweet potato is.
It's a great carbohydrate.
It has some sweetness to it,some sugar, lots of vitamins and
minerals.
It's just a.
It's just a great overall carband vegetable to eat.
It works really well in our bar.
You know, there's really nomore science behind it than that
(18:24):
.
Philip Pape (18:25):
Yeah, yeah.
And you know, when I think ofpotatoes and sweet potatoes,
there's the carb sources, thefiber, and there's also the
satiety.
Lori (18:32):
So between, like, the fat and the carbs, yeah, Fun fact I
don't like sweet potatoes, so Idon't want people to think that
the bars even taste like sweetpotatoes.
Philip Pape (18:42):
True, true.
Lori (18:43):
I mean, I've had a few people that say I can taste that
and I'm thinking, no, that'spsychological.
Tony (18:50):
And we also go back and forth on should we be promoting
the sweet potato or not?
Because you have people likeLouie, who don't like sweet
potatoes, and say I don't wantthat bar because I don't want
something that's going to tastelike sweet potato.
Interesting, yeah, so tasteslike sweet potato.
Uh, interesting, yeah, so it's.
It's sort of a catch-22.
It's, you know, adds a lot ofpositives to the bar but also
may turn some people away, whichwe don't want to do.
(19:11):
But again, it doesn't.
You can, you can vouch for thisyou don't taste sweet potato no
, you don't.
Philip Pape (19:17):
It's not like the.
Uh, what is it?
Larabars with the dates.
Where you like, taste rightyeah you know.
so if you don't like dates,you're not gonna going to like
it, all right.
So I know your protein sourcesor protein types have changed
over time.
I mean, how does the marketdrive some of your decisions?
I know you mentioned the DavidBarr.
Maybe you didn't mention it,but it was.
You were showing it.
I don't know if you like tomention competitors, but
(19:37):
everybody knows, and theyrecently changed, I think they
went from some sort of naturalto artificial sweetener in there
, which, again, as part of youroverall diet, you can have a
Diet Coke, you can have this andthat, but if you're going to be
pounding protein bars a lot,you may want different
ingredients, especially whenthey don't taste great.
So how does the market drivethese decisions for you?
Lori (19:58):
Yeah, I'm going to be perfectly honest.
I mean, for us we've kind ofsteadfast in trying to stay with
the ingredients that we have.
The more natural things are,the more expensive they are.
Philip Pape (20:10):
Yeah.
Lori (20:13):
So I think there are companies that say we want to
save money and make more, sowe're going to use cheaper
ingredients.
I mean, it's just a fact.
Tony (20:25):
I think, rather than reacting to the market, I think
we're in a position where we'retrying to influence the market,
maybe change the market andupend the market and be a little
bit of a disruptor in the barmarket.
I think we're in a positionwhere we're trying to influence
the market, maybe change themarket and upend the market and
be a little bit of a disruptorin the bar market.
I think we've been sort ofahead of the whole make America
healthy again movement.
I think people are starting tocatch up with us.
So, rather than adjusting towhat the market wants, we're
(20:46):
trying to educate the market onwhat they should be eating.
So we do funny little posts.
We take some shots at the otherbars that are out there because
we read the ingredients andunfortunately we know that a lot
of people don't turn the barover and read what's on the back
.
They read what's on the frontof the label.
So we're out there trying toeducate the marketplace and drag
(21:08):
people along with us, and Ithink educating a marketplace is
difficult and it takes a lot oftime, but we're in it for the
long haul.
Philip Pape (21:15):
Yeah, I love it and hopefully this podcast does its
tiny piece pimple on the whaletoward doing that.
But yeah, so that's interesting.
You met, yeah, you mentionedthe mom movement and the
politics of it.
I just spoke to a analcohol-free lifestyle gentleman
, james Swanick uh, who probablybe on the show right before,
right after, this episode, and,um, he's talking about how
(21:37):
alcohol free has is becomingmore and more acceptable.
Right, and I do see a healthylifestyle and lifting weights
and quality food.
It's great Like that's awonderful move direction that
we're going in.
Tony (21:48):
Yeah, it is.
Yeah, we haven't gone analcohol free yet.
