Is THIS the Ideal Protein Bar for Lifters and Athletes? | Ep 331
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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
Episode resources:
Website: muscleupbars.com
Instagram: @muscleupbars
How to Choose a Protein Bar That Actually Supports Your Training Goals
Protein bars are everywhere, and for good reason. They’re convenient, portable, and (sometimes) tasty. But if you’re trying to build muscle, improve body composition, or just hit your protein targets consistently, not every bar is going to be the best tool for the job. Some are closer to candy. Others lean ultra-high protein but sacrifice taste and digestibility. So how do you choose the ones that actually support your training goals?
In this episode of Wits & Weights, I talked with two athletes-turned-entrepreneurs who created a bar they couldn’t find in stores… one focused on quality protein, balanced macros, and real-food ingredients. While their approach may not be for everyone, it sparked a broader conversation about how to evaluate the bars you keep in your pantry.
Why the Protein to Sugar Ratio Still Matters
If you’re using a bar to support muscle building or recovery, protein needs to be the star. One quick metric I like to use: does it have at least twice as much protein as sugar?
For example, the Muscle Up Bar we discussed has 15g protein and 7g sugar, which fits that guideline nicely. This isn’t about demonizing sugar. Some quick carbs can be helpful depending on the context. But if a “protein” bar has more sugar than protein, it may not be the most efficient tool for fueling your goals.
Whole Food Ingredients Aren’t Better, But They May Feel Better
Some folks prefer bars with minimal ingredients because they tend to sit better digestively, especially pre-workout. In this case, the base is made with things like sweet potato, almond flour, and coconut nectar, which gives it a subtly sweet, almost cookie-dough-like texture.
That doesn’t mean bars with sugar alcohols or artificial flavors are bad. I still eat plenty of those, and they can absolutely fit into a flexible diet. But if you’ve ever noticed that some bars leave you feeling bloated or overly full, it might be worth experimenting with options that lean more toward real-food ingredients and simpler macros.
Why Whey Protein Still Reigns Supreme
From a quality standpoint, whey protein concentrate remains one of the best options for building muscle. It’s complete, easily digested, and high in leucine. Some bars blend multiple protein sources to increase the grams per serving, which can work well depending on the goal, but it’s worth paying attention to how your body responds to different protein types.
Some brands also lean heavily on collagen or plant-based sources. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but it’s something to be aware of if you’re counting on the bar as a primary source of complete protein.
Texture, Flavor, and the “Real Food” Experience
One thing that stood out in this conversation was how much texture can impact enjoyment and satiety. If a bar feels like dense taffy or melts into a chalky paste, it might be hard to stick with consistently. A more natural texture, like the soft, slightly grainy bite you get from almond flour and cacao nibs, can make it feel closer to eating real food than a supplement.
And yes, flavor still matters. You don’t need every bar to taste like birthday cake, but if it’s a chore to eat, it’s not going to become a regular part of your routine.
When (and Why) to Use Protein Bars
Here’s how I like to use protein bars in a flexible diet:
As a pre-workout snack when I’m short on time
As a midday option when I’m behind on protein
As a dessert replacement when I want something sweet but still want to hit my macros
Occasionally split in half to keep calories lower while staying full
Could you get the same protein from whole foods? Sure. But sometimes convenience wins. The key is knowing what you’re getting and how it fits into your overall nutrition plan.
Ingredient Preferences Are Personal, So Let the Goals Guide You
Some people prefer to avoid artificial sweeteners, colors, or gums. Others don’t mind them at all, especially if it means more flavor or lower calories. There’s no one right answer here. But it’s worth knowing what’s in your food, how it affects you, and whether it supports your goals.
If a bar keeps you full, helps you hit your protein, and you enjoy it enough to eat it regularly, that’s a win.
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Transcript
Philip Pape: 0:01
If you're trying to build muscle and build that strong, lean physique, protein bars can be a hugely convenient tool in your nutrition arsenal. But there are tons of options on the market, so how do you choose ones that actually support your training goals as well as your values? Today I'm talking to two athletes who turned their quest for better nutrition, a better protein bar, into a business. You'll discover the science behind protein quality and absorption, why thoughtful ingredients and sources matter for performance, and how to evaluate macro ratios to align with your fitness goals. You're going to walk away understanding how to make more informed choices about the protein supplements you use to fuel your training and recovery and recovery. Welcome to Wits and Weights, the show that helps you build a strong, healthy physique using evidence, engineering and efficiency. I'm your host, philip Pape, and today's going to be a lot of fun because we are discussing protein bars and the supplementation industry. We're talking ingredients, macros, quality, flavor, how to choose all of it, and my guests today are Tony and Lori, the founders of Muscle Up Bars right here in Connecticut.
