LÄRABAR: Lara Merriken (2018)

In 2000, Lara Merriken was 32, recently divorced, and without a job when she decided to make energy bars by mixing cherries, dates, and almonds in her Cuisinart. Eventually, she perfected the recipe and launched her company: LÄRABAR. After just two years, the company was bringing in millions in revenue. In 2008, she sold to General Mills, but stayed on to help grow LÄRABAR into one of the biggest energy bar brands in the U. S. PLUS in our post-script "How You Built That," we check back with Gerry Stellenberg who combined his knack for technology with his love of pinball to create a company for modern pinball enthusiasts called Multimorphic. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Guy Raz?

  Really quick before we start the show, I want to remind you about an upcoming live recording of the podcast. It's happening in Denver on November 13 at the Paramount Theater. I'll be interviewing Kurt Richardson. He's the creator of the OtterBox phone case. And if you haven't been to one of our live shows before, they are super fun. They're a chance to see me and to meet other builders and fans of the show. It's all brought to you by American Express, and we'd love to see you there. So to get tickets, go to nprpresents.org. And I hope to see you in Denver. So Laura Merican was one of those people who owned a Cuisinart but never bothered to use it, until one day, she decided to make a new type of snack bar.

• 0:44Guy Raz?

  So out came the Cuisinart, and about three years later, out came Laura Bar. If you haven't heard it, it's an incredible story that first ran in March of last year. And if you have heard it, totally worth hearing again. Enjoy.

• 1:01Guy Raz?

  What happened to that name?

• 1:04Speaker 01

  Well, the trademarking attorney called me at the 11th hour, and we were getting ready to launch. It was the year 2002, summer. And she said, I think you're going to need to change the name. And I just thought, you're joking, right? I've left working at Whole Foods, and we're supposed to be launching, but we don't launch. And everybody's backing out because nothing's happening.

• 1:36Guy Raz?

  From NPR, it's How I Built This, a show about innovators, entrepreneurs, idealists, and the stories behind the movements they built.

• 1:48Guy Raz?

  I'm Guy Raz, and on today's show, how Laura Merican threw dates, cashews, and dried cherries into her Cuisinart and turned that mushy mix into Laura Bar, one of the best-selling energy bars in America.

• 2:08Guy Raz?

  So if you've recently walked through the energy bar section of the supermarket, you might be surprised, or rather overwhelmed, by the number of choices. I mean, for starters, there are hundreds of different types of energy bars, which is kind of crazy if you think about it. There are protein bars, and paleo bars, and Whole30, and vegan, and gluten-free, and cacao infused with matcha powder. There is probably an energy bar out there for each and every one of us. And that whole revolution, it really got started in the 1990s with Cliff Bar. And if you've heard previous episodes of the show, you might have heard our interview with Gary Erickson, who actually invented those Cliff Bars. Well, in the early 2000s, Laura American came up with a pretty simple concept

• 2:52Guy Raz?

  that shockingly wasn't really out there in the world. It was an energy bar made from two or three raw ingredients, like almonds or cashews, all bound together with dates. Now, Laura bars may not seem like a big deal today, right? You can get them pretty much anywhere, at any 7-Eleven. But back in the day, they were kind of revolutionary. And how she even came to inventing them, to building this brand? Well, there was no direct path. Laura never intended to start her own business or even to sell a product. She grew up in the Denver area. Her parents ran a pretty successful, high-end clothing store. And Laura was really into sport. She was actually good enough to make the USC women's volleyball team.

• 3:37Guy Raz?

  But after she graduated from college with a degree in psychology, she wasn't really sure what to do. So she came back to Denver and got a job as a social worker. And she started to work with kids and teenagers who needed help.

• 3:51Speaker 01

  It was hard. I mean, just emotionally difficult job. It was intense. It was always chaotic. We were on call every six weeks. I had to call-- this is at a time where I had to carry a pager around. Remember the pager days?

• 4:05Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 4:05Speaker 01

  And if the pager went off at 2:00 in the morning because somebody ran away from our treatment facility, you had to answer the phone call. But it was intense work. And to see-- You know, 15-year-old girls, actually 13-year-old girls with kids. And I had to manage their care with the judicial system. I went to court a lot. I made recommendations. It was one of the most stressful jobs I've ever had in my life. And I was in my early 20s.

• 4:31Guy Raz?

  How long did it take you before you got burned out?

• 4:34Speaker 01

  Like, a year and a half.

• 4:36Guy Raz?

  So about a year and a half, you're doing this. And you just decide, this is not, this is not for me.

• 4:42Speaker 01

  I knew I needed to change what the landscape looked like. So I wanted to help these kids, but I wanted to do it in more of a recreational component. I didn't want to feel like I was the police all the time. And so I became a community involvement leader. And I got these kids involved in the community.

• 5:03Guy Raz?

  How long did you do that for?

• 5:04Speaker 01

  About four years. I really loved being in the more recreational component with these kids and kind of opening their eyes to a bigger world and hoping that they saw opportunity for themselves. That was very gratifying.

• 5:19Guy Raz?

  Like, you would play, like, sports with them and take them for, like, nature walks and stuff like that?

• 5:26Speaker 01

  I would do anything and everything. I mean, we went to a natural food grocery store one day and got a tour of that. And then I would take them to Rockies games because somebody would donate the tickets. And then we had the cat petting club. And I'd take them to the local animal shelter because they couldn't have pets in their homes. And then we would have our community garden. And so it was a year-round program. They'd come after school. And then during the summer, I basically ran a summer camp. And then I would teach them how to cook and do arts and crafts. I mean, anything I could think of to do, I would do.

• 5:55Guy Raz?

  So this was like your MBA. That was your management training.

• 5:58Speaker 01

  It was, it was good. It was, it was really fun. I mean, to this day, I still think about these children. And I wonder where they are, what's happened, what they're doing. So during this time that I was being a social worker, working as a social worker, I was also cultivating this passion for natural foods.

• 6:16Guy Raz?

  How did that happen?

• 6:18Speaker 01

  Well, so let's go back to college. College volleyball, our, our coach had a rule of no sugar and no red meat. So at the time, I was totally into junk food. I was 18 years old. You know, my favorite place to eat was any fast food restaurant you can name. And then I all of a sudden, I'm stopping eating sugar and no red meat.