Philip Pape (21:51):
Well, you know, I just it's one thing at a time,
you know.
Whatever's important to you,all right, so like, what's your
favorite way to actuallyincorporate these, either
yourself or like your typicalcustomer?
I'm sure you post these onstories too, but how do people
incorporate them in their, theirdiet?
Tony (22:09):
Well, again, when I started doing this and
incorporate them in their dietAgain, when I started doing this
, I was working in an officenine to five.
I'd have lunch at noon, Iworked till five-ish, drive an
hour home, go to the gym at sixor 6.30.
That's six hours since I hadanything to eat and I would
always stop and say I needsomething in my stomach before I
work out and I'd go to theconvenience store, the CVS, the
(22:31):
gas station, where I'm trying tofind something quick to eat and
that's where my frustrationjust kept building.
So for me, you know I eat oneif I've worked all day on my way
to the gym, so I have someenergy to work out.
Lori, you might use them alittle bit differently.
Lori (22:47):
Yeah, I had one this morning driving to work.
I wanted to get there early.
I didn't want to spend any time.
You know, um didn't have a lotof time to make breakfast, so I
had her on the way to work.
Once I got to work I was ableto make a little more to eat.
Tony (23:02):
She didn't have one for lunch.
Lori (23:03):
I didn't have one for lunch too, but also for me.
A lot of times I will eat halfbefore, like a lifting session,
kind of halfway through thesession, eat the other half
Right To keep myself going, butbecause they're filling.
But you know when, when you'relifting heavy, you want that.
Tony (23:25):
So I think you know people can eat them as a quick,
convenient source of energy forworking out, but they're also
either protein're protein bars,right, so we are.
We're always looking tosupplement our protein.
We can never get all theprotein that we need.
So for me, you know, middaysnack, if I'm looking for
something to grab real quickwhile I'm working, you know I'll
grab a protein bar, cause Iknow I need extra protein
(23:47):
because I'm not getting all theprotein.
Philip Pape (23:49):
Love it, okay, yeah .
No, I just want to give peopleoptions.
I mean pre-post-workoutconvenience option you talked
about the convenience storeoption Mid-afternoon snack
that's my favorite use of it.
It is a dessert.
Let me just give it to you guys.
A dessert Now granted you couldmaybe.
Tony (24:03):
People often ask us can we use this as a meal replacement,
can we?
This is a meal replacement.
I always say no.
I say eat your meals, take athird of them and eat this in
between.
Lori (24:15):
But I know a lot of you know, women people are looking
to lose weight or or you're juston the go with the kids right
and you know, a lot of peoplearen't going to do what I used
to do, where I would just take,you know, grab a chicken breast
put.
You knew that it would driveyou crazy, put in a ziploc and
off.
I'd go and just munch on mychicken breast, you know, um,
but a lot of people don't wantto do that.
(24:36):
Um, yeah.
Philip Pape (24:39):
So what about adding to recipes?
Do you guys?
I like I haven't looked toointo it.
I'm not a big recipe guy.
There's some people, includingsomeone on my team she's the
opposite.
She like loves planning herwhole week out with like fancy
recipes.
I opposite, she like lovesplanning her whole week out with
like fancy recipes.
I have a ninja creamy, though Icould see potentially adding
this somehow.
But uh like, maybe as the thingthe mix in afterward.
(25:02):
But yeah, do you guys?
Lori (25:02):
do recipes where people like break these up and put them
in something.
Not necessarily, but we we hadsomeone that took little pieces
and put them in her oven andturn them into little cookies.
You know, just kind of melts itall a little bit, yeah, but we
used to do that with quest barscause they turned into cardboard
and you have to stick them inthe microwave.
Tony (25:19):
Yeah yeah, I don't know.
I've actually ever eaten aquest bar.
I was a two.
I was too afraid.
Philip Pape (25:23):
After reading the label, it's it's yeah, yeah, I
used to eat them just like itwas.
It was.
You didn't have a lot ofoptions back then.
Yeah, exactly, so now we've gotoptions.
So you guys are.
Obviously.
You have day jobs, and this isnot the only thing you do.
How does that work?
Just give us a peek into yourlife.
Tony (25:41):
How does it work?
It's pretty difficult.
