Lodi trio seeks cash to take bars national
It’s been nearly four years since Lodi ultra marathoners Nathan Flood and Jerimiah Patterson decided to create an energy bar that would boost their energy and help them get through their long runs.
“We were running races of 50, 70 and 100 miles and we would always take bars and supplements on our runs because we were out there for hours and hours, and we need to eat,” Flood said. “Everything just had a bunch of junk in it or it tasted terrible, so we started making the bars just for ourselves.”
The two never imagined that something they made in a studio apartment kitchen would have the potential to become a nationally distributed product. However, the energy bars have gained interest from several wellknown national retailers.
“We didn’t even intend on making a business out of it, but then people started asking us to make them because they like them so much ” Flood said.
Once their bars became popular, Flood and Patterson set up shop at the Lodi Farmers Market and were selling out every week.
For their first three years in business, Flood and Patterson prepared the bars by hand. They traveled to commercial kitchens spending three days out of the week making 500 to 1,000 bars. The bars sold out every week, so that became a routine for them until they were able to secure a manufacturer last summer.
“We just got to the point where we couldn’t keep up with orders and stores that wanted to start selling them,” Flood said.
The manufacturer is able to produce 50,000 bars for them in four hours. A year ago, they also brought on a third business partner, Gabriel DeAnda.
“We brought him on because he is like the business guy,” Flood said. “Me and Jerry were the ones with the idea and we made the bars and knew nutrition and stuff, but when we started realizing this was going to start taking off we brought him on to help us with business side of things.”
Now with the opportunity to take their bars national, they are seeking help from the public to raise the capital to make that dream a reality.
Despite garnering a lot of attention with their original flavor almond noir, an almond butter flavored bar with dark chocolate coating, they will have to produce two new flavors — coconutty, a coconut flavored bar with dark chocolate coating, and cafe mocha, a coffee flavored bar with chocolate coating — in order to go national.
“The problem with getting into national retail and bigger companies like that is that they need multiple flavors in order to bring that product on,” Flood said. “So we’re at this point right now where we have these big chains that want to carry us but they need the flavors. So we just launched a Kickstarter campaign to try and do some crowdfunding to raise the capital to actually produce the bars so they will take them on.”
Flood, Patterson and DeAnda held a Kickstarter launch party last Friday.
They will be at School Grounds Coffee shop on Saturday from 8 a.m. to noon promoting their bars. They will be providing the public with information on their campaign and give samples of their bars.
An additional promotional event will be held at the Five Window Beer Co. at the end of the month.
Flood said they will need at least $120,000 to produce the bars and the goal for their kickstarter campaign is $20,000. If they raise enough funding, it would only take 10 weeks for the manufacturer to produce the bars for national distribution.
Flood said they are half way to their Kickstarter goal but are still a ways away from their overall goal. If they are unable to garner enough funding, Flood said that they will consider taking on an investor.
“We have options, but we really would like to do everything ourselves and not give away part of the company, since we’ve worked so hard over these four years,” Flood said “We’ve got this far on our own. We want to see what we can do on our own before we bring in outside investments.”
For more information on the bars visit vicia.myshopify
.com. To pledge to their campaign visit www.kickstarter. com/projects/viciaenergybar/vicia-energy-bar.