• 6:41Guy Raz?

  And he, and just to be clear, he felt that no red meat, no sugar would result in in better performance from his players?

• 6:49Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 6:50Guy Raz?

  And did he, did he like enforce this rule?

• 6:52Speaker 01

  Oh, yes.

• 6:53Guy Raz?

  This wasn't a joke. This was real.

• 6:55Speaker 01

  No, this was very real. Like it was a rule in the team and.

• 6:59Guy Raz?

  And that was, by the way, it must have been an intense team. And that's Division One volleyball, USC, which is a major like Pac 10 school.

• 7:09Speaker 01

  Oh, yes. I remember thinking, I can't believe I have the opportunity to play volleyball on this team. I will do anything this man tells me to do. And then I all of a sudden, I'm stopping eating sugar and no red meat. It was really an interesting experience. So I started feeling better. So that was the first light bulb that went off for me. Post-college, I'm, you know, I'm working as a social worker. I start doing all this reading. And then I started having migraines. I started getting migraines out of nowhere. I'd never had them. And I got a blood test and learned that I was actually very allergic to wheat.

• 7:48Guy Raz?

  Wow. You'd been eating wheat your whole life and after college you discovered this?

• 7:53Speaker 01

  Yes. I mean, wheat's in.

• 7:55Guy Raz?

  Everything.

• 7:56Speaker 01

  Everything. So this is in the early 90s at the time, and there wasn't really many options. And their, their solution to this is stop eating wheat. And I'm thinking, well, what am I going to eat? So at the time, I didn't even really know how to cook much. My, you know, I grew up with two working parents. My mom went to school and it was just like frozen.

• 8:18Guy Raz?

  Like slaving over the stove every night. Right. Okay.

• 8:21Speaker 01

  No, it was very much convenient food oriented. So I really didn't even know how to cook. Why I had to learn how to cook for myself because I had such a limited diet. And I got introduced to natural foods at the time. So things like kale and quinoa and all the things that we kind of know now as normal were totally foreign to me.

• 8:41Guy Raz?

  Especially in the mid 90s, like.

• 8:43Speaker 01

  It was weird to me at first. And then I had, I thought, well. I'm going to embrace this. And so I would read everything I could about recipes and nutrition. And I just got into it and I made the most of it.

• 9:00Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 9:00Speaker 01

  So then I started thinking to myself in the background of going through this whole experience and feeling better, I thought, I don't know. I love natural foods. This makes such, this is common sense to me. Why don't people know about this? Why isn't somebody teaching us about healthy food? And so my passion started to build.

• 9:23Guy Raz?

  So I guess at a certain point, you stopped working with kids. And did you find another job? Or did you, did you kind of start to just, like, did you start to think about what you had to, what you wanted to do?

• 9:35Speaker 01

  Well, I knew I had an excitement and passion for natural foods. I just didn't know how I was going to make a transition between being a social worker and natural foods. They were two completely different worlds.

• 9:49Guy Raz?

  What was going on in your personal life? Were you single at the time?

• 9:52Speaker 01

  I was married and I was in the middle of getting divorced.

• 9:55Guy Raz?

  Wow.

• 9:56Speaker 01

  So it was a huge change for me. And I realized that I needed to get a divorce in the middle of all of this.

• 10:02Guy Raz?

  So you were, you were a young, young woman, married and getting divorced?

• 10:07Speaker 01

  Yes. And, and thinking about changing my career in a matter of like six months.

• 10:13Guy Raz?

  And what were you thinking about doing at that point?

• 10:16Speaker 01

  I didn't know. But all I knew is that I needed to find the courage to take a leap of faith. And somehow, some way, I figured that out for myself. And I left my marriage, I left my job and decided, I'm going to go back to school and I'm going to study. I want to get into naturopathic medical school.

• 10:40Guy Raz?

  And naturopathic is like, like natural, like homeopathic remedies and stuff?

• 10:46Speaker 01

  Yes. So there's a school in Seattle, Washington, and one in Portland, Oregon, in naturopathic medicine. And I thought, I'm going to practice that, which covers all natural medicine, nutrition, acupuncture, everything. And that's what I really, I think that's the direction I want to go. I looked at the school for years, really renounced school. I thought, this is what I'm going to do. So I started taking chemistry and physics and all these science classes at the local community college. And actually, I'd moved back out to California. My parents were living out there. So I'm on my path of taking classes. And I meet a friend of mine, a dear friend of mine now, one day,

• 11:27Speaker 01

  eating at the local health food store, we're eating lunch. And he drags me to this raw food class. And I have one of the most amazing meals I've ever had in my life at this class. And I thought, wow, raw foods are kind of amazing. And it just never had occurred to me. And meanwhile, I'm taking my classes. I got accepted to this program, two schools, one in Seattle and one in Washington. And I thought, I'm going to be a naturopathic doctor. That's what I'm going to do. And I went to a meeting with all the doctors in California, and they were very limited in their scope of practice there at the time, because the laws weren't open there. And I went to this meeting, and it was like April. I was moving to Seattle in July of that year.

• 12:10Guy Raz?

  This is like 90.

• 12:12Speaker 01

  This is the year 2000.

• 12:15Guy Raz?

  Year 2000, okay.

• 12:16Speaker 01

  So I was three months away from moving to Seattle. I was thrilled to death I got into this school. I went to this meeting with all these, you know, naturopaths that had been naturopaths for 20 years. And this meeting scared the living daylights out of me.

• 12:30Guy Raz?

  Why?

• 12:31Speaker 01

  Because all of these people were passionate, but because the state of California didn't allow them to really practice their scope of medicine, because the laws limited them, it just looked like a giant struggle.