We're up early in the morningwriting notes and fulfilling
orders.
We're up late at nightpreparing for orders for the
next day.
Um, I was out at lunchtime, um,restocking our inventory, you
know.
So it's wherever we can squeezein it was.
You know, it started off assort of a um, a weekend side gig
(26:03):
, but it's, it's almost become asecond job.
Um, yeah, so you know we wedefinitely have to squeeze it in
where we can.
I work from home so I have alittle bit more flexibility.
But, yeah, we're in the we'remaking it work.
We're making it work, yeah.
Philip Pape (26:20):
Yeah.
So I hope people listening trythese out.
Just buy a few boxes.
Try them out because you won'tbe disappointed.
Get you some new clients.
Tony (26:28):
I have some interesting statistics if you're interested.
I've been doing some research,please do.
We're actually looking atbringing on some investors, so
I'm putting some decks together.
What's interesting about ourbar is that if you come back for
a second order means you likethe first order.
You come back for a secondorder.
The average person buys ninetimes.
Philip Pape (26:49):
Awesome, awesome.
They do that on like asubscription.
The average person buys threetimes because they Awesome.
They do that on like asubscription.
Tony (26:52):
The average person buys three times because they just
get sick of the bars.
Nice Right.
So we have a very high returncustomer rate.
Our retention rate is super.
We have a subscription program.
We have a lot of clients onsubscription where they give us
a box or two or threeautomatically every month.
That's a great piece ofbusiness for us and really
(27:14):
convenient for the consumers.
Philip Pape (27:18):
So with the investors, are you looking to
scale or go to physicallocations, things like that?
Tony (27:24):
We're looking to scale.
I mean, we sell bars all overthe country.
We've hit every one of the 50states and we've also hit puerto
rico, uh, yeah, um, and hawaii.
It's kind of one of the 50states.
We don't ship outside of theunited states at this point
because of sorry, friends inaustralia yeah, just to get them
(27:47):
we have people asking fromcanada all the time we get them
in canada.
We have people from Europeasking if they can get them in
Europe.
So we haven't gone that routeyet, but we're looking to scale
the business.
The thing about the protein barbusiness is it's really a
volume business.
There's not a lot of profit,there's not a lot of margin in
the bars.
People are very price sensitive, so we have to keep our prices
(28:08):
as competitive as possible, andthe only way to make a real
living off of this is to scaleand drive your unit costs down.
So that's our next move, Ithink.
Philip Pape (28:18):
Yeah, and I don't know how price sensitive I am.
I definitely shop around for alot of things, but I will say
this is one of those that I'vesubscribed to and I honestly
didn't care what the price wasbecause I love them so much, so
that's a great product to have.
Seriously, because there aresome things I'm like do I still
need this?
Oh, and the price just went upagain.
Uh, yeah, I'm going to put youon the spot a little bit, but
(28:39):
what's like the biggestcomplaint you get, even today
that maybe you're working onwhat it what keeps you up at
night that you're trying toimprove?
Complaint from customers orCustomers or, yeah, customers.
Tony (28:49):
We don't get any.
Okay, okay, every once in awhile, like you said earlier,
maybe someone gets a bar wherethe wrapper is open, so the bar
dried out.
That's a manufacturing thing ora wrapper, so we'll replace the
bars.
Someone got like a half a barfor some reason in their box, so
we send them a new box of bars.
No one ever complains about thetaste, the, the, uh it's very
(29:14):
it's very rare.
Lori (29:15):
I think we could.
Since 2016, we definitely couldcount on just one hand how many
like low star reviews we'vegotten, and when we get them, we
actually put them on ourinstagram because we want to be
very transparent.
Tony (29:33):
But it's almost kind of funny you know, because when
someone said all these barsdon't taste good, so we posted
that, and someone said well,I'll take them, she doesn't want
them.
Philip Pape (29:40):
I love them.
Lori (29:41):
That's great yeah, so we really is remarkable people want
more flavors.
Tony (29:46):
We've had.
We have two flavors.
Right now, with the peanutbutter, we have the chocolate
chip.
Yeah.
Lori (29:50):
Yeah, so more requests than complaints.
Tony (29:52):
Yeah, looking for different flavors.
