David Versus: “I think RxBar had a great story and a great team," Peter Rahal says about his first act,"but this time around we are going to avoid some mistakes.”itting at a table at Balthazar in downtown Manhattan, Peter Rahal spears a piece of smoked salmon on his plate and ignores the nearby toast. The 38-year-old cofounder of nutrition bar brand RxBar thinks about protein constantly—and not just for his own health.
Rahal took the opportunity to create a new bar in October 2022, immediately after his 5-year non-compete agreement with Kellogg’s expired. He spent a year developing David with his cofounder, Zach Ranen, 27, under the guidance of Attia, who acts as the company’s Chief Science Officer. Rahal’s current iteration of David includes milk protein isolate, collagen and whey protein, and is held together with allulose and polydextrose.
The sale came at the start of a wave of health bar acquisitions: Simply Good Foods acquired Quest, a protein-based snack company, in 2019 for $1 billion, and He started investing in other companies in the food space, beginning with the prebiotic soda brand Olipop, which was founded in 2018, and is now valued at $200 million. Rahal says he has since invested roughly $50 million in about 100 different businesses, including ready-to-eat oats brand Mush and the better-for-you popcorn company LesserEvil.
Additionally, developing a product with a unique nutritional profile takes significant time, money and resources. Many new founders in the space aim to launch their brands as fast as possible, which means taking their ideas to outside developers who can expedite product manufacturing, according to“These founders often don't have a lot of funding to actually do the research, or the correct scientific partners to create what they want to,” French says.
The snack bar industry is growing—Jim Salera, an analyst at Stephens specializing in packaged foods, estimates the domestic market is currently about $10 billion in retail sales, up $2 billion from 2019—but it’s becoming murkier to define as more companies began using protein in existing products.