• 12:44Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 12:44Speaker 01

  It looked frustrating to be able to have a degree in something and not be able to really do it. And then I went back to Colorado over Memorial Day weekend to visit one of my dearest and oldest friends. And

• 12:58Speaker 01

  I went hiking and I was just kind of eating a trail mix and thinking of food and raw foods and thinking about moving to Seattle. And all of a sudden, I'm on this mountain and this light bulb goes off for me. And I think, why hasn't somebody made something made of fruit, nuts and spices? Like something very just pure, simple, real foods, but it's portable and convenient, but it tastes indulgent, like you shouldn't be eating it, like junk food. I mean, I don't know, that day, at that moment, it was like this surge of energy I got. I could feel this excitement over an idea. It's not like I hadn't had ideas before. I mean, people are walking around every day with ideas.

• 13:40Speaker 01

  But for whatever reason, at that day, in that time, and all those little experiences that built up, I just felt it.

• 13:48Guy Raz?

  So what'd you do? Did you like run home and start like writing things down or drawing pictures? Or did you just kind of mull it over for a while?

• 13:57Speaker 01

  So I ran down the mountain. I got out a notebook and I started writing down ideas. And then when we got back to Denver, I thought, how can I take fruit, nuts and spices and turn them into something really exciting? And I would get ideas from pies and cookies and cakes. And I think, okay, how do I take cherry pie and make it just in my cuisine art, basically a raw, unprocessed food and make it taste like cherry pie or apple pie or banana bread or what have you?

• 14:33Guy Raz?

  Did you immediately think, hey, I can turn this into a business? Or was it more like, I just want to try to experiment and see if I can make this snack?

• 14:45Speaker 01

  I did think, I think I can turn this into a business. I don't even know. I think it was like a day later. And the next thing you know, I'm thinking, I'm going to start this business and I'm going to do this in the next three months. I mean, how naive is that to think that you're going to start a business in three months?

• 15:06Speaker 01

  And I called my parents and everybody thought I was completely out of my mind.

• 15:13Guy Raz?

  Did they think it was like an early midlife crisis?

• 15:17Speaker 01

  I don't know what they thought. They just thought, we've sent her, you know, to, through private high school, USC, she's graduated, she's 32 years old. Oh, my God, what's going on here? But it was actually great that people questioned me and wondered why I was doing what I was doing. And especially my family, because it made me dig in more and recognize that I really did want to do it, that I didn't need to get approval from anybody, but that I needed, I had found something that was important to me and I just could not be stopped. I arranged to stay with another friend of mine, moved in with her.

• 16:01Guy Raz?

  In Denver?

• 16:02Speaker 01

  Yes. And then I would take these concoctions that I would come up with, with using the Cuisinart that I had had for years. By the way, I'd never actually used it. I didn't even know how to use the Cuisinart. And for some reason, I got the Cuisinart out and I would do what's called, well, they officially call it a focus group. I didn't even know the name then. And I would, I created my own little survey and I would ask people, why do you, you know, what do you eat energy bars for? Why do you like them? Why don't you like them? You know, all these things. And people would fill them out. And then I would give them my concoctions and say, please tell me what you think.

• 16:39Guy Raz?

  And so is that how you developed your recipes?

• 16:41Speaker 01

  Yes. The interesting thing is the recipes came fairly quickly. I, you know, because I would sample my friends and they would give me feedback, like, I really like the cherry, but I don't taste cherry in every bite. And I would go back to the drawing board and think, I think I need to add more cherries. You should taste cherry in every bite. You shouldn't be searching for it. Then it doesn't taste like cherry pie, right?

• 17:06Guy Raz?

  By the way, how did you make, like, how did you think of cherry pie? Like, what, you dried cherries and, or, and, I don't know, what else?

• 17:13Speaker 01

  Well, I, so I would go to this natural food store. Because everything was less expensive there. And I would buy dried cherries and dried bananas and dried apples. And then I would come up with the idea of, oh, cherry pie. Okay, let me see if I can make cherry pie with these cherries, the, the dates and the almonds. And they sold these tart unsweetened cherries. I will never forget, they were the best tasting thing because they actually are a real cherry without a bunch of sugar in them.

• 17:41Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 17:42Speaker 01

  And then what is today larbar cherry pie is from these cherries.

• 17:47Guy Raz?

  So I'm just imagining this because I do a lot of cooking. And you're in your, in your kitchen with your Cuisinart. And I'm thinking you put a bunch of, of dates and like nuts in there. And you're just gonna get this like ball rolling around the Cuisinart, this sticky like like sticky ball of a mass. And then you would like take it out with your hands and like

• 18:09Speaker 01

  I would roll it out with a rolling pin. And then I got a cutter and I would, like a pizza cutter, and I would cut it out.

• 18:18Guy Raz?

  Just in your kitchen?

• 18:19Speaker 01

  And, and I would make samples. I mean, batch after batch after batch.

• 18:27Guy Raz?

  And did you have any of your own, I mean, did you have any cash? Did you have to sort of ask your parents to help you out in that year while you were not, you know, weren't getting a salary? How did you pay your bills?

• 18:37Speaker 01

  Within about a week, I realized, oh, I, I had a little bit of money saved up. And then I thought, I'm gonna start this business, but I have to work. I have to get a job, you know?

• 18:49Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 18:50Speaker 01

  So Whole Foods opened their first store in Denver at exactly the same time. And I started seeing the building go up in the, in the neighborhood I grew up in, actually. And I thought, huh, I'm gonna get a job with them. I'm gonna work in their nutrition department doing what I love. But I'm gonna figure out the business and how it works and use it as a learning opportunity, almost like a paid internship in a sense.

• 19:17Guy Raz?

  I mean, that, that's like incredibly Imprescient, like, that's really amazing planning. It reminds me, we interviewed Ben and Jerry's and people think that they were just these hippies, but they actually stood on a street corner with a counter to count how many people passed the street corner when they were looking for a location for their Ben and Jerry's. You know, like, that is a real planning moment. You were sort of looking ahead and saying, all right, well, if I'm going to do this business, let me at least learn natural foods and go, like, what, be like a cashier at Whole Foods?

• 19:48Speaker 01

  I got a job in the nutrition department, doing what I loved, which was working around all the nutrition products. So I thought, OK, I'm going to enjoy myself, but I'm also going to, I'll have a firsthand view of what it's like to have a product in their store and what does that mean from the standpoint of the vendor. And it was one of the best decisions I ever made.

• 20:13Guy Raz?