People want us to makesomething that's dairy-free.
Philip Pape (30:00):
Oh, yeah, okay.
Tony (30:02):
Probably fruity too right.
Philip Pape (30:03):
They want something fruity yeah something fruity.
Tony (30:09):
Sometimes someone will say , oh, oh, the bar has too many
calories.
Lori (30:14):
Well, I know, I know so, but so you know actually, you
know what, you know what.
Philip Pape (30:18):
That is an interesting one.
Let's, let's, let's head onthat just real quickly, because
I suspect it's the fat that'sgiving the most calorie impact,
right, because fat's so dense.
Is that something you'vethought about of like stripping
that back and have a lower fat,higher protein, carb version?
No?
Tony (30:34):
No, we're happy with the balanced macros, and if you
don't like a balanced macro bar,there are other bars that you
can purchase.
Lori (30:41):
Or you can do like me and have half or half half.
Have the other half later.
Philip Pape (30:45):
And you know what?
200 calories is only 10% ofyour day.
So guess what, folks?
You get the rest of the day tochoose what you want.
It's not that hard.
Lori (30:52):
You know, it's kind of like you're only eating it at
home because of the convenience.
Um, you know, hopefully you areeating real foods the rest of
the day.
So you know, and you're goingto feel nice and full.
Philip Pape (31:05):
So yeah, I like it.
For that reason I will say that, of all the years, now that
I've had protein bars, proteinpowders, you know things like
that like, unless you're goingto go with a whey protein powder
, which is pretty efficient,you're not trying to get a bar
to give you all your protein.
It's like, well, I need proteinand you know I need to get a
lot of it every day, so why nothave something that has more
(31:26):
protein than other things and ithappens to be great in all
these other ways?
I mean, that's just kind of mylogic on it, right, yeah, I
agree.
Okay, so, and we talked aboutthe consumer awareness, about
ingredient quality.
I mean, how do you think that'sgoing to?
I know you're trying to informthe market, but then you're also
trying to meet the market whereit's evolving.
What are, like, the top two orthree things?
Are they related to specificingredients, like when people
(31:48):
got all upset about red dyes fora while and, of course, seed
oils has always been a villainand things like that.
Is it that or is it more justgeneral quality?
Tony (31:59):
Well, we've never had any of those things in our products,
so we never had to worry aboutthose things.
But as those become moreprevalent in the news, then
we'll promote those as well.
So we did a post recently aboutthe birthday cake bar that had
all the different red dyes andso forth in it.
Um, you know we do posts aboutsugar, alcohol all the time.
So again, we're.
(32:20):
The market is evolving and Ithink they're catching up with
us and we're trying to educatethem at the same time.
Philip Pape (32:25):
So, um, yeah, I'm just curious, it's fine, yeah,
I'm, I'm.
I asked lots of questions, guys, so don't you know what I mean?
Um, I'm just very curious.
So, all right, it sounds likeyou know.
It started with a dream, whichI love.
I like when.
When I said impulsive, you knowI meant that almost as a
compliment, cause I tend toempathize with that idea of the
(32:48):
more you do, the more you hustle, the more movement you make in
your life, the more serendipityfinds you, and you're not going
to know until you put yourselfout there.
Lori (33:02):
So is there something along the way you've tried and
didn't work out regarding eitherthe bar specifically or just
business in general?
Yeah, yeah, yeah, you knowespresso bar.
Yeah, so we did try to cater tothe non-dairy folks and used
collagen.
We actually had a doublechocolate espresso bar Delicious
, but you either loved it orhated it.
(33:27):
So it was definitely it was ourleast sold.
We still have people that willask are you going to bring that
back?
But, um, perhaps if we had madeit not double chocolate
espresso, because we had, it hadespresso beans in it, like it
was delicious.
Tony (33:43):
So, again, that texture that I love salsa covered
espresso beans and, at the time,like actual bean that's crunchy
and everything.
Yeah, yeah we actually hadthose in the bar.
So you know, I guess that wascatering to a certain, uh, taste
bud yeah plus collagen is verydifficult to work with, as you
know.
It's sort of gluey.
Yeah, yeah, for sure, it's hardto get the right texture for us
(34:04):
.
