Anthony Flynn, YouBar: ‘If you DON’T got it, flaunt it!’

First we caught up with Anthony Flynn, co-founder & CEO of ‘design your own nutrition bar’ company YouBar.

What keeps you awake at night?​

The ‘holy grail’ of convenience food is to create an item that offers the nutritional value of the ideal meal (ie; ‘wild caught salmon and spinach’ or ‘lentils, rice and kale’) that is also totally shelf life stable and portable. I don’t think I’ll ever sleep until I crack this!​

But we are definitely getting closer; we can now create a bar that offers 20g of grass fed whey protein and just 2g of sugar, and includes superfoods like brown rice protein and spinach in it. However, we still haven’t perfected the macros so they line up precisely, and the ‘mouthfeel’ isn’t exactly the same as what you’d get from the actual meal. In short, to quote one of my favorite movies of all time (“Charlie and the Chocolate Factory”), I want the ‘shnazberries’ to taste like ‘shnazberries’!​

What trends are you tracking?​

The huge trend is the food industry is what I like to call: ‘If you DON’T got it, flaunt it!’ Consumers are increasingly looking for foods that are created ‘as nature intended’ and don’t have the things that have come to be synonymous with processed convenience foods. As a result, in 2016, we are going to see an increasing emphasis on food items that are “Non GMO,” “Gluten Free” and “Soy Free.”​

In terms this ‘pro-nature’ trend, it is also increasingly important to consumers that the animals they eat had ‘natural lives.’ We are going past ‘cage free eggs’ into much broader range with this including: ‘pasture raised bison,’ ‘wild caught salmon’ and ‘grass fed milk.’ ​