WBE Feature – Women‘s Month & Stress Awareness: UNiTE

Intro: [00:00:07] Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX Studios, it’s time for Women In Motion. Brought to you by WBEC-West. Join forces. Succeed together. Now, here’s your host.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:27] Lee Kantor here. Another episode of Women In Motion, and this is going to be a good one. But before we get started, it’s important to recognize our sponsor, WBEC-West. Without them, we couldn’t be sharing these important stories. Today on the show we have Clara Paye with UNiTE. Welcome.

Clara Paye: [00:00:44] Thank you. Happy to be here.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:45] I am so excited to learn what you’re up to. Tell us a little bit about UNiTE. How are you serving folks?

Clara Paye: [00:00:51] So, UNiTE, if people aren’t familiar out there, is a protein bar company with a twist. So, our protein bars are not your average run of the mill vanilla and peanut butter and chocolate. We like to incorporate global flavors to welcome everybody into wellness. So, our flavors would be churro, baklava, bubble tea, Mexican chocolate, and peanut butter and jelly, because that’s my American heritage also. And our goal is to just bring everybody into wellness, make protein bars that reflect our beautiful multicultural world.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:23] So, what’s your backstory? How did you get into this line of work?

Clara Paye: [00:01:27] So, like a lot of entrepreneurs, I had no food background other than, you know, just being a home cook. But it was just born out of personal need. I was diagnosed with a gluten intolerance a few years ago and was trying to look for diet compliant food. I ended up working with a nutritionist who told me gluten free foods to eat were like protein bars. And I would go to the grocery store and try to find one that I liked. And one day I just realized that they are all the same flavor. It didn’t matter which brand I chose, they were always chocolate or chocolate-peanut butter or double chocolate chip or just kind of all in the same flavor profiles.

Clara Paye: [00:02:03] And I’m an immigrant. I was not born in the U.S. I was born in Sudan in Africa. I came here at the age of five. And I have always loved to incorporate my cultural foods with American cultural foods and just thought that, you know, nobody had done this yet. Why hadn’t there been any kind of more interesting flavors out on the shelves? And thought, you know, I could do it. It can’t be that hard.

Lee Kantor: [00:02:25] So, was it that hard?

Clara Paye: [00:02:28] You know, I think there’s, like, such a benefit to being naive and starting out. I happen to pick a super competitive category. Grocery retail is super cutthroat, low margin. But it’s been more fun than it is hard. And I think the fun makes the hard work worth it. And when I get emails from consumers who say thank you for making a protein bar for us, thank you for seeing us, for validating us, it becomes about more than just creating a product. It’s about living out a purpose and a vision and a mission.

Lee Kantor: [00:02:57] So, what was it like at the beginning not having the background, how did you make a bar? Like, how did you even begin this?

Clara Paye: [00:03:06] Simply. I mean, I went to Trader Joe’s and I got one ingredient I would put in my bar if I was making it for my family. And I got a Cuisinart out, and I started just tinkering with ingredients. So, I put in some almond butter, some dates, some vanilla, and cinnamon and started just creating my own recipes and testing them on my friends. My poor friends, I probably went through 20 different flavors on them.

Clara Paye: [00:03:35] When they finally started to like them, I got a little bit more serious and found a food scientist to help me take my kitchen formula and make it kind of a manufacturable formula, manufacturing ready formula. And she went to Trader Joe’s, too, so we were working off the same ingredient list. And that’s how we did it. We just created a prototype.

Lee Kantor: [00:03:53] And did you like, go to farmers’ markets and festivals to just test it or did you go right from your kitchen and your friends to let me see if I can get it on a shelf somewhere?

Clara Paye: [00:04:04] Yeah. It went straight from my kitchen to shelves. And so, that’s probably not the best path for most food entrepreneurs. But I knew that I didn’t want to make it myself. I knew that I wanted a very qualified packaging and producing partner – it’s called the Coleman in our space – to make it for me so that there was no liability or no way for me to kind of mess it up. I wanted the highest level manufacturing.

Clara Paye: [00:04:32] And so, we had the product made, and I was sent to debut it at a large expo in natural products called Natural Products Expo in March of 2020, and literally had our booth set up ready to sell my product, and COVID happened. So, our business was born at the intersection of the COVID pandemic. So, kind of a really crazy launch story.

Lee Kantor: [00:04:53] Now, those kind of food, I’ve been to several of those trade shows where there’s a lot of vendors but it gives you a chance to put your product in front of people that could buy large amounts of it. Being in COVID, were you able to do that? Obviously, you couldn’t do it in person that kind of sampling, but were you just sending out samples left and right?