We worked really hard ongetting the right texture.
I thought we had it.
You know we hit it pretty well,but it was still a little gluey
.
So yeah, we had that part forlike a year or a year and a half
, and we had to discontinue itbecause it just wasn't selling
fast enough it.
Lori (34:18):
Yeah, it was a lot like the um rx bars, where you felt
like it kind of got stuck inyour teeth oh, you know what
like built bars too.
Maybe you know you haven't eventried it.
Philip Pape (34:30):
No no okay, there's a whole thing there because
built bars.
They're very gluey, some peoplehate them, some people don't
protein.
Lori (34:37):
You know we just couldn't.
So you know it would kind ofseep out.
And if the oil is seeping outand then it's coming through the
(35:01):
, we don't want you to that wasthe collagen yeah, like it would
.
It was oily, yeah, so I say,yeah, it was kind of a no,
that's good, but the conceptjust didn't work.
Tony (35:11):
So we got really lucky with our first two, and the
third one was kind of a dud, butthat happens.
Philip Pape (35:16):
Keith, are you still experimenting with some
things, even if you can't talkabout them Always?
Tony (35:22):
Well, we can talk about it , okay, I don't know what he's
going to say.
I have grand visions for thiscompany being more than just a
protein bar company.
I don't think that there is atrusted protein supplier out
there where I can go and feelgood about what I'm buying in
(35:43):
terms of all the different waysthat we eat protein other than
meat, so I make my own yogurt athome.
I would love to have a proteinyogurt that people can trust
that has great ingredients.
I'd love to have a, a, um, aprotein powder that people can
trust even maybe a protein drinkand be like the trusted protein
company I don't think that'swhere you're going?
I don't think that, uh, yeah, isuh.
(36:05):
That doesn't exist in themarketplace at this point.
Philip Pape (36:08):
Yeah, what do you think of companies like um, like
Fairlife, like fair life.
You know who has the, thefiltered milk.
I'm thinking of a couple thatpeople tend to find are cleaner.
Tony (36:20):
Ish, right, because they're mainly milk, but they
have other stuff in there thereare good companies in each silo,
but there's no company thatsays we're we're covering all
the protein sources proteinstuff.
Philip Pape (36:29):
Yeah, be your trusted protein company yeah,
you're right, because some thecompanies like first form, which
I'm an affiliate for them, buthonestly, a lot of their stuff
has tons and tons of you knowthese ingredients and they they
spend a lot of time trying toeducate on protein and how it's
filtered, but not really talkingso much about all the other
ingredients in there.
So you know, cool.
Yeah, now what about a?
(36:49):
What about a vegan option?
And again, I don't I eat meat,but I do have a lot of clients
that are vegetarian, vegan, andthey're always asking for that
kind of stuff.
So, on the whey protein side,pea and rice is a great option.
Are you ever looking to that?
Tony (37:01):
We've had people ask for that.
I'm just not sure that thevegan consumer is a large enough
percentage of the entirepopulation to make it worth it
for us at this point.
We still have 300 million plusnon-vegans that we have to sell
to and convince before we try togo out to the vegan market, and
(37:21):
that's not really where ourexpertise lies.
So after having the lack ofsuccess with the collagen bar,
I'm probably a little hesitantto try something unusual again,
not having any expertise in thatarea.
Stephanie (37:37):
The most value that I got from this was the fact that
I had someone that I could talkto about anything and that
there was going to be nojudgment.
It was just well, here are yourgoals, here's the best way that
you're going to achieve it, andthen let's work together to
help you feel inspired andmotivated to do that and there's
a lot of people out theretrying to be coaches and not all
(38:00):
of them have done the work andalso just be a genuine person
that is positive and coming fromthe heart in terms of wanting
to help, and Philip reallyembodied all of those qualities.
I would recommend him to justabout anyone that's looking to
achieve goals in that realm oftheir nutrition and building new
habits.
Philip Pape (38:23):
So do you have a way that people get to you with
feature requests or ingredientrequests or new product requests
?
Is it just on your website?
Lori (38:30):
Sometimes they'll just email us, you know, and ask.
Tony (38:33):
Email.