  So at what point did you think to yourself, OK, this is going to be really, this is really going to be a big, big deal? Like, this is, people are going to want to buy these?

• 20:24Speaker 01

  I'm not sure I ever thought that.

• 20:25Guy Raz?

  Huh.

• 20:26Speaker 01

  It was such a gradual progression. So I first, you know, got my recipes together and I would give them out to friends and then friends would say, I would buy those. And that, that little tidbit of asking me to buy it would make me feel so excited and motivated to get to the next place, which was, how in the world am I going to manufacture these things?

• 20:48Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 20:49Speaker 01

  Where am I going to get dates and almonds and cherries? I didn't even know. I'm buying them at a natural food grocery store in little baggies.

• 20:57Guy Raz?

  Right.

• 20:58Speaker 01

  What do I know about almonds and dates and all that stuff? What do I know about manufacturing equipment? And at the time, I started questioning, am I actually going to do this or should I just go to work for Whole Foods? Maybe I'll just do that.

• 21:13Guy Raz?

  And just to clarify again, how are you just like sort of funding this business, like buying the ingredients and stuff? Were you just using your own money?

• 21:24Speaker 01

  You know, I had a job at Whole Foods and then I had a credit card.

• 21:28Guy Raz?

  And were you nervous or anxious at all?

• 21:31Speaker 01

  I don't know. I would have moments where I would be really gung ho and I would get all kinds of great information. And a month would go by and I would find out about a piece of manufacturing equipment or just little things. And I would be so motivated and somebody'd want to buy bars and I'd make them a batch of bars in these little Ziploc bags and a little Chinese takeout box. They would pay me like $22 or something for a box of bars and I would think, wow. And then another month would go by where I couldn't get anywhere. I felt like my feet were stuck in the mud. And then I would just get really unmotivated and nothing would happen. And this went on for the three-year period between my idea phase and when I actually

• 22:16Speaker 01

  launched.

• 22:17Guy Raz?

  So I'm trying to figure out how you maintained your optimism and confidence about all this because, I mean, you're 32, you're divorced, and I imagine you probably have some emotional ups and downs at this point. And I don't know, was part of you, I mean, did you ever get the feeling that people would look at you and kind of think, oh yeah, that's Laura, she's got this kind of weird side project?

• 22:42Speaker 01

  Oh, a lot of people thought that. I mean, I would see people I went to high school with and they would come into Whole Foods and, you know, they're already climbing the ladder of big jobs and finance and all kinds of things. And they'd say, oh, I didn't know you worked here. And people would see me. And even if I had those moments with people where I would notice the fact that I wasn't on that trajectory, I finally just said, this is your path in life and you have to go for it and embrace it and make it happen.

• 23:18Guy Raz?

  When we come back, how Laura embraced the uncertainty and slowly, slowly, figured out how to turn her kitchen project into a business. Stay with us. I'm Guy Raz, and you're listening to How I Built This from NPR.

• 23:55Guy Raz?

  Hey, welcome back to How I Built This from NPR. I'm Guy Raz. So it's 2001. Laura American is working at Whole Foods in Denver, and she's trying to figure out how to start a company. But she still doesn't have a whole lot of money, and she doesn't have any professional equipment, or even a way to process and package her energy bars.

• 24:14Speaker 01

  So eventually, I went to a packaging company in Denver, and they weren't even taking me seriously.

• 24:20Guy Raz?

  What did you say to them? You said, hey, how do I make this on a bigger scale?

• 24:24Speaker 01

  Well, I said, I need packaging. And then they'd look at me and go, huh? I mean, they couldn't take me seriously. I didn't even have a business. And they'd give me a giant book that looked so tedious to read through. And they'd say, well, read some of this and come back, and we'll talk to you about packaging. And then I would read enough that I would come back partially educated. And then they started realizing I was serious about it.

• 24:45Guy Raz?

  That you wanted, you were looking for somebody to, who had food-grade packaging that could package your bars?

• 24:50Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 24:51Guy Raz?

  And meanwhile, back at home, you're still using your Cuisinart?

• 24:54Speaker 01

  Yes. I was using the Cuisinart. And I was trying to find a giant Cuisinart. I was trying to, I didn't even know what that was called. It's called a vertical cutter mixer, I learned. And, and then that led to some guy that they knew that had a piece of manufacturing equipment that, lo and behold, was the exact thing that I needed.

• 25:12Guy Raz?

  The giant Cuisinart?

• 25:14Speaker 01

  Yes. And so because I had the tenacity to ask, and I wasn't afraid, at a time when a lot of people questioned what I was doing, but I knew that I needed to do it, it gave me the motivation to keep asking questions and to be curious.

• 25:33Speaker 01

  And tenacious. And so I'd call the guy with the piece of equipment and I'd meet him. And then I talked to this guy and he's like, well, I'm not really using it. If you want to use it, you can. And that's how it all kind of pieced together.

• 25:47Guy Raz?

  Yeah. And, and did you, and you had the name by that point, Lara Bars?

• 25:51Speaker 01

  Well, no, it was a different name. So I was going to name it Mana Bar. And your Mana is your vital energy or your chi.

• 26:01Guy Raz?

  You, how's that spelled?

• 26:02Speaker 01

  M A N A.

• 26:03Guy Raz?

  What, what happened to that name?

• 26:06Speaker 01

  Well, the trademarking attorney called me at the 11th hour and we were getting ready to launch. It was the year 2002, summer. And she said, I think there's going to be a problem. And she said, there's actually Mana Bread, M A N N A. And I think it could be confusingly similar. And I think you're going to need to change the name. And I just thought, you're joking, right? I, I don't, I don't want to deal with this right now. Naming is one of the hardest things. So I got the phone call, finally came to terms with the fact that that was going to have to happen.

• 26:44Speaker 01

  And a friend said, you know, why don't you call them Lara Bar? You know, they're, you make them, they're your bars. It sounds kind of like a good, it rings Lara Bar, you know?

• 26:56Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 26:57Speaker 01

  And I thought, no way. I am not putting my name on this product. I don't want my name in there. I, no way. I'm not doing that. And then I just kind of sat with it for a couple of weeks. And I finally thought, huh, Lara Bar. I guess that could work.

• 27:15Guy Raz?