Philip Pape: 1:14
I am a personal consumer of their bars I just crushed one chocolate chip right before this interview and I've been a customer since pretty much, I think the first year they launched, and Tony is a certified financial planner by day. He's a dedicated CrossFit athlete, an Olympic lifter in his free time, and Lori is a doctor of audiology who's also a certified personal trainer, or was a certified personal trainer, is currently a coach, and together they've created protein bars designed with athletes and lifters in mind that are focused on the optimal macro ratios, I'll say, but also, and maybe more importantly, quality ingredients, and, from my personal experience, they're very delicious and my wife and kids agree as well. So today we're going to get into that. We're going to discuss the science behind effective protein supplements, how to evaluate ingredient quality when you're looking at a label because this is the bar for people who read labels and some tips to incorporate convenient foods like protein bars into your diet. Enough talking, tony, lori. Welcome to the show.
Tony: 2:11
Thank you.
Philip Pape: 2:12
Thanks for having us. All right, I hope I got everything right in the intro, but I just want to let people get to know you and really get to the root of the story behind your success and the bar that you create. What made you think way back when, when we can make a better protein bar there's so many on the market, but we can do something different.
Tony: 2:29
Well, I think it all started out of frustration. I'm a little bit picky about what I eat and I like to read labels, even going back a number of years. So I couldn't find a bar that I liked because I was reading the labels and I was finding either too much sugar or too many chemicals or a lot of weird ingredients. So you know, I just knew I had this, this frustration about finding one that I liked. So I literally one night had a dream that I was making protein bars in my kitchen with the ingredients 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 I saw all the ingredients and she said that's weird.
Lori: 3:20
Yeah.
Tony: 3:21
I said, yeah, I don't know why I'm having this dream, but I couldn't get the idea out of my head and I literally saw all the ingredients and I saw myself making it. So after about a month of thinking about it, I said you know what? I'm just going to try this. And I tried the recipe that I dreamt of, with the sweet potatoes and the whey powder and the almond flour, and threw some bars together and they tasted delicious. I brought them to our local CrossFit gym for people to try and they said these are great. Where'd you get them? I said, well, I made them at home 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 I can make a good bar. I made one first try. Maybe we can turn this into a little business. And we didn't really have any aspirations about becoming a big brand or anything. We just really I want bars for myself that I was comfortable eating.
Philip Pape: 4:13
Yeah, so I'm curious more about that, because I don't know if you're naturally impulsive and just the type of person just does something, or this was very different for you. Start there, because that's the first question.
Tony: 4:24
I don't know. Am I impulsive? I do. I like to do things. I like to cook, like to tinker in the kitchen, I like to do projects. I'm a bit of a do-it-yourselfer and I do like to cook. So I think all that together just spurred me on and gave me the inspiration to give it a try. Why not try it?
Philip Pape: 4:44
So I mean sweet potato. We can get into some of the ingredients that are fairly unique and, I'll say, unusual. As far as protein bars go, and some of the things I love about it, Was there like one thing you said look, no protein bar that I ever eat has this. Was it the taste? Was it the ingredients? What was it for you?
Lori: 5:00
Well, most of the protein bars that were out there, you know they, oh, this is great protein. And we'd look at the back and it would really be a candy bar. There would be more sugar than protein. At the time we were really involved in CrossFit and sweet potato and protein was just what we ate. So we didn't see any other bars out there that had sweet potato and we thought this is a great binder, a great carb. I mean, it's nature's best carbohydrate, I think. So there was nothing like that and we decided that we wanted to always have at least twice as much protein than sugar, and if there was any sugar, it was going to come from something natural. But yeah, there just wasn't anything out there like that. And bad ingredients, bad taste a lot of sugar.
Tony: 5:52
I don't know if we're trying to be different with the sweet potato. It was just the magic ingredient that allowed us to have some natural sweetness without adding a lot of sugar and without having to use sugar substitutes, without having to use sugar alcohols. A lot of bars have sugar alcohols. In fact, when we, when we found a manufacturer to make the bars for us because we couldn't do mass production in our little kitchen we told them what we wanted and they came back with us to us with a recipe that had all kinds of fake sweeteners in it and we said what is this stuff? Why? Why is this in here? Do we have to have this? They said, no, you don't have to have it. It's just the way we do things.
Tony: 6:31
It was for everybody else yeah and we said laurie kept saying, well, take this out, take that out. We went through probably a dozen different recipes, eliminating, yeah, ingredients that the manufacturer wanted us to put in but we didn't want, and we ended up with something that's just very simple, minimal number of ingredients. It's not super sweet, which I think most consumers are used to, it's just naturally lightly sweet, and that's what we wanted. It's not a dessert, it's a protein bar.
Philip Pape: 7:04
Oh yeah, but you can eat this for dessert, let me tell you. Let me tell you Okay. So let me give my personal thing, cause this is just so the listener knows. I invited Tony and Lori on. I love the protein bars. They always send these really sweet, like personal notes with their packages. There was actually a little I don't know if it was a manufacturing defect or somebody had opened the package, it doesn't matter and they sent me a new box because there was one small bar in there that was a little bit off and that's like the kind of stuff that good business owners do.