Clara Paye: [00:05:14] So, during COVID, if you remember, grocery stores and everything were more worried about keeping toilet paper on shelves and Lysol. Nobody was buying bars because consumers weren’t on the go, so the category took a major hit. But I kind of saw the opportunity in using our bars for the power of good. So, I just really started donating as many bars as I could to hospitals and food banks. You know, I didn’t have any masks I could donate, but I could donate protein bars to help fuel our health workers and just started really spreading the product out through charitable contributions. And that kind of started to build our brand awareness.

Lee Kantor: [00:05:54] And so, you were building your brand awareness by a good group of people that are the potential purchasers of the brand in the long run.

Clara Paye: [00:06:03] Yeah. I didn’t even think about that, but that’s a great point, health workers and healthy people.

Lee Kantor: [00:06:09] Now, what was your first flavor?

Clara Paye: [00:06:13] Our first flavor, actually we launched with three, so they were churro, Mexican chocolate, and peanut butter and jelly.

Lee Kantor: [00:06:20] So, they forced you to put a chocolate in there? You couldn’t get around that?

Clara Paye: [00:06:25] No. For me, I wanted an interesting chocolate. Like chocolate is one of the most popular protein bar flavors that there are because people want to really eat a Snickers, but they’ll settle for a chocolate protein bar instead. And so, for me, if we were going to make a chocolate one, I wanted it to be interesting. And Mexican chocolate has really interesting flavor notes and a flavor profile that I just really love.

Lee Kantor: [00:06:47] And then, what is kind of the nutritional makeup of these bars?

Clara Paye: [00:06:54] So, the bars are under 200 calories, a minimum of 10 grams of protein, a good source of fiber, and, really, dietitian and nutritionist approved.

Lee Kantor: [00:07:05] And then, are they all gluten free or that was just what got you started?

Clara Paye: [00:07:10] Thanks for reminding me. They’re all gluten free, soy free, and free of artificial flavors, and anything artificial really. They’re very natural.

Lee Kantor: [00:07:18] And when did you start kind of getting some traction where you’re like, “You know what? I think this thing’s going to work out”?

Clara Paye: [00:07:26] So, there was no opportunity to really meet with grocery stores, but my local grocery store had a local program, and it was Bristol Farms. I don’t know if you’re familiar, but it’s a chain here in Southern California, where they look for local makers. And I said, I live here where your store is, would you help me spread the word about my product? And the local buyer loved it. And she gave me this huge display of protein bars, like, in June or July of that year, 2020. And we were able to sell so many bars and people really started to build traction. And then, later that year, I got a chance to get in front of Walmart, the world’s largest retailer, and they loved it, too, and they launched our product that next year.

Lee Kantor: [00:08:08] And then, how did you develop the packaging because it’s beautiful packaging?

Clara Paye: [00:08:14] Thank you. Yeah, I did it with a freelancer. So, I knew exactly what I wanted. I had a clear vision for the product. You know, when I think of global flavors, I think of color. And so, I think of like a Moroccan souk or a bazaar in Mexico City and those tall mounds of spices that are always very colorful. And in the protein bar space back then, it was very grays and whites and green, and people were really trying to show natural through just a lack of color. And I said, well, we’re going to stand out. We’re going to be the color on the protein bar aisle. And so, color is very important to our brand. And then, just really clear value proposition right on the packaging, so our packaging has served us well.

Lee Kantor: [00:08:59] And I think there’s some whimsy to it, too. It doesn’t look like those kind of corporate-y bars.

Clara Paye: [00:09:04] Yeah. It’s supposed to be fun. We’re food that you want to eat, not food you have to eat.

Lee Kantor: [00:09:08] Right. So, now, any advice for an aspiring food entrepreneur out there? Are there some kind of things that you’ve learned that you were like, “Well, if I could do this again, I probably would do it this way”?

Clara Paye: [00:09:21] I think in formulation. You know, how we started our conversation, I think, don’t get too married to your very first iteration. You’re going to launch and then you’re going to get a lot of consumer feedback, and obviously you want to have the best product when you launch, but be amendable to insights as you grow and as you learn to improve your product. And, really, taste is table stakes. It has to taste really great.

Lee Kantor: [00:09:49] Right. So, that’s a given, like you have to get that right to just play.

Clara Paye: [00:09:55] Right. And you’d be surprised, a lot of people think that you can just launch an average product and people will eat it just because it’s healthy. And they might try it once, but they won’t continue to eat it.

Lee Kantor: [00:10:04] Right. I think the consumer is so much more sophisticated now and their expectations are so much higher now.

Clara Paye: [00:10:10] Right. For sure.