  And, and by the way, you had raised some money.

• 27:17Speaker 01

  No, I hadn't raised any money.

• 27:18Guy Raz?

  You didn't raise any money?

• 27:19Speaker 01

  Okay. I wrote it, sorry, I wrote a business plan. My dad helped me write a business plan. I had a few friends and family interested and.

• 27:29Speaker 01

  Between the renaming of Larabar, Monobar to Larabar, and manufacturing issues, I was going to launch in fall of 2002. And that got delayed until April of 2003. And during that time, all of my interested friends and family backed out.

• 27:49Guy Raz?

  They, because they got cold feet because it was, yeah.

• 27:53Speaker 01

  It was just getting delayed.

• 27:54Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 27:55Speaker 01

  And all these people are starting to slowly back out because things are not happening. I've left working at Whole Foods. It's like mid 2002 and we're supposed to be launching, but we don't launch. And everybody's backing out because nothing's happening.

• 28:10Guy Raz?

  So what'd you do?

• 28:12Speaker 01

  Well, I had to, I had to raise the money. And my dad had decided he would let, he wanted to get involved in the company. He had a great business background in the retail business.

• 28:23Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 28:23Speaker 01

  He knew operations and how to run a company. And he called me one day and he said, hey, would you, would you want a business partner?

• 28:32Guy Raz?

  And then how much money did you decide that you needed to raise?

• 28:36Speaker 01

  There really wasn't an amount. It wasn't really a specific, I think, I think we came up with the amount because I had to print packaging. And we, I had five flavors that I was launching with and each-

• 28:49Guy Raz?

  There were cashew cookie.

• 28:50Speaker 01

  Okay, cashew cookie, cherry pie, apple pie, banana bread and chocolate coconut chew. And there was a minimum print run of all of those. And I actually printed at this company in Minnesota. And I remember it costing somewhere around, you know, a hundred, a hundred and fifty thousand dollars. And the manufacturing wasn't working out. I had been to now four manufacturing places that did not work out. And I had a giant vertical cutter mixer in the back of my old Land Cruiser that I would haul around to each facility, whether it was two hours away, an hour away, two hours away, what have you.

• 29:30Guy Raz?

  That you would have them install in their facility ideally. You bought this thing?

• 29:34Speaker 01

  I borrowed it.

• 29:35Guy Raz?

  The giant, the giant Cuisinart?

• 29:37Speaker 01

  Giant Cuisinart, it's 400 pounds. It was on a pallet and they'd have to forklift it into the back of my Land Cruiser. So I was running around the state of Colorado trying to find somewhere to manufacture. And when you're new to business, nobody takes you seriously.

• 29:51Guy Raz?

  Nobody wants to work with you, yeah.

• 29:52Speaker 01

  They, they don't even know how to make your product. You know, they just want me to fit into what they're doing. And so I'm running around trying to find a place to manufacture. And all the additional investors have now backed out. And I remember it was just like a, a dark night in January and my dad was getting discouraged. So I said to him, you know what? I believe that this is going to work out. I really have faith and I think the right people will come along at the right time. So I started talking to some other friends about it, friends in yoga class, friends I worked with at Whole Foods. And then all of a sudden, a whole new group of people came that were just thrilled, like six, six people and said, we'd love to invest in it.

• 30:33Guy Raz?

  To put money in it?

• 30:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 30:33Guy Raz?

  And how much did you raise?

• 30:36Speaker 01

  Well, it was a total of $150,000.

• 30:38Guy Raz?

  $150,000 and that was going to get you through some production and printing?

• 30:44Speaker 01

  More or less. And then a little bit of extra just for operating costs. But we were operating out of a tiny duplex in Denver, so the overhead was extremely low.

• 30:54Guy Raz?

  Okay, so you have the manufacturing and the printing nailed down. But how did you then find the stores to, to buy and then sell Lara bars?

• 31:03Speaker 01

  Well, let me, let me backtrack to where, when I was working at Whole Foods before I left. So one morning I was there, because this is also part of what you're asking me. So I was on the early shift at 8:00 AM and one of the grocery guys, he said, Laura, the guy you need to meet, he's the regional buyer from Austin. And he's, he's the guy, he's coming in, you know, this next week. He's the guy you should talk to about your product. So here I am, I'm taking trash out one morning. It's about 8:15 in the morning and he walks across my path on the back dock of the store. This, this buyer and he says, oh, hey, how are you? What's, what's new? You know, he just, he was being friendly. He'd seen me before.

• 31:48Speaker 01

  He didn't know who I was and I, in that moment, I thought, this is my moment. And I said, oh, hi, you know, this is what's new. I've been working on this product. I'm creating my own nutrition bar, this and that. And he literally kind of dead stopped and started doing this.

• 32:07Guy Raz?

  Oh, please, yes.

• 32:08Speaker 01

  I didn't really mean that.

• 32:10Guy Raz?

  Don't pitch me.

• 32:10Speaker 01

  Don't pitch me. I didn't mean that and I'm, I'd like to run away from you right now. And he said, well, I'm only here for two hours. Do you have samples? And he's just trying to get rid of me. And I said, actually, I do have samples. I'm leaving in two hours. I said, well, I can go home and get them. And I mean, I had an answer to everything. He just tried to make me go away and I wasn't going away. And he said, okay, bring me the samples and just kind of walked off. And so I said to my coworker, I have to go home right now and take my break. And so I gave him to him and then like an hour later, he's sitting there and he goes, Laura, this is the most innovative product I've tried in years.

• 32:53Guy Raz?

  Wow.

• 32:55Speaker 01

  And I'm standing there, I, I couldn't even believe my ears. You know, I knew I made a great product, but he's a buyer, he's a regional buyer. And he said, when you are ready, here's my card. He said, give me a call, let me know. He said, dot your i's, cross your t's. I will let you bring it into the Colorado stores.

• 33:15Guy Raz?

  Huh.

• 33:16Speaker 01

  And that was just such a motivational moment for me.

• 33:19Guy Raz?

  I bet.

• 33:20Speaker 01

  I mean, this is, you know, two years in and I'm questioning what I'm doing and why I'm doing it. I'm tired. I don't know what I'm doing. And he says this, and I think, wow.