Philip Pape: 7:33
But I wanted to bring you on because literally, the bar itself is just so tasty. It does have a great sweetness. My kids will say you know, it tastes like real food. It doesn't taste chemically and I'll admit I have. I have six different brands of protein bars in my pantry and I'm sure a lot of your customers do, because they.
Philip Pape: 7:51
It depends on what you're looking for. Are you trying to get super protein dense? Are you trying to have you know, very sugary candy bar style? You know we do it right, but but 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 it reminds me you talked about the sweet potato. I used to be big into paleo. Now I have more flexible diet but and CrossFit as well. I was in CrossFit and I. One of my favorite recipes was a pumpkin pie type custard. We did them in these ramekins and pumpkin puree was the base. It wasn't the sugary pumpkin pie mix, it was just pumpkin puree and it's like my wife makes butternut squash, doesn't have to add much to it, not even add butter, and it just has a great taste. So I'm just kind of promoting you guys and the bar for making that choice, even if it was unintentional. And why don't more? Why don't more bars have these kinds of ingredients? Is it the taste profile? Is it cheaper?
Lori: 8:42
they didn't even have it. Yeah, they had to order it in for us. You know here this was this manufacturer that all they do was make bars.
Tony: 8:50
So they had never heard of it. They had to source it for us specifically. As far as we know, no one else uses it at this point. I don't know why, because to us it just seemed to make a lot of sense. I'm always staying on top of what's new in the bar market. As a matter of fact, I have a couple of our competitor bars right here.
Philip Pape: 9:07
Oh, I see David there. I know you posted about David, yeah, yeah, and even today.
Tony: 9:11
I mean, these are relatively new to the marketplace and if you look at the ingredients list they are loaded with all kinds of different weird sweeteners.
Lori: 9:20
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: 9:28
Yeah, yeah, I wouldn't want to eat before you work out hey, what was popular when yours came out?
Philip Pape: 9:33
it was quest bars, right wasn't that rx bars and quest has like definitely gives people some digestive issues right.
Tony: 9:40
Rx bars were interesting because they didn't have the sugar alcohol. But when you look at the sugar to protein ratio, they have more sugar than protein yeah, yeah, you're right.
Philip Pape: 9:51
They call them a protein. That's the other thing is you call it a protein bar. It's got to have at least at least 10 grams of protein, in my opinion, if it has more sugar than protein.
Tony: 9:59
To me that's a candy bar, it's not a protein bar. So we want, we wanted our ratio to be at least twice as much protein as sugar, and the sugar has to be natural and just a light, light amount just to make it 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 your diet toward mostly whole foods with some indulgences in there. You generally, in my experience, your sweet tooth gets resensitized when you're eating more fruit and when you're eating more whole foods and sweet potato, like you said. So it actually does taste, to my opinion, rather sweet in a good way, like in a good natural way, or you could eat it for dessert, just so people know. This one bar, at least what I have a chocolate chip. It's 230 calories. It's 12 grams of fat, including only three grams saturated. It is 22 grams of carbs and 3 of those are fiber, probably from the sweet potato, and maybe I think you might add some probiotics or something else that has fiber. We can talk about it. And then 7 grams of sugar, but only 4 grams added. So that's mostly from the fruit right 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, I used to drink that stuff and 15 grams of protein, so that, like the, I was teasing everybody. How much protein does it have? So, while there are bars that have like a lot more density of protein, I would call this a more balanced, good source of, like overall energy and that's a good thing. I think that's a good thing. So, but the two to one protein to 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 a yogurt that was on the market um cities and they used to promote that when it was right on top. I think they ended up having to change that. Maybe someone else had copyrighted that, but it just really made me think that's a good way of doing things. We need to have at least twice as much protein than sugar. If we could have the sugar even lower, we would, but we really hate to change anything because they are super delicious and it is natural sugar when we first made the bar, my number one priority was good ingredients and clean.
Tony: 12:17
My priority wasn't a great taste, right? So I said, even if the sugar is low, if it doesn't taste great, I'm gonna eat it because it's good and it has good ingredients. Turns out they they taste great and they have good ingredients as well. But we were really trying to push 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 how consumers 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 important what are the ingredients and what are the macros? That's the taste good, but it has to have good macros first.
Lori: 12:54
They definitely do. I mean this one here is birthday 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 between those 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 the go. You know, at the time I was running around seeing clients coaching at different gyms and you know, when you stop somewhere you're starving because you've been going all day long. What are you going to grab? If you walk in a convenience store, it's going to have all the sugar, alcohols and all that. That was another reason we just needed something.