We have a lot of instagrammessages, facebook messages
through our website.
We have chat bot on our websitethat you know comes straight to
us.
Even though it's a chat bot, wecan answer.
We answer chats pretty much.
Philip Pape (38:48):
Almost feels like 24 7 yeah um yeah, no, I can
tell you guys have a feel of ofa.
You know the direct to consumer.
You care, you listen to people,you talk to people and again,
just for anybody watching thevideo, these notes are great and
I can't imagine how much timeyou put into them.
But what was the genesis ofthis?
Tony (39:15):
Delorey, I said you know, even though we're selling
protein bars, I believe thatwe're in the relationship
business, so we have to treatthis like we're building
relationships because, really,ultimately, that's what we all
do.
You do it, we do it asaudiologists and financial
planners.
That's what we do.
So why not do it with a food ora protein bar?
We're in the relationshipbusiness.
So Delore already startedwriting these handwritten notes
(39:36):
and it's just become like, uh,um, you know, a signature deal
for us.
Lori (39:41):
People always comment on the handwritten notes I just
think it's really important forpeople that it is a relationship
and we want people to know thatwe appreciate that they're
doing business with us.
So I feel like I can take thetime as long as I can take the
time to write the note, like Ilove writing the note that says
(40:01):
thanks for a second order.
Right, and I want people toknow that we know they're
getting a second order.
I just think it's important.
Tony (40:09):
Or thanks for your 20th order.
We got an order today fromsomeone.
I think it was their 109thorder.
Philip Pape (40:16):
Wow, is that like a record, or who did you?
Know, that's great.
That's great.
Um, yeah, no, this one saidPhillip, thanks again, Looking
forward to the podcast.
You know, just, it was great,you know it was nice.
Tony (40:28):
Um, I think that was me.
Philip Pape (40:31):
I haven't learned to distinguish your handwriting.
Yeah, yeah, you can tell, youcan see man it's handwriting.
Yeah, all right.
So I mean, what are you excitedabout now going into the future
?
Tony (40:42):
Well, this idea of scaling , of becoming a bigger brand, of
becoming the trusted proteinprovider I mean, again, I make
my own yogurt at home.
I love the idea of homemadeyogurt knowing exactly what's in
it, which is, you know,basically just one ingredient or
(41:05):
two ingredients milk and, anduh, the protein bacteria, if you
want to call it that.
You know, I just growing andbecoming.
You know, you know we havethese.
I have a grand vision, right, westarted as a mom and pop thing,
just so we can have somethingthat we trusted.
Um, and I want it to besomething, just so we can have
something that we trusted, and Iwant it to be something that
everyone can trust and somethingthat everyone can feel good
about.
I think that in the supplementspace, if you want to put us in
the supplement space, I think ifyou ask people what's the first
(41:28):
thing that comes to mind whenyou say supplements, they
probably say I don't reallytrust them, I don't know what
they are, what's in them,they're not regulated.
I don't you trust them.
I don't know what they are,what's in them, they're not
regulated, I don't know wherethey're coming from.
I want to be a trusted providerof good products for people and
then having that relationshipmindset as well, I think we can
take this and turn it into afairly large organization.
Philip Pape (41:54):
I mean there's tremendous value in that fairly
large organization.
I mean there's tremendous valuein that Is part of that
strategy connecting withathletes or influencers or
business owners or podcasters.
I'm just curious.
Tony (42:04):
Yeah, for sure We've.
You know, we've worked withathletes, We've worked with
Olympic weightlifters, we wereOlympic rower, we had an.
Olympic rower.
You know people are reachingout to us all the time from you
know, not with nil right.
A lot of college athletes arereaching out to us looking for
um products.
(42:25):
Um nascar reached out to usrecently.
So there's a lot of opportunityto partner, uh, with different
athletes.
But you know we're pretty picky.
We don't want just any athletejust for the name.
If we're going to partner withsomeone, we want it to be
someone who shared the samevalues as we do and can help us
(42:47):
grow the company, rather thanjust piggybacking on what we do.
Philip Pape (42:52):
It's a fascinating industry.
I don't envy you because Iunderstand how hard it is and it
sounds like quite the hustle,but you're also doing what you
can to really grow and make animpact.