• 33:35Guy Raz?

  So what, like a few months later, you were you were ready to put Lara bars out into the world, right?

• 33:41Speaker 01

  Yes. I finally have raised all the money we wanted to raise and found a manufacturing facility. It was the fourth one.

• 33:51Guy Raz?

  And how many bars did you have them make for the first big push, the first launch?

• 33:55Speaker 01

  They didn't make the bars. We made the bars.

• 33:58Guy Raz?

  You did. Okay. How many did you make?

• 33:59Speaker 01

  500 bars by hand. So I had rolls of packaging and a vertical cutter mixer, essentially.

• 34:06Guy Raz?

  And it was you and a bunch of like friends and?

• 34:09Speaker 01

  It was me, my father, and then any friend that would help. And it took us about 15 hours to make 500 bars because I had to hand cut each wrapper off of the rolls of film, make the bar, you know, roll it out with a pizza, with a rolling pin and a pizza cutter, and then stuff it in a package and heat seal.

• 34:32Guy Raz?

  And then what? You would take those those bars to like Whole Foods and then like set up a table with with samples and try to to sell them to people who were shopping in the store?

• 34:41Speaker 01

  Yes. So what I had learned working at Whole Foods in the three years that I was there, among other things, was when you sample products for free to people, it's this kind of non-risky trial. So in my mind, the marketing plan for me was to do that, is to stand in the store, to talk to people, educate them. Because what I was doing, fruit and nuts, I mean, everybody was afraid of a piece of fruit at the time. The the whole carb thing, the Atkins thing was very big. And everybody thought like eating a carrot was a very bad thing. So I'm thinking, what am I going to do with, you know, cherries and dates? And then and then nuts have high fat in them, but it's good fat.

• 35:22Speaker 01

  And so there was a lot to explain, but I had to make it digestible and simple for people. So my whole strategy was to get in each store and as often as I could, lunch and dinner, demo my product, cut it up.

• 35:36Guy Raz?

  And you were manning the table and you were like saying, hey, you want to try a Lara bar?

• 35:40Speaker 01

  I was manning the table. In fact, I have pictures of me doing all the demos. And within two, two weeks of being in Whole Foods, because one of my friends still worked there, he said, Laura, you have to go look at the movement chart upstairs. And I said, what? And he said, Larbar is the top five, one through five, selling products in the entire store right now. It outsells olive oil and water.

• 36:05Guy Raz?

  You had one of the five best-selling products in that store within two weeks?

• 36:09Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 36:10Guy Raz?

  That's insane.

• 36:12Speaker 01

  I mean, I knew, I knew in my heart, and from all the feedback I'd gotten, that people were excited about what I was doing. But I also, on the other hand, knew that there was going to be challenges. And that was the, I remember the day I got into the stores and I brought it after making those 500 bars by hand. And I remember standing there and I was just, I was excited, exhilarated, anxious, scared to death. I mean, it was like putting a piece of art on display.

• 36:40Guy Raz?

  What do you think, I mean, like, what explains why it sold so well? Like, now you think about, you know, so many people are paleo, I am paleo, and, you know, people are doing Whole30 and all these, and that's, and raw food is just kind of, it's a lot more mainstream now. But in 2003, you know, Atkins was still really big, you know, and so some of these ingredients were sort of uncommon to a lot of people. They would, they would think, oh, well, I don't know about all the nuts and the fat and this. What explains how it took off so fast?

• 37:16Speaker 01

  It was simple.

• 37:17Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 37:18Speaker 01

  10 or less ingredients. You know what these ingredients are. Almonds, dates, cashews, cinnamon, I mean, depends on the bar, but cherries. And you know what these things are. And we've been eating these items and, you know, they're grown on trees. We know what they are. It's not a question. And then they were made to taste, I blended them to taste like something you want to eat. So I didn't feel like you had to sacrifice, oh, it's healthy, but doesn't taste good. I wanted to blend both and I wanted to make it something that you were so happy and excited to eat.

• 37:49Guy Raz?

  And there's like, two, three, four, five ingredients in the average Larbar, right?

• 37:55Speaker 01

  There are. Like, my all-time favorite, cashew cookie.

• 37:58Guy Raz?

  Yes, me too.

• 37:59Speaker 01

  I love it. And it's two ingredients, cashews and dates. It's so simple. And I think that's what resonated with people, is people had never seen something like this before.

• 38:10Guy Raz?

  Which is-

• 38:10Speaker 01

  In that category.

• 38:11Guy Raz?

  Which is crazy, because it's such a simple idea. And so, I mean, it's complicated, but it's simple ingredients.

• 38:16Speaker 01

  Even my dad asked me one day, how come somebody else hasn't thought about this? I said, I have no idea, but I have. And I want to, this is why we're doing this.

• 38:27Guy Raz?

  So, once you launch in Whole Foods and you realize that you're one of the top five sellers, and it's just that one Whole Foods in Denver, right?

• 38:35Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 38:35Guy Raz?

  In that neighborhood in Denver. How quickly did Whole Foods generally, you know, the Whole Foods, I don't know, Whole Foods come to you and say, "Actually, we want these to go national"?

• 38:45Speaker 01

  That took a little time. I mean, it was over the next year that that started to happen. That wasn't as easy as it seemed, but it did come together. There was a journalist in Denver that worked for the Denver Post, and he wrote an article about me, Memorial Day of 2003, and it literally put my company on the map, just from that one article. I will always be grateful for that. And from that, the industry newspaper caught it, and then all these stores from California started calling, and so I started launching in California, and it just started to build.

• 39:25Guy Raz?

  How were you making the bars fast enough?

• 39:29Speaker 01

  We were doing anything and everything we could to make the bars fast enough.

• 39:32Guy Raz?

  Were you still personally making them at that point?

• 39:34Speaker 01

  I was. My father started taking over manufacturing operations, and then we started just getting help.

• 39:42Guy Raz?

  You had to hire people?

• 39:43Speaker 01

  We, oh, yeah, we had to hire people. And we were really riding a great wave.

• 39:47Guy Raz?

  You were already getting a lot of attention at that point?