Tony: 13:48
That was good if we had to grab and go yeah, and 100 when you're starving, I mean you're going to grab whatever you can and we had young kids that we were taking to sporting events and the kids, you know, needed something quick and you don't want to feel guilty as a parent giving your kids something that's not healthy, you know. So we have this as an option for our kids as well. And, like you said, kids it's amazing. Kids love these bars. We have kids two years old, five years old, right, and the parents have to hide the bars from 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, but that's just. I'm a huge chocolate fiend and just having it broken up by that occasional chip, that surprises you, 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 to texture. We wanted a bar that had texture. So you know, you've got the cacao nibs, you've got the chunks of chocolate, all that. It's just like a nice little surprise each time you take a bite.
Philip Pape: 14:47
It is, it is. And again, I like people are probably listening like wow, you're going to have a whole episode about protein bars but we're going to get into some more of the ingredients and science behind it. But sometimes when you find something, it's just unique. The texture is not to be underrated. It's like how do I describe it? It's got a little bit of um I don't want to say graininess, cause that sounds bad. It's like uh. It's like uh how do I? How do I describe it? Like almost like cookie dough, a little bit texture right when there's a little bit of roughness in there and it feels good on your tongue, and then it's smooth at the same time.
Philip Pape: 15:17
You know what I mean yeah, and it sort of melts in your mouth.
Tony: 15:20
Yes, texture mouth. Yes, texture is really important when it comes to food. People don't realize, but you know, even when you're eating a meal, texture in a restaurant is very 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 oil and some of the things in there. Give it that mouthfeel. Are there like? When we look at some of these separate things, we some of these strike me as back in the day with keto and paleo. When I see MCT oil, for example, is that bulletproof coffee right, which I don't do that anymore, but still is it a hangover from that, or is there a benefit to it?
Lori: 15:56
It is because that's how we started. We really started thinking about everything in 2015, 16. That was still really big Right. So you know that helped us kind of craft it in the beginning and then, like I said, we hate to 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 generally thinking protein bar, so what does it have? And it's just whey protein and whey protein concentrate. Is there anything you look for there in terms of sourcing, in terms of how it's filtered or processed, 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 to make sure they're sourcing good, clean ingredients for us. We wanted a whey protein bar. A lot of bars will use whey protein but then supplement with other proteins egg whites or soy or pea. They try to get the protein numbers up, but correct me if I'm wrong. I believe whey is a full protein.
Philip Pape: 17:02
It's complete protein. It's the highest quality in terms of like leucine content.
Tony: 17:05
Yeah, Right, so we can maybe on our label, boost our protein gram number up by adding some 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 mean sometimes it's in the form of gelatin, which makes sense. You might even have I don't know if you have gelatin, but you don't have gelatin. No, gelatin, I mean that I can get it, I can get as a binding or whatever. But when they just add collagen to get the numbers up, I'm like, oh, collagen is like two amino acids, you know. So that's good, okay. So I mean some of the evidence is still out on whether any of that is is, um, actually correlated. I do know collagen is good for joint health and connective tissue, with its specific type, which if you don't have that type in your bar, it's still not that it's kind of useless. Go back to the sweet potato. Are there specific benefits? You like to tout about having that in there, like the fiber or the nutrients or anything like that.
Tony: 17:57
Again, we didn't put the sweet potato in.
Lori: 18:00
On purpose. On purpose because we thought it 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 research we 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 carb and vegetable to eat. It works really well in our bar. You know, there's really no more science behind it than that.
Philip Pape: 18:25
Yeah, yeah. And you know, when I think of potatoes and sweet potatoes, there's the carb sources, the fiber, 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 I don't want people to think that the bars even taste like sweet potatoes.
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's psychological.
Tony: 18:50
And we also go back and forth on should we be promoting the sweet potato or not? Because you have people like Louie, who don't like sweet potatoes, and say I don't want that bar because I don't want something that's going to taste like sweet potato. Interesting, yeah, so tastes like sweet potato. Uh, interesting, yeah, so it's. It's sort of a catch-22. It's, you know, adds a lot of positives to the bar but also may turn some people away, which we don't want to do. But again, it doesn't. You can, you can vouch for this you 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 right yeah you know.
Philip Pape: 19:22
so if you don't like dates, you're not gonna going to like it, all right. So I know your protein sources or protein types have changed over time. I mean, how does the market drive some of your decisions? I know you mentioned the David Barr. Maybe you didn't mention it, but it was. You were showing it. I don't know if you like to mention competitors, but everybody knows, and they recently changed, I think they went from some sort of natural to artificial sweetener in there, which, again, as part of your overall diet, you can have a Diet Coke, you can have this and that, but if you're going to be pounding protein bars a lot, you may want different ingredients, especially when they don't taste great. So how does the market drive these decisions for you?
Lori: 19:58
Yeah, I'm going to be perfectly honest. I mean, for us we've kind of steadfast 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, so we'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're trying to influence the market, maybe change the market and upend the market and be a little bit of a disruptor in the bar market.
