For Ignite Bar founder Nicole Zohdi, nutrition and fitness have always been important. It took on extra importance when she was diagnosed with an autoimmune disorder during her senior year of college at George Washington University. What did that mean? No more snack foods. No more late night pizza. Only a strict five food diet. “Mentally, I was going insane!” says Nik. “It gets exhausting to eat grass-fed beef, spinach, kale, raw almonds and wild fish every single day for 365 days!”
Deciding this simply wasn’t enough, Nicole created a snack food brand that would bring back the joys of eating to her healthy diet. Today, this company is known as Ignite Bars, officially founded in 2018.
All Ignite bars are heavy in essential micronutrients, low in sugar, and high in protein. Plus, they taste great! Known as superfood crunch bars, Ignite Bars offers those with a healthy sweet tooth four indulgent flavors: Salted Chocolate, Caramel Almond Chia, Peanut Cinnamon Hemp, and the new BlueBerry Vanilla Almond. “The snacks we consume shouldn’t be flooding us with sugar! At the same time, healthy snacks shouldn’t be boring or gross to eat!” Nicole told us in explaining her products.
How did this recent graduate go from a five-food diet to building a snack-food manufacturing company? As is the case for all successful food businesses, through trial, error, and many taste tests.
Nicole launched her first health bar in 2018. While the response to the bar was mixed, she learned several valuable lessons. Firstly, people loved the superfood crunch. It reminded them of their favorite childhood snacks, similar to a rice krispies treat or cereal bar. Secondly, product positioning and packaging matters a lot. Her first bar highlighted the health aspects instead of the taste, a lesson she learned while demoing and talking directly with her consumers.
Building off of what she learned, Nicole spent countless hours in the kitchen, finding the right mix of micronutrient ingredients that fit her vision and packaging that better told the crunchy story! Drawing knowledge from research and her own restrictive diet, Nicole committed to using only keto-friendly ingredients. This resulted in each bar being loaded with protein fibers and micronutrients that are both healthy and tasty. She finally found a viable alternative to the unhealthy ingredients found in a lot of other “health” foods. Compare the 22g of sugar in a Clif bar to the 3g of sugar in an Ignite Bar, and the difference becomes obvious.
Ignite Bars are available at Whole Foods Market, Compass Coffee, Union Kitchen, and online.
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