• 39:49Speaker 01

  I mean, we were two years in. We were basically a national brand now.

• 39:53Guy Raz?

  What was your revenue in year two?

• 39:55Speaker 01

  Um, year two, I want to say like five to seven...

• 40:01Guy Raz?

  Million dollars?

• 40:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'd say about five.

• 40:03Guy Raz?

  Year two?

• 40:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, we were jumping.

• 40:06Guy Raz?

  Crazy growth?

• 40:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 40:10Guy Raz?

  Was your whole life, from like 2000 to launch, and then in the middle of this, like 2005, 2006, were you working like crazy? Or by the time you're hitting five to seven million in sales, were you like kind of kicking back and you and your dad sort of clinking champagne glasses and saying, "All right, we can chill out a little bit"?

• 40:32Speaker 01

  No. Never. The bigger we got, the more I felt like we could never rest on our laurels. And I just felt like I had to work as hard as I could because I was leading our team. And if I wasn't showing that I'm working hard and showing up every day, then how could I ask people that did that for me?

• 40:53Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 40:54Speaker 01

  You know, we're, we're building a company. We can't say, sorry, we're not available until Friday. You answer the phone anytime somebody calls.

• 41:02Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 41:03Speaker 01

  I mean, you know, some of these big retailers would call in the most random moments.

• 41:08Guy Raz?

  And say, hey, we need more.

• 41:09Speaker 01

  We're interested. We'd like to bring you in. Can you come out and meet us at our national headquarters?

• 41:14Guy Raz?

  And of course, you'd have to go.

• 41:15Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 41:15Guy Raz?

  So as you continue to grow, you're doing five, seven, 10, I don't know, 20 million, 30 million. How many employees did you eventually hire?

• 41:27Speaker 01

  We had about 26 in sales and marketing. And then manufacturing had about 75.

• 41:35Guy Raz?

  Yeah. You, in 2008, I guess, you were approached, or starting and maybe even earlier than that, you started to get approached by big companies that were interested in talking to you. You did eventually sell to General Mills, which I want to get to in a sec, but they were not the only company that approached you.

• 41:57Speaker 01

  They were not. The first phone call I got from a really large company was in early 2005, so like a year and a half in.

• 42:09Guy Raz?

  Wow. And they said, hey, we want to talk to you.

• 42:12Speaker 01

  My, one of my investor friends who worked for us was answering the phones. And she said, so and so from this company's on the phone. And I went, what? And it was...

• 42:23Guy Raz?

  A big, huge company.

• 42:26Speaker 01

  Yeah. It's a competitor of General Mills. And... I was in shock. I didn't, I, it never occurred to me that I would sell my company or be approached by these big companies. It just, it wasn't in where my mind was.

• 42:42Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 42:43Speaker 01

  And then it became a distraction in the middle of growing the company and running it. And, and so, you know, my business partners and I had to decide, were we really going to be serious entertaining an offer? Or were we just, you know, because it's just too much distraction.

• 43:00Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 43:00Speaker 01

  So, we finally decided in 2007 that we would entertain an offer if it was the right company, if we felt like it was the right company, because we didn't have to sell. We were a very, you know, financially stable company.

• 43:17Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 43:17Speaker 01

  But for me, I was starting to get really tired and just, I was, I was getting worn down.

• 43:25Guy Raz?

  I bet. And, and I mean, you had spent most of, or all of, virtually all of your 30s really just grinding this out, right? And so presumably you wanted to kind of just focus on yourself a little bit?

• 43:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, I, I just wanted a little relief, I think. And, and then we started to talk to some of these companies. And then I met with General Mills. And I just knew the day I walked in that building and how they approached me and the meeting we had, I knew, I felt that there was a connection and authenticity, that if there were a company that were big, that they would be a great fit. I felt like they understood my brand and respected it. And all the brands they'd had have been around forever. So they're not just churning brands out and putting them on the shelf and getting rid of them. I just felt the synergy.

• 44:20Guy Raz?

  I mean, almost nobody we've had on the show, with some exceptions, but almost nobody we've had on the show even thinks about money when they're starting their company. They're just committed to a product or a path, there's a passion, there's a problem they want to solve. And then one day, they find themselves with this money. They're financially secure. You start this thing at 30, 33, really.

• 44:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, 34.

• 44:46Guy Raz?

  34, 39, you sell it and all of a sudden you and your dad, you have this money and this thing that you built. Like, how did you wrap your head around it?

• 45:02Speaker 01

  It took a while.

• 45:05Speaker 01

  You know, during the sale process, I had to be, you know, they had to do all of kind of the research of our company without us telling our employees. And that was very nerve wracking. So I had to have this very compartmentalized life for three months. And I felt like I was going to have a nervous breakdown. But because you don't know if it's going to come together until like literally the day before. So that was very stressful period for me. Exciting, but also really unknown. And then we put a deal together and that was the day before I turned 40.

• 45:43Speaker 01

  And then all of a sudden, I had to go from running the ship to realizing that a whole nother team of people wanted, needed to come in and do that. And I needed to let them do that. As a result, you know, I had a little boy. I'm involved in his life. I, you know, I get to spend time pursuing other things important to me.

• 46:06Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 46:06Speaker 01

  And still keep my hand in the business and do the things that I love for it, but without all the stress.

• 46:12Guy Raz?

  Yeah. And you go into any 7-Eleven or any Whole Foods or Safeway or Trader Joe's, there are Lar-bars right by the cash register, everywhere. Your name on this thing, on this brand, on this product.

• 46:29Speaker 01

  I actually have, I was in Target one day with my son. This is a couple of years ago and, you know, he's, he was six at the time. And we were, you know, wandering around, buying whatnot. And then he saw the Lar-bars and he said,

• 46:47Speaker 01

  "Did you make all these bars for the store?" And I said, "Well, yes, indirectly, yes." And, you know, it was the first time the light bulb went off for him about what I had done and what Lar- you know, he'd seen them at our house. But to see him in the store and it was, it was really exciting. It was a really positive moment.

• 47:08Guy Raz?

  Has he ever had a Snickers?

• 47:11Speaker 01

  Yes, he has had a Snickers. And he does love them.

• 47:15Speaker 01

  He has.