Lee Kantor: [00:10:12] Now, how important is having kind of this brand mission that you have and the social impact that you’re shooting for? How important is that in the success of a brand like yours?

Clara Paye: [00:10:26] You know, consumers want to understand who the company is making their products are, and especially with food. I think in this Netflix era where there’s so many food documentaries and what you should eat and what you shouldn’t eat. Consumers are smarter than ever and they want to peel back the curtain and they want to know who’s making their food, how are they making it, what causes do they support. So, it is important. And I think brands that will emerge as leaders will have powerful social missions in addition to great products.

Lee Kantor: [00:11:04] Yeah. I think if you have a strong why that’s an edge in today’s market.

Clara Paye: [00:11:09] A hundred percent. And we’re not selling widgets here. Food is what brings people together. Food is how you nourish yourself and your family and those you love. So, it deserves a good analysis.

Lee Kantor: [00:11:23] And, also, it makes the customer feel good when they’re pulling it out of their bag at the gym. They’re signaling to their folks what kind of person they are as well. So, it has to be kind of authentically theirs as well.

Clara Paye: [00:11:37] I couldn’t agree more. We’d like to invite our community into creating our products. So, on the back of every single one of our packs is an email address, it’s hello@unitefood.com, and we invite our community to tell us what flavors we should make next. And I love getting those emails and I love learning what flavors people grew up with.

Lee Kantor: [00:11:55] So, have you been able to incorporate any of their flavors yet into your product mix?

Clara Paye: [00:11:59] Yeah. So, we’ve taken a lot of insights, and so in our innovation pipeline, we’ve got quite a few flavors developed. But people have said that they want to see more indulgent flavors and that’s what we kind of take.

Lee Kantor: [00:12:15] So, now are your neighbors your beta testers still or you’ve kind of got a whole new advisory board when it comes to beta testing?

Clara Paye: [00:12:26] It’s expanded a little bit. But I do love testing them on my neighbors. They’ve been with me from the very beginning. They’ve tasted every bar, every iteration, every change, and so I do trust them. But I also like to test on my kids because kids don’t lie and kids don’t pander. And if my kids like it, or our cousins like it, or friends’ kids like it, then I know it’s on the right track.

Lee Kantor: [00:12:49] And that’s another pro tip for those aspiring food entrepreneurs is, kids don’t lie. That’s a better focus group than your family.

Clara Paye: [00:12:58] A hundred percent.

Lee Kantor: [00:12:59] Now, can you share a little bit about why you chose to be involved with WBEC-West?

Clara Paye: [00:13:06] Well, when I started this business, you know, I didn’t see a lot of women represented in the food industry. And if they were and they raised funds, they quickly were diluted. And so, getting women-owned status was an important differentiator for me because my bigger mission is to inspire more women to become entrepreneurs, and to enter the food space, and enter just the business space, because I think women bring a unique point of view that will actually create a better business environment.

Lee Kantor: [00:13:39] Now, have you had a chance to collaborate with any of the women in the association?

Clara Paye: [00:13:45] Not too much. Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to attend the conference, but it’s on my list for next year. It’s a little bit too close to Expo West, which is our national large trade show for natural products. So, I can’t be in two places at once, but it is on top of my list.

Lee Kantor: [00:14:01] So, what do you need more of? How can we help you?

Clara Paye: [00:14:05] I think you guys are very supportive. I think it would be great to have more continuing education. You guys do a lot of that and a lot of great resources out there. And I think the trade shows that you do, where you bring partners who are looking for women-owned businesses to partner with, I think that’s really important. So, creating economic opportunities is probably what’s most important to women starting businesses.

Lee Kantor: [00:14:31] And then, what’s next for UNiTE?

Clara Paye: [00:14:34] We want to be the next household brand. We want to stand for diversity, inclusion, for a protein bar that people can trust, that is going to taste really great, that it’s going to give them the energy that they need to get through their day and their tasks, and to be just the bar that you reach for that’s your favorite and your kid’s favorite.

Lee Kantor: [00:14:55] And if somebody wants to learn more about UNiTE, the website or the way to kind of learn more on social media?

Clara Paye: [00:15:03] Yeah. You can look us up at unitefood.com or on Instagram, @unitefood. And if you want to follow my personal journey, I’m Clara Unite; on Instagram, @clara_unite; or on LinkedIn, Clara Paye.

Lee Kantor: [00:15:18] Well, Clara, thank you so much for sharing your story today. You’re doing such important work and we appreciate you.

Clara Paye: [00:15:23] Thank you, Lee. It was a pleasure to be on.

Lee Kantor: [00:15:26] All right. This is Lee Kantor. We’ll see you all next time on Women In Motion.