Tony: 20:32
I think we're in a position where we're trying to influence the market, maybe change the market and upend the market and be a little bit of a disruptor in the bar market. I think we've been sort of ahead of the whole make America healthy again movement. I think people are starting to catch up with us. So, rather than adjusting to what the market wants, we're trying to educate the market on what they should be eating. So we do funny little posts. We take some shots at the other bars that are out there because we read the ingredients and unfortunately we know that a lot of people don't turn the bar over and read what's on the back. They read what's on the front of the label. So we're out there trying to educate the marketplace and drag people along with us, and I think educating a marketplace is difficult and it takes a lot of time, 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 whale toward doing that. But yeah, so that's interesting. You met, yeah, you mentioned the mom movement and the politics of it. I just spoke to a an alcohol-free lifestyle gentleman, james Swanick uh, who probably be on the show right before, right after, this episode, and, um, he's talking about how alcohol free has is becoming more and more acceptable. Right, and I do see a healthy lifestyle and lifting weights and quality food. It's great Like that's a wonderful move direction that we're going in.
Tony: 21:48
Yeah, it is. Yeah, we haven't gone an alcohol 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 actually incorporate these, either yourself or like your typical customer? I'm sure you post these on stories too, but how do people incorporate them in their, their diet?
Tony: 22:09
Well, again, when I started doing this and incorporate them in their diet Again, when I started doing this, I was working in an office nine to five. I'd have lunch at noon, I worked till five-ish, drive an hour home, go to the gym at six or 6.30. That's six hours since I had anything to eat and I would always stop and say I need something in my stomach before I work out and I'd go to the convenience store, the CVS, the gas station, where I'm trying to find something quick to eat and that's where my frustration just kept building. So for me, you know I eat one if I've worked all day on my way to the gym, so I have some energy to work out. Lori, you might use them a little 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 lot of time to make breakfast, so I had her on the way to work. Once I got to work I was able to 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 half before, like a lifting session, kind of halfway through the session, eat the other half Right To keep myself going, but because they're filling. But you know when, when you're lifting heavy, you want that.
Tony: 23:25
So I think you know people can eat them as a quick, convenient source of energy for working out, but they're also either protein're protein bars, right, so we are. We're always looking to supplement our protein. We can never get all the protein that we need. So for me, you know, midday snack, if I'm looking for something to grab real quick while I'm working, you know I'll grab a protein bar, cause I know I need extra protein because I'm not getting all the protein.
Philip Pape: 23:49
Love it, okay, yeah. No, I just want to give people options. I mean pre-post-workout convenience option you talked about the convenience store option 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 could maybe.
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 a third 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 just on the go with the kids right and you know, a lot of people aren'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 drive you crazy, put in a ziploc and off. I'd go and just munch on my chicken breast, you know, um, but a lot of people don't want to do that. Um, yeah.
Philip Pape: 24:39
So what about adding to recipes? Do you guys? I like I haven't looked too into it. I'm not a big recipe guy. There's some people, including someone on my team she's the opposite. She like loves planning her whole week out with like fancy recipes. I opposite, she like loves planning her whole week out with like fancy recipes. I have a ninja creamy, though I could see potentially adding this somehow. But uh like, maybe as the thing the mix in afterward. 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 had someone that took little pieces and put them in her oven and turn them into little cookies. You know, just kind of melts it all a little bit, yeah, but we used to do that with quest bars cause they turned into cardboard and you have to stick them in the microwave.
Tony: 25:19
Yeah yeah, I don't know. I've actually ever eaten a quest 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 it was. It was. You didn't have a lot of options back then. Yeah, exactly, so now we've got options. So you guys are. Obviously. You have day jobs, and this is not the only thing you do. How does that work? Just give us a peek into your life.
Tony: 25:41
How does it work? It's pretty difficult. We're up early in the morning writing notes and fulfilling orders. We're up late at night preparing for orders for the next day. Um, I was out at lunchtime, um, restocking our inventory, you know. So it's wherever we can squeeze in it was. You know, it started off as sort of a um, a weekend side gig, but it's, it's almost become a second job. Um, yeah, so you know we we definitely have to squeeze it in where we can. I work from home so I have a little bit more flexibility. But, yeah, we're in the we're making it work.
Tony: 26:18
We're making it work, yeah.
Philip Pape: 26:20
Yeah. So I hope people listening try these out. Just buy a few boxes. Try them out because you won't be 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 at bringing on some investors, so I'm putting some decks together. What's interesting about our bar is that if you come back for a second order means you like the first order. You come back for a second order. The average person buys nine times.
Philip Pape: 26:49
Awesome, awesome. They do that on like a subscription. The average person buys three times because they Awesome. They do that on like a subscription.
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 return customer rate. Our retention rate is super. We have a subscription program. We have a lot of clients on subscription where they give us a box or two or three automatically every month. That's a great piece of business for us and really convenient for the consumers.
Philip Pape: 27:18
So with the investors, are you looking to scale or go to physical locations, things like that?