• 47:19Guy Raz?

  Laura, how much of what happened to you is because of luck? And how much because of your skill?

• 47:28Speaker 01

  I mean, I feel lucky that I have opportunity in my life and that I've surrounded myself with people that care about me. And that, you know, along the way, when people thought I was completely out of my mind for starting an energy bar company, I remember thinking to myself, you know, you need to surround yourself with people that believe in you. It's really important. And actually, I remember thinking to myself, I have more to lose if I don't find out than I do if I try this and it doesn't work. And I'm so glad that, for whatever reason, I had that in my mind because it compelled me to move forward and make Larabar happen.

• 48:13Guy Raz?

  Laura American, founder of Larabar. By the way, if you've ever struggled with how to pronounce Larabar, maybe you thought it was Larabar, you can blame that umlaut above the A in Lara, you know, like the one used in Haagen Dazs or Molly Crew, which serves no real purpose or function. Lara just thought it looked pretty cool.

• 48:54Guy Raz?

  And please do stick around because in just a moment, we're going to hear from you about the things you're building.

• 49:02Speaker 02

  In 1987, dozens of federal agents surrounded a trailer park in Ozark, Missouri. Their target: a white supremacist threatening violent revolution.

• 49:11Speaker 03

  I have eight teams of Freedom Fighters prepared to start a race war nationwide.

• 49:15Speaker 02

  The agents fired tear gas, arrested him, and found a massive arsenal.

• 49:19Speaker 04

  C4 plastic explosives, hand grenades, thousands of rounds of ammunition.

• 49:24Speaker 02

  So years later, why did the FBI stop watching him? That story on Embedded from NPR.

• 49:30Guy Raz?

  Hey, thanks so much for sticking around because it's time now for How You Built That. And today, we're updating a story that first ran about a year ago. And it starts more than 20 years ago, when Jerry Stellenberg was a student at Virginia Tech, and he and his friends would hang out at the Student Center.

• 49:46Speaker 05

  And there were pinball machines around the pool tables. And all my friends, while we were playing pool, they'd take a break and go over and play pinball. And I thought they were just throwing money away.

• 49:55Guy Raz?

  But one night, one of his friends finally talked him into playing a game, just one game of pinball.

• 50:02Speaker 05

  Begrudgingly, I walked over, and geez, it must have been just a minute or two, but had the time of my life, and I kind of got hooked immediately.

• 50:09Guy Raz?

  And what he loved about it was that it was kind of a physical game. You could manipulate the flippers to keep the ball in play. But Jerry was a tech guy, a computer engineer, and there was something about pinball that started to bug him.

• 50:24Speaker 05

  While the ball's rolling around this painted piece of wood, it's not doing anything other than just rolling.

• 50:30Guy Raz?

  Which, by the way, has been perfectly acceptable for the legions of pinball players who've loved the game for decades. But Jerry couldn't shake the feeling that the game could somehow be reimagined. And so in 2009, when touchscreen tablets started to get popular, he got an idea.

• 50:48Speaker 05

  So I saw that technology, and I wanted to figure out how to implement that in a pinball machine, where we could take the physical pinball and have it interacting with graphics in the same way that your finger does on a tablet computer.

• 50:59Guy Raz?

  So Jerry set out to do just that.

• 51:01Speaker 05

  So I started with one friend, who's a mechanical guy, and we connected with an audio engineer, a very popular audio engineer.

• 51:09Guy Raz?

  And after three years, working nights and weekends, Jerry and his friends built a pinball game where you could use physical buttons and flippers to launch an actual ball over an LCD display.

• 51:21Speaker 05

  So that the ball, while it's rolling towards the physical devices... Could interact with these virtual objects.

• 51:29Guy Raz?

  And one of the games they developed is called Rocks, which is kind of a riff on the popular video game Asteroids.

• 51:36Speaker 05

  Where you take the physical pinball, and as it's rolling around the playfield surface, it's interacting with images of asteroids on the screen. And mind you, there's still a physical component of this game, so the ball's still rolling towards physical targets. But we enhanced that experience with the virtual.

• 51:53Guy Raz?

  As their prototype got better and better, Jerry and his team decided to show it off at a pinball festival in Frisco, Texas.

• 52:00Speaker 05

  And so many people came to us and thought it was amazing. People stayed there and played it for hours.

• 52:05Guy Raz?

  And what's kind of surprising here is that up to this point, Jerry wasn't really thinking about selling these machines. He and his friends had been mostly doing it for fun.

• 52:15Speaker 05

  But I was fortunate enough to have an aunt and uncle who saw the early prototype, and they called me, actually, after the show. And they said, hey, if you want to try this, then we're willing to give you some money to get started.

• 52:26Guy Raz?

  And so with a very generous investment from Uncle Gary and Aunt Diane, Jerry was able to quit his day job in tech and pay a small team of engineers to build the pinball machines. And in 2016, four years after that show in Texas, their company shipped out their first machines to a handful of fans.

• 52:44Speaker 05

  It doesn't need to be a billion-dollar company to make me happy. I'd be happy just selling a few hundred machines a year, making it a lifestyle business, and giving people something new and different and exciting.

• 52:54Guy Raz?

  Jerry's pinball machine is called the P3. The company is called Multimorphic, and it's based out of Austin, Texas. And when we first ran the story, Jerry's hope was to get his machines into bars and restaurants, the same types of places where he discovered pinball. Well, this year, they're doing onsite trials at Dave and Buster's. And they're also about to release their first online product, a multiplayer pinball game.

• 53:20Guy Raz?

  To hear more about Multimorphic or hear previous episodes, head to our podcast page, howibuiltthis.npr.org. And of course, if you want to tell us your story, go to build.npr.org. And thanks so much for listening to the show this week. You can subscribe at Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. And while you're there, please do give us a review. You can also write to us at [email protected]. And if you want to send a tweet, it's at howibuiltthis or at Guy Raz. Our show was produced this week by Ramtin Arablouei, who also composed the music. Thanks also to Candice Lim, Julia Carney, Saz Meshkhanfor, Neva Grant, and Jeff Rogers. Our intern is Sequoia Carrillo. I'm Guy Raz, and you've been listening to How I Built This.