21-07-2025
The Little Food Lab Fueling the Big Protein Boom
Anthony Flynn had already watched a series of food fads rise and fall. His company, YouBar, has long produced snacks for brands that cater to the popular diets of the moment. He dabbled in no-carb bars. He did paleo pastries. When keto had its moment, he tested so many high-fat recipes that he had to place spittoons in his office. ('You can only eat so much coconut oil,' he said.)
Mr. Flynn was agnostic about the trends, though each boosted his business. Sure, he could make date-sweetened granola bites. Yes, he could produce a no-sugar cake pop. But then came protein, the nutrient that prompted him to start his business — and that has recently transformed it.
'It's just been an insane amount of demand,' said Mr. Flynn, as he walked through YouBar's headquarters in the San Gabriel Valley of Southern California this spring. 'We cannot build lines fast enough.'
Mr. Flynn, 41, started making his own protein bars as a teenager, trading recipes with his mother — a health-conscious and Level Two certified snowboarding instructor — on drives to and from a ski resort outside the Los Angeles neighborhood where he grew up.
After he graduated from college in 2006, he convinced her to turn their kitchen experimentation into a business, spinning up a web-based retailer that he called YouBar. It whipped up bars for CrossFit fans and ultramarathoners and sold them in packs of 12. Customers could choose their base and mix-ins, building the precise bar to meet their nutritional needs.
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