I don't know if you follow MikeMatthews right.
He's the owner of LegionAthletics.
They're a massive, massivesupplement company and he just
ended his podcast after manyyears because his supplement
company is finding success now,after getting to $65 million of
(43:16):
revenue.
You know what I mean.
Like it took that long beforeyou said okay, now I'm
independent.
And I'm not trying to make youguys put pressure on you guys.
I just think it's a fascinatingindustry for sure.
Very much like most of retailin the food industry, I imagine,
when it comes to thecompetitiveness and the margins
and things like that.
Lori (43:32):
Yeah.
Tony (43:33):
We used to work with a food group where we had we were
with a granola company, a yogurtcompany, a chocolate company,
all different, all different, um, direct-to-consumer types of
food companies and all smallstartups and they were, all you
know, all had the same issues.
So, um, yeah, it's, it's thefood industry, the supplement,
(43:56):
the protein.
They're very competitive,difficult businesses to survive
in.
Philip Pape (44:02):
I feel like you guys should be in Whole Foods,
you know, but I'm sure you hearthat a lot because that's a hard
business to get into.
Lori (44:07):
Yeah, and then there's and again, it's what you said, so
we're in our the local, all theyou know Carol Luzzi's around
here, big Y right.
Tony (44:17):
Yeah, we have a handful of local markets that we service
here in western Connecticut.
We decided not to expand thatas much and really focus more on
the direct-to-consumer throughour website, so we can just
reach more people.
Lori (44:37):
Yeah, higher margins, more scale.
Yeah, there's also the issue ofwe have a nine-month shelf life
because it's naturalingredients.
So if we try to do somethinglike a whole foods, it's just
constantly we'd be having toreplace bars if they didn't sell
out or whatever and, like yousaid, the, the margins and what
they want and you know how muchthey want to pay for something.
(44:59):
So, yeah, yeah, it just doesn'twork.
Philip Pape (45:03):
That's important Sticking to the values.
That's why.
That's why we buy the product.
So is there anything else, aswe wrap up, that you wish I had
asked that we didn't cover?
Lori (45:12):
I don't think so.
No, I can't think of anything.
Tony (45:20):
So, from your perspective, as someone who eats the bars,
who understands the ingredients,how would you describe this to
one of your clients?
How would you describe thebenefits of the ingredients, and
not so much the taste of thebar, but the benefits of the
ingredients, and not so much thetaste of the bar but the
benefits of the ingredients?
Philip Pape (45:38):
Well, I do lead from the taste, though.
Yeah, I mean I mean most, mostfolks I work with or listen to
podcasts.
You know they have bodycomposition goals, athletic
goals, performance goals and, um, pretty much understand energy,
balance and macros, or they'relearning about it.
So I'm going to start there andsay you know, you need protein
supplementation Great bar forthat.
(46:00):
It has a balance.
That a macro is great for that.
But it also is a source ofenergy.
As far as the ingredients, well,and it tastes great that you
guys can't discount that, let metell you.
And then, as far as ingredients, for sure, like I always
struggle to find, I don't evenuse the word clean.
I know you guys use it.
That's just me.
I just use like whole foods,like I almost think of this as a
whole foods bar.
You know what I mean.
(46:20):
Like a protein bar, energy bar.
A lot of people are looking forthat, and with 10, 20% of your
diet made up of some sort ofindulgences, you're probably
going to spend your processedfood budget on pizzas or donuts
or something like that, right?
Tony (46:36):
So we do pizza.
Philip Pape (46:38):
Yeah, you know, I mean, you know whatever, and so
this fits squarely in the.
This is nutrient dense, it's,it's delicious, it's got fiber
and it could actually fit inthat side of the equation rather
than be considered likeprocessed food.
So I think that's adifferentiator for you guys for
sure.
Yeah, I don't know if that wasa good explanation, think that's
a differentiator for you guysfor sure.
Lori (46:59):
Yeah, I don't know if that was a good explanation, but
that's what comes to mind.
Tony (47:02):
Yeah, yeah, it's good, thank you.
And we're so busy talking aboutthe bar all the times ourselves
.
It's nice to hear what otherpeople think about it,
especially people in theindustry.
