LÄRABAR: Lara Merriken

How I Built This with Guy Raz

Guy Raz | Wondery

Business

4.8 • 31.1K Ratings

🗓️ 19 March 2018

⏱️ 55 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In 2000, Lara Merriken was 32, recently divorced, and without a job when she decided to make energy bars by mixing cherries, dates, and almonds in her Cuisinart. Eventually, she perfected the recipe and launched her company: LÄRABAR. After just two years, the company was bringing in millions in revenue. In 2008, she sold to General Mills, but stayed on to help grow LÄRABAR into one of the biggest energy bar brands in the U.S. Plus, for our postscript "How You Built That", how two brothers from Guinea, West Africa founded a company that makes Ginjan, a spicy-sweet juice from their boyhood, which mixes pineapple and ginger. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey, Prime Members, you can listen to how I built this early and ad-free on Amazon Music.
0:07.0	Download the app today.
0:09.0	New Year's is here, and with it brings the possibility of change.
0:13.0	As one behavioral scientist put it, first starts are really powerful.
0:17.0	So as you head into 2023, LifeKit is a great resource to help you plan your life and tackle changes, both big and small.
0:24.0	Listen to the LifeKit podcast from NPR.
0:30.0	What happened to that name?
0:36.0	Well, the trademarking attorney called me at the 11th hour, and we were getting ready to launch.
0:42.0	It was the year 2002 summer, and she said, I think you're going to need to change the name.
0:48.0	And I just thought you're joking, right? I've left working at Whole Foods, and we're supposed to be launching, but we don't launch.
0:57.0	And everybody's backing out because nothing's happening.
1:02.0	From NPR, it's how I built this, a show about innovators, entrepreneurs, idealists, and the stories behind the movements they built.
1:17.0	I'm Guy Raaz and I today show how Laura Merrican threw dates, cashews, and dried cherries into her cuisine art, and turned that mushy mix into Laura bars.
1:29.0	One of the best-selling energy bars in America.
1:38.0	So if you've recently walked to the energy bar section of the supermarket, you might be surprised