"Enthusiasm is excitement with inspiration, motivation, and a pinch of creativity." Bo Bennett
Why Bars?
For years, our co-owner Megan made nut butter-based energy bars for on-the-go snacks and post-workout treats for herself and fellow triathlete friends. When Mark started making handcrafted nut butters, it was only natural that Megan started using Big Spoon Roasters nut butters as a base for her bars. Any cook knows that a recipe is only as good as its ingredients. Now, Megan had a source for truly fresh-roasted nut butter. She added homemade granola, dried fruit, quinoa, grass-fed whey protein, and honey and found that the resulting bars were remarkably delicious- far better than anything she could find on the shelves.
Knowing that other athletes would love to have a snack that was as tasty as it was nutritious, Megan and Mark decided to make extra to sell at the weekly Big Spoon Roasters farmers market stand. Compared to the bars on the market at that time, with long lists of hard-to-pronounce, processed ingredients, and uninspiring flavor, it’s no surprise that the Big Spoon bars were a hit. In fact, a small group of customers would show up at the start of the market and buy their whole stock each week!
Scaling Up!
Realizing that it wasn’t sustainable to make such tiny batches for only a few customers, Mark & Megan made a plan to scale bar production. They invested in specialized equipment for mixing, hand pressing, and cutting the bars and trained their small team on how to make them. In 2014, our Cherry Pecan and Apricot Pepita nut butter bars made their official debut as part of the Big Spoon Roasters line-up. We were so grateful to discover that customers loved the taste and appreciated the simple ingredient list.
New and Improved
Always seeking to improve, in 2018, we launched an evolved bar lineup featuring revamped versions of Cherry Pecan and Apricot Pepita, as well as two new bars, Figgy Chai and Cranberry Cashew. The new bars use 60% less packaging than the previous generation and contain non-GMO plant-based protein. They also have a softer texture and longer shelf-life, all while maintaining our strict ingredient, in-house production, and quality standards. These changes reflect our mission for our products from the start: to bring our dedication to ingredient integrity, quality, and incredible flavor to an on-the-go snack. We believe that just because a snack is convenient, it doesn’t have to sacrifice, integrity, flavor, or freshness. Our goal is to make the kind of bar you’d make at home if you only had the time!