Tony: 27:24
We're looking to scale. I mean, we sell bars all over the country. We've hit every one of the 50 states and we've also hit puerto rico, uh, yeah, um, and hawaii. It's kind of one of the 50 states.
Tony: 27:39
We don't ship outside of the united states at this point because of sorry, friends in australia yeah, just to get them we have people asking from canada all the time we get them in canada. We have people from Europe asking if they can get them in Europe. So we haven't gone that route yet, but we're looking to scale the business. The thing about the protein bar business 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 as competitive as possible, and the only way to make a real living off of this is to scale and drive your unit costs down. So that's our next move, I think.
Philip Pape: 28:18
Yeah, and I don't know how price sensitive I am. I definitely shop around for a lot of things, but I will say this is one of those that I've subscribed to and I honestly didn't care what the price was because I love them so much, so that's a great product to have. Seriously, because there are some things I'm like do I still need this? Oh, and the price just went up again. Uh, yeah, I'm going to put you on the spot a little bit, but what's like the biggest complaint you get, even today that maybe you're working on what it what keeps you up at night that you're trying to improve? Complaint from customers or Customers or, yeah, customers.
Tony: 28:49
We don't get any. Okay, okay, every once in a while, like you said earlier, maybe someone gets a bar where the wrapper is open, so the bar dried out. That's a manufacturing thing or a wrapper, so we'll replace the bars. Someone got like a half a bar for some reason in their box, so we send them a new box of bars. No one ever complains about the taste, the, the, uh it's very it's very rare.
Lori: 29:15
I think we could. Since 2016, we definitely could count on just one hand how many like low star reviews we've gotten, and when we get them, we actually put them on our instagram 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 bars don'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 peanut butter, 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 make something 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 on that just real quickly, because I suspect it's the fat that's giving the most calorie impact, right, because fat's so dense. Is that something you've thought 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% of your day. So guess what, folks? You get the rest of the day to choose 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 are eating real foods the rest of the day. So you know, and you're going to 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, protein powders, you know things like that like, unless you're going to 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 protein and you know I need to get a lot of it every day, so why not have something that has more protein than other things and it happens to be great in all these other ways? I mean, that's just kind of my logic on it, right, yeah, I agree.
Philip Pape: 31:38
Okay, so, and we talked about the consumer awareness, about ingredient quality. I mean, how do you think that's going to? I know you're trying to inform the market, but then you're also trying to meet the market where it's evolving. What are, like, the top two or three things? Are they related to specific ingredients, like when people got all upset about red dyes for a while and, of course, seed oils has always been a villain and things like that. Is it that or is it more just general quality?
Tony: 31:59
Well, we've never had any of those things in our products, so we never had to worry about those things. But as those become more prevalent in the news, then we'll promote those as well. So we did a post recently about the birthday cake bar that had all the different red dyes and so forth in it. Um, you know we do posts about sugar, alcohol all the time. So again, we're. The market is evolving and I think they're catching up with us and we're trying to educate them 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 like you know. It started with a dream, which I love. I like when. When I said impulsive, you know I meant that almost as a compliment, cause I tend to empathize with that idea of the more you do, the more you hustle, the more movement you make in your life, the more serendipity finds you, and you're not going to know until you put yourself out there.
Lori: 33:02
So is there something along the way you've tried and didn't work out regarding either the bar specifically or just business in general? Yeah, yeah, yeah, you know espresso bar. Yeah, so we did try to cater to the non-dairy folks and used collagen. We actually had a double chocolate espresso bar Delicious, but you either loved it or hated it. So it was definitely it was our least sold. We still have people that will ask are you going to bring that back? But, um, perhaps if we had made it not double chocolate espresso, because we had, it had espresso 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 had those in the bar. So you know, I guess that was catering to a certain, uh, taste bud yeah plus collagen is very difficult to work with, as you know.
Tony: 33:59
It's sort of gluey. Yeah, yeah, for sure, it's hard to get the right texture for us. We worked really hard on getting 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 for like a year or a year and a half, and we had to discontinue it because 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 in your teeth oh, you know what like built bars too. Maybe you know you haven't even tried it.
Philip Pape: 34:30
No no okay, there's a whole thing there because built bars. They're very gluey, some people hate them, some people don't protein.
Lori: 34:37
You know we just couldn't. So you know it would kind of seep out. And if the oil is seeping out and then it's coming through the, we don't want you to that was the collagen yeah, like it would. It was oily, yeah, so I say, yeah, it was kind of a no, that's good, but the concept just didn't work.
Tony: 35:11
So we got really lucky with our first two, and the third one was kind of a dud, but that happens.
Philip Pape: 35:16
Keith, are you still experimenting with some things, even if you can't talk about them Always?
Tony: 35:22
Well, we can talk about it, okay, I don't know what he's going to say.
