Katie Forrest and Taylor Collins were once proud vegans. Now they make snack bars made of meat.
It's a surprising transformation for the young entrepreneurial husband and wife--but also a lucrative one. “Back in 2013, this whole Paleo primal movement was very young and niche,” says Collins, 32. “But whatever people called it, they were going into clean protein, low carb, low sugar food. We saw an amazing opportunity.”
That opportunity: a meat bar. That is, a jerky/sausage-like cooked meat in an energy bar form factor. It comes in flavors ranging from Bison Bacon Cranberry to Chicken Sesame BBQ to Lamb Currant Mint. They sound odd, even unappetizing, but the product stands out to customers. Since Forrest and Collins launched Epic Bar in 2013, they’ve seen tremendous growth. In 2014, Epic Bar's first full year of operation, they did $6.8 million in sales. They project revenue to nearly triple to $20 million in 2015.
The story of Epic is unique, but it's also part of a larger trend. The granola bar was once king of snacks for the active, health-conscious crowd. No longer. Over the last few years, American food fads have shifted away from carbohydrates and sugars (not to mention the scary gluten) toward protein. In that transition, meaty snacks like beef jerky are ascendant. But despite jerky’s on-the-go reputation, few foods are as convenient for active snacking as the individually-wrapped energy bar.
An assortment of Epic Bar's various meats and flavors.
That’s where Forrest and Collins come in. The active couple, who competed at triathalons and endurance cycling races, once fueled their outdoor adventures with a completely vegan diet. They were such staunch believers that their first food startup (founded in 2010), Thunderbird Energetica, made organic, vegan, raw energy bars.
It was a good business—one they took nationally with Whole Foods in 2011. But Collins and Forrest soon had a revelation. Personally, they decided to add meat back to their diet. Professionally, they realized meat was the future, and a "meat bar" could be a viable product. That no one had ever done it before only made the concept more attractive to them.
“One of the things we were frustrated with on Thunderbird bars was explaining what made them different,” says Forrest, 29. “With a meat bar—Bam, it’s different. No questions like ‘How is this different than a Luna Bar?’ It’s not jerky; it’s something you can throw into your pocket.”
Clearly, it’s a hit for Forrest and Collins, who met during college at the University of Texas at Austin. Neither of them studied business. (Collins’ majored in sports science, then added a master’s degree in physical therapy, while Forrest studied psychology and earned her master’s in women’s studies.) But they were always entrepreneurial.
While in school they started their first company, a commercial recycling business. “When people are in college, they’re super idealistic and into saving the planet,” says Collins. “In Austin, we had great residential recycling, but nothing commercial.”
Forrest and Collins operated the business for five years, which at its peak serviced 30 corporate accounts. They picked up trash themselves—one 10-hour day per week of backbreaking, smelly labor. “It was very profitable, but also incredibly dirty, filthy work” Collins says. The business enabled their intense outdoor sports hobbies.
Thunderbird began out of those hobbies, as they tried to make a better (raw, organic, vegan) energy bar. Their tastes were eclectic. For example, the “Lover Bar” was composed entirely of supposedly aphrodisiac ingredients. Today, the couple looks back and wonders how that business succeeded at all. “We never knew what we were getting into, so many of our decisions were made out of naiveté,” says Forrest. “We could have gone down in flames 1000 times,” adds Collins.
They bootstrapped from friends and family, surviving costly missteps on the manufacturing side, including Collins blowing his life savings on the first run of product wrappers, which turned out blurry and pixelated. Luckily, a Whole Foods employee stumbled onto the Thunderbird bars in a local coffee shop. Soon after, Forrest and Collins were invited to meet with the grocer's regional distribution team. The couple showed up in flip flops and jean shorts. “They opened by asking us, ‘How big do you want to take this?’ We had never thought about it,” says Collins.
Scaling up that business taught them lessons they applied to Epic. “Thunderbird was totally amateur hour, but it helped us launch Epic like rocket fuel,” says Collins. Yet even after going through an accelerator program in 2013, they hesitated to take money from what Collins calls a room full of “douche investors” dressed in suits. “No one understood our business,” he says. “They were super pumped on EBITDA and exit strategy. A day later, we realized we weren’t going to take money from people like that.”
Instead, they accepted $750,000 from a single angel investor who had called them to rave about eating a Thunderbird bar. That money went directly into production in Austin. As ex-vegans cooking meat, they had a lot to learn. “Boiling ground meat and stuff, it was super gross,” say Collins. But their inexperience also helped them experiment. “We had been vegan for such a long time that we had to teach ourselves how to use meat,” says Forrest. “But we didn’t have any preconceived notions about what meat couldn’t do. Why not put meat in a bar?”
Today, Epic is expanding its product offerings, adding a line of jerky called "Bites" and a series called "Hunt & Harvest Mix"--a meat, berry, nut, and seed take on the typically cab-heavy trail mix. Packaging for each one prominently features the primary animal protein source.
Epic Bar's new line of "Hunt & Harvest" protein-based trail mixes.
That's important because the market for their breakthrough product has gotten more crowded. Forrest and Collins now see half a dozen other meat bar companies popping up, and premium jerky-maker Krave (bought earlier this year by Hershey) announced it will be launching its own version. For now, the couple isn’t worried about competition—or that the protein craze may fade.
“We know better than most how fast the food industry changes,” says Forrest. “But we as human beings have been consuming animal proteins since the beginning of time. We don’t consider meat consumption a fad.”
