YB Team

YouBar Client Stories

Discover what our clients have to say

Our clients' privacy is extremely important to us at YouBar, and we sign NDAs to ensure all information remains confidential. We publish these testimonials with the full permission of the clients we have quoted -- on the basis that they would be used anonymously.  

"The YouBar team helped us go from recipe to market in just six months"

I have more than 15 years’ experience as a dietician and personal trainer, and I wanted to create a protein bar brand that exemplified the nutritional advice I give my clients. And so, I decided to pursue the dream of launching a bar business. After getting a lot of great advice, I decided the best way to bring the bars to market was to hire a co-packer. I wanted to find a partner that had a number of complex certifications (like SQF and Organic) in order to support my retail ambitions, and after looking at several of them, determined that YouBar was the best fit for me and my new company. The YouBar team helped us go from recipe to market in just six months, and they helped with everything from professionalizing our formulas to FDA compliance (including prop 65 advice) to packaging and final product testing. I look forward to continuing our relationship and would recommend YouBar to anyone new to this type of business.

- Founder of a popular brand of bars in the Keto-friendly dietary space

"They are an innovation house, business partner and manufacturer all rolled into one."

"Finding the right co packer for my product was the first biggest challenge I encountered when trying to launch my protein bar business to retail stores and hit the volumes that were expected from me as I grew. I spent almost an entire year interviewing lots of different manufacturers, and then coming to a dead end with all of them because they couldn’t provide me with the amount of help that I needed to take me all the way from professionalizing my formulas to designing FDA compliant packages to getting the certifications that are core to my business. Hours of research, phone calls and questions were absolutely exhausting. I only wish I had found YouBar sooner. YouBar is so much more than a standard co-packer. They are an innovation house, business partner and manufacturer all rolled into one. From basically the first time I contacted YouBar, and spoke to Emily on the phone, I knew I had found my bar manufacturing partner.

- CEO of a fast-growing brand of protein bars sold in GNC, Sprouts and on Amazon

"...we’re defining trends and not just following them."

I have been a product developer in the CPG space for over 20 years and I’ve personally overseen the co-packer search for snack products at several of the largest food companies in the United States. In the 1990’s and 2000’s, this process was cumbersome but straightforward. I’d usually take the product development brief designed by my firm’s team to a food consultancy and they’d work with us to come up with a formula, packaging options, have focus groups and then go on a long (and almost always frustrating) co-packer search. It would typically take around 18-24 months to get a product on the shelves and it was hard to launch new ideas or pivot based on market trends. But it worked back then because everything that was sold on grocery store shelves was in the same super-long development pipeline and so there was no fast-to-market competition. In recent years, however, small start-up snack brands are popping up everywhere and launching direct to consumer snack concepts on Amazon. And these ‘start ups’ are beating the types of companies I work for over and over again when it comes to new trends (like Paleo and Keto). I got so frustrated by failing to strike when the iron was hot on multiple trends that I finally decided to call the innovation house/co-packer that I knew several of these start-ups were using (based on my industry contacts). It was YouBar. At first, I thought YouBar must be cutting corners to get products out so fast. But I soon discovered they weren’t. They’re SQF certified, organic certified and all-in run one of the most efficient operations I’ve seen in the food space. The way they cut new product pipeline time from 18 months to 6 months is simply by handing everything from innovation to manufacturing to regulatory compliance themselves and not wasting months on goose-chasing 3rd party ‘partner’ searches.  After talking with Emily on the phone and then flying out to meet Anthony (the CEO) and the rest of the team in person in LA, I started working with them for the large company I work for. It’s been mind-blowingly great. We finally have products on the shelves as fast as the start-ups and we’re defining trends and not just following them. I can’t imagine going back to the old model ever again.

 - VP of New Product Development for a prominent snack food brand with national distribution in Whole Foods, Costco and Target

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