Bondi couple’s ‘weird’ idea makes $3.5 million

The options eight years ago were basically an apple or a carrot, as something off the supermarket shelf was sure to be full of sugar or artificial ingredients.

It was a problem nutritionist and fellow PT Veronika Larisova was also struggling to answer.

So, along with Libby’s husband Justin Babet, they set out to create a snack people could pick off the shelf that would be healthy.

Unusually they turned to LinkedIn to find a food technologist and together they came up with a meat-based bar, which Mr Babet said was an “instant hit”.

But he revealed creating the bars – made either with beef or lamb at the time – wasn’t without its problems.

“The challenge when you are creating a snack bar is you need it to stick together. So if you are going to create a bar, you need artificial fillers or thickeners to stick it together, so a natural bar uses dried fruit or syrups and the problem is then you have a product that is 30 or 40 per cent sugar,” he told news.com.au.

“Artificial fillers means it’s ultra-processed food so it might look healthy but it’s not particularly good for you. The first solution was to do a dry jerky style product formed into a bar so it creates high protein, low carb and sugar, but the challenge with dried meat is they have nasty preservatives added.

“So we worked for food tech as way to make these dried and cured bars healthy.”

This launched their side hustle Chief Nutrition in 2015 where they sold the bars in their gym, in health food stores and through a wholesaler.

The 46-year-old said the business ticked along on the side without much time being put into it as they worked on other things and had two children, now aged four and one.

Then in 2018, Mr Babet decided to go into the business full-time along with their wholesaler and they started out by distributing other health food products for cashflow.

Then they offloaded that side of the business to focus on their own products full-time from January 2020.

During that time they had created a new snacking product – a nut butter-based collagen bar – which presented a number of challenges.

“When you use nut butters it either gets too moist as the natural oils from the nuts come out so you get this really slimy bar. Or it gets too dry so it gets way too crumbly and if you open a packet and have crumbs fall over your lap and if you’re driving along is not a great experience” he explained.

“It took a long time to get the formulation right so it tastes great and [has a] good texture. It’s why people use thickeners and other things as it solves the problems in an easy way – it’s basically a short cut, But those type of ingredients are really cheap.”

However, their bestseller is still their beef bar and it’s popular among a surprising group of people, Mr Babet said.

“I think being weird is a part of it. When we advertise on Facebook our ad leads with ‘WTF is a beef bar?’ It stands out and creates curiosity,” he said.

“There are plenty of other jerky and biltong products, but nothing like that in a bar. We found that more than 50 per cent of customers are female and the jerky segment is normally 80 per cent male-dominated.

“The bars have enabled us to open up that jerky section to broader people.”

The ads have been part of the key to their success with four million Aussies seeing one online in the past 12 months “which is quite huge for a little brand like us”, Mr Babet said.

The dad-of-two said the beef bar is also a good option to replace once of the “smelliest” healthy snack options out there.

“We found with customers that they are replacing that can of tuna in a handbag. If they are trying to be healthy and eat well – it’s much easier and less smelly to have a beef bar,” he said.

“It’s a bit of a novelty and you don’t always feel like a sweet snack, so we find a lot of people have beef bars for breakfast or lunch. I often keep some in the glove box to have on the road, so you feel like you’re having a proper meal.

“A 40g bar contains 80g of beef, so it’s basically like having a small steak,” he said. “A protein bar feels like a treat and it is mostly a bit of a treat, rather than a meal, and that has been the gap in the market.”

Moving on to Chief Nutrition just as the pandemic hit was “challenging and positive” for the brand, according to Mr Babet, who said sales at brick and mortar sites dried up instantly forcing them online.

At first they were making just $5000 to $10,000 a month before it jumped to $40,000.

They then hit $83,000 in one month which Mr Babet said was a “game-changer” as it allowed them to scale up the business in terms of production, packaging and even the team.

Within a year, the business was raking in $1 million for some months.

“When I look back on Covid, it kinda sucked at the time but I’m grateful at it in a way as forced us to take a particular path which in hindsight was to build our base online and build our audience and brand,” he said.

“We sell a lot more online than competitors in the marketplace that are much bigger, so it gives us an outsized footprint.”

The team scored a deal with Woolworths and some other major retailers like Ampol, Dan Murphy’s, BCF, Supercheap Auto and Harris Farm, which has doubled the business in the last nine months alone.

Chief Nutrition is currently making over $3.5 million per year.

Now, Mr Babet said they have their eyes set on becoming a global business – looking to the likes of Kind bars and Quest Nutrition, which have both been sold for over $1 billion.

“They are targeting a big market globally so we want to play in that sandpit,” he said.

“Long-term it would mean [being] in the US, New Zealand, Singapore and the Middle East by exporting and we are expecting that to grow that in the next 12 months.”

The beef bars come in two flavours – traditional and chilli – and Mr Babet said the plan is to expand this flavour range, while they are also investigating real food supplements that are freeze-dried.

The company is targeting reaching $10 million in revenue next year too.