You know, experts like you,like yourself.
Philip Pape (47:09):
Yeah, it's hard to find when people say okay.
I actually rely on clients andgroup members, people in the
Facebook group, to kind of tellme what are you finding out
there in the world?
That's what you consider cleanor minimal, and usually it's
fewer ingredients.
Lori (47:23):
Yeah, things you can pronounce.
Philip Pape (47:24):
Things you can pronounce.
Tony (47:26):
Things you can find in your pantry.
Philip Pape (47:27):
Yeah, it does it Pretty much.
Most people will find that ittastes good when it's like that,
in other words, like a bar likethis.
Unless you don't like aningredient, you're going to find
that it tastes good, whereasyou find that the bars with
artificial sweeteners and sugar,alcohols and what there's
always some segment that saylike something's off Taste
McTallick does something when Igo to the bathroom.
No thanks, right.
So you know.
(47:49):
And again, I eat those bars.
Other people do as well, we all.
We're not.
I don't want you to say perfectCause there's, there's no such
thing.
Tony (48:01):
We're not all eating a hundred percent whole foods, but
this is definitely a greatoption in my opinion.
Yeah, I appreciate that, soagain, and again for the
listeners I've.
Philip Pape (48:05):
I invited them on.
So this is not like aninfomercial paid, nothing like
that.
I'm paying them for the barsand there's no affiliate thing,
nothing like that, and I'm happyto do it and I hope everyone
looks you guys up and buys thebars.
So what is the best way to dothat?
Tony (48:18):
Let's check out our website muscleupbarscom.
It's, you know, really consumerfriendly website.
We have right on the front pagethe homepage.
If you don't want to dig in,you know it's all the different
pages behind.
You can buy our three box pack,which is two boxes of peanut
butter and one box of chocolatechip.
You get three boxes.
(48:38):
Or, if you just want to try thebars, we also have a what's
called a score for a four packsampler right on the homepage.
Just hit the buy button.
You don't have to dig throughthe website to find that.
So you want to try and get thefour pack.
If you want to jump right in,there's a three pack Well, three
boxes which is 36 bars, righton the homepage.
(48:58):
And you know we have blogs, wehave nutritional information.
If you want to check out ourlabel, our nutritional label,
it's in there on every productpage.
So all the information, we'revery transparent.
Everything's out there.
A lot of times when you go to aprotein bar webpage which I do
a lot to look for theingredients, I can't find them.
Really have to dig for them.
Right?
(49:18):
Ours are right there, you know.
Read the label.
It's there for you to read andif you like what you see.
Give them a try.
Phillip believes they tastegood.
I think they taste good.
Lori (49:31):
And I think most people think they do.
I do also want to say that wedo wholesale.
So if anybody's listening andthey have a gym or whatever a
small store, we do wholesale.
Tony (49:41):
We sell to gas.
We don't promote to the gasstations but we have gas station
scholars who want to sell ourbars.
We ship bars out to a gasstation in New Jersey and
Arizona recently.
So yeah, we do wholesale ondirect to consumer on our
website yeah, love it.
Philip Pape (50:00):
I mean, yeah, like you said, there's a, there's a
comparison table there, there'sa whole blog reviews, all of
that stuff, amazing.
Tony (50:07):
All right, muscle at barscom, I'll throw it in there
which we try to be better aboutdoing, and we're putting some
fun posts up on instagram.
Yep bars, you can find us thereas well.
Philip Pape (50:15):
Cool, I'll put the links in the show notes which we
try to be better about doing,and we're putting some fun posts
up on Instagram.
Yep, you can find us there aswell.
Cool, I'll put the links in theshow notes and thanks so much
for doing this.
It's been a pleasure to meetyou guys in person again, I
think again and um, share yourstory and talk about this, this
awesome food product that is, uh, going to help you make gains
while sticking to good qualityingredients and enjoying a snack
(50:36):
that really does taste great.
Thanks, Thanks, guys.
Tony (50:40):
We appreciate you inviting us.
Thank you, and I appreciate theopportunity to chat with your
listeners.
Philip Pape (50:46):
Thanks for coming on.
Tony (50:47):
Thanks, bill, appreciate it.
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