Tony: 35:27
I have grand visions for this company being more than just a protein bar company. I don't think that there is a trusted protein supplier out there where I can go and feel good about what I'm buying in terms of all the different ways that we eat protein other than meat, so I make my own yogurt at home. I would love to have a protein yogurt that people can trust that has great ingredients. I'd love to have a, a, um, a protein powder that people can trust even maybe a protein drink and be like the trusted protein company I don't think that's where you're going?
Tony: 36:02
I don't think that, uh, yeah, is uh. That doesn't exist in the marketplace 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, the filtered milk. I'm thinking of a couple that people tend to find are cleaner.
Tony: 36:20
Ish, right, because they're mainly milk, but they have other stuff in there there are good companies in each silo, but there's no company that says we're we're covering all the protein sources protein stuff.
Philip Pape: 36:29
Yeah, be your trusted protein company yeah, you're right, because some the companies like first form, which I'm an affiliate for them, but honestly, a lot of their stuff has tons and tons of you know these ingredients and they they spend a lot of time trying to educate on protein and how it's filtered, but not really talking so much about all the other ingredients in there. So you know, cool. Yeah, now what about a? 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, and they'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 the vegan consumer is a large enough percentage of the entire population to make it worth it for us at this point. We still have 300 million plus non-vegans that we have to sell to and convince before we try to go out to the vegan market, and that's not really where our expertise lies. So after having the lack of success with the collagen bar, I'm probably a little hesitant to try something unusual again, not having any expertise in that area.
Stephanie: 37:37
The most value that I got from this was the fact that I had someone that I could talk to about anything and that there was going to be no judgment. It was just well, here are your goals, here's the best way that you're going to achieve it, and then let's work together to help you feel inspired and motivated to do that and there's a lot of people out there trying to be coaches and not all of them have done the work and also just be a genuine person that is positive and coming from the heart in terms of wanting to help, and Philip really embodied all of those qualities. I would recommend him to just about anyone that's looking to achieve goals in that realm of their nutrition and building new habits.
Philip Pape: 38:23
So do you have a way that people get to you with feature requests or ingredient requests 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 instagram messages, facebook messages through our website. We have chat bot on our website that you know comes straight to us. Even though it's a chat bot, we can 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 of a. You know the direct to consumer. You care, you listen to people, you talk to people and again, just for anybody watching the video, these notes are great and I can't imagine how much time you put into them. But what was the genesis of this?
Tony: 39:15
Delorey, I said you know, even though we're selling protein bars, I believe that we're in the relationship business, so we have to treat this like we're building relationships because, really, ultimately, that's what we all do. You do it, we do it as audiologists and financial planners. That's what we do. So why not do it with a food or a protein bar? We're in the relationship business. So Delore already started writing these handwritten notes 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 for people that it is a relationship and we want people to know that we appreciate that they're doing business with us. So I feel like I can take the time as long as I can take the time to write the note, like I love writing the note that says thanks for a second order. Right, and I want people to know 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 from someone. I think it was their 109th order.
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 said Phillip, 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, you can see man it's handwriting. Yeah, all right. So I mean, what are you excited about now going into the future?
Tony: 40:42
Well, this idea of scaling, of becoming a bigger brand, of becoming the trusted protein provider I mean, again, I make my own yogurt at home. I love the idea of homemade yogurt knowing exactly what's in it, which is, you know, basically just one ingredient or two ingredients milk and, and uh, the protein bacteria, if you want to call it that. You know, I just growing and becoming. You know, you know we have these.
Tony: 41:09
I have a grand vision, right, we started as a mom and pop thing, just so we can have something that we trusted. Um, and I want it to be something, just so we can have something that we trusted, and I want it to be something that everyone can trust and something that everyone can feel good about. I think that in the supplement space, if you want to put us in the supplement space, I think if you ask people what's the first thing that comes to mind when you say supplements, they probably say I don't really trust 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 where they're coming from. I want to be a trusted provider of good products for people and then having that relationship mindset as well, I think we can take this and turn it into a fairly large organization.
Philip Pape: 41:54
I mean there's tremendous value in that fairly large organization. I mean there's tremendous value in that Is part of that strategy connecting with athletes or influencers or business owners or podcasters. I'm just curious.
Tony: 42:04
Yeah, for sure We've. You know, we've worked with athletes, We've worked with Olympic weightlifters, we were Olympic rower, we had an.
Tony: 42:12
Olympic rower. You know people are reaching out to us all the time from you know, not with nil right. A lot of college athletes are reaching out to us looking for um products. Um nascar reached out to us recently. So there's a lot of opportunity to partner, uh, with different athletes. But you know we're pretty picky. We don't want just any athlete just for the name. If we're going to partner with someone, we want it to be someone who shared the same values as we do and can help us grow the company, rather than just piggybacking on what we do.
Philip Pape: 42:52
It's a fascinating industry. I don't envy you because I understand how hard it is and it sounds like quite the hustle, but you're also doing what you can to really grow and make an impact. I don't know if you follow Mike Matthews right. He's the owner of Legion Athletics. They're a massive, massive supplement company and he just ended his podcast after many years because his supplement company is finding success now, after getting to $65 million of revenue. You know what I mean. Like it took that long before you said okay, now I'm independent. And I'm not trying to make you guys put pressure on you guys. I just think it's a fascinating industry for sure. Very much like most of retail in the food industry, I imagine, when it comes to the competitiveness 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 yogurt company, a chocolate company, all different, all different, um, direct-to-consumer types of food companies and all small startups and they were, all you know, all had the same issues. So, um, yeah, it's, it's the food industry, the supplement, 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 hear that 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 the you 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 that as much and really focus more on the direct-to-consumer through our website, so we can just reach more people.
Lori: 44:37
Yeah, higher margins, more scale. Yeah, there's also the issue of we have a nine-month shelf life because it's natural ingredients. So if we try to do something like a whole foods, it's just constantly we'd be having to replace bars if they didn't sell out or whatever and, like you said, the, the margins and what they want and you know how much they want to pay for something. So, yeah, yeah, it just doesn't work.
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, as we 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 the benefits of the ingredients, and not so much the taste of the bar, but the benefits of the ingredients, and not so much the taste 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, most folks I work with or listen to podcasts. You know they have body composition goals, athletic goals, performance goals and, um, pretty much understand energy, balance and macros, or they're learning about it. So I'm going to start there and say you know, you need protein supplementation Great bar for that. It has a balance. That a macro is great for that. But it also is a source of energy.
Philip Pape: 46:04
As far as the ingredients, well, and it tastes great that you guys can't discount that, let me tell you. And then, as far as ingredients, for sure, like I always struggle to find, I don't even use 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. Like a protein bar, energy bar. A lot of people are looking for that, and with 10, 20% of your diet made up of some sort of indulgences, you're probably going to spend your processed food 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 in that side of the equation rather than be considered like processed food. So I think that's a differentiator for you guys for sure. Yeah, I don't know if that was a good explanation, think that's a differentiator for you guys for 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 about the bar all the times ourselves. It's nice to hear what other people think about it, especially people in the industry. 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 and group members, people in the Facebook group, to kind of tell me what are you finding out there in the world? That's what you consider clean or 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 it tastes good when it's like that, in other words, like a bar like this. Unless you don't like an ingredient, you're going to find that it tastes good, whereas you find that the bars with artificial sweeteners and sugar, alcohols and what there's always some segment that say like something's off Taste McTallick does something when I go to the bathroom. No thanks, right. So you know. And again, I eat those bars. Other people do as well, we all. We're not. I don't want you to say perfect Cause 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 great option in my opinion. Yeah, I appreciate that, so again, and again for the listeners I've.
Philip Pape: 48:05
I invited them on. So this is not like an infomercial paid, nothing like that. I'm paying them for the bars and there's no affiliate thing, nothing like that, and I'm happy to do it and I hope everyone looks you guys up and buys the bars. So what is the best way to do that?
Tony: 48:18
Let's check out our website muscleupbarscom. It's, you know, really consumer friendly website. We have right on the front page the 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 chocolate chip. You get three boxes. Or, if you just want to try the bars, we also have a what's called a score for a four pack sampler right on the homepage. Just hit the buy button. You don't have to dig through the website to find that. So you want to try and get the four pack. If you want to jump right in, there's a three pack Well, three boxes which is 36 bars, right on the homepage.
Tony: 48:58
And you know we have blogs, we have nutritional information. If you want to check out our label, our nutritional label, it's in there on every product page. So all the information, we're very transparent. Everything's out there. A lot of times when you go to a protein bar webpage which I do a lot to look for the ingredients, I can't find them. Really have to dig for them. Right? Ours are right there, you know. Read the label. It's there for you to read and if you like what you see. Give them a try. Phillip believes they taste good. I think they taste good.
Lori: 49:31
And I think most people think they do. I do also want to say that we do wholesale. So if anybody's listening and they have a gym or whatever a small store, we do wholesale.
Tony: 49:41
We sell to gas. We don't promote to the gas stations but we have gas station scholars who want to sell our bars. We ship bars out to a gas station in New Jersey and Arizona recently. So yeah, we do wholesale on direct 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's a 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 about doing, and we're putting some fun posts up on instagram. Yep bars, you can find us there as 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.
Philip Pape: 50:18
Yep, you can find us there as well. Cool, I'll put the links in the show notes and thanks so much for doing this. It's been a pleasure to meet you guys in person again, I think again and um, share your story and talk about this, this awesome food product that is, uh, going to help you make gains while sticking to good quality ingredients and enjoying a snack that really does taste great. Thanks, Thanks, guys.
Tony: 50:40
We appreciate you inviting us. Thank you, and I appreciate the opportunity to chat with your listeners.
Philip Pape: 50:46
Thanks for coming on.
Tony: 50:47
Thanks, bill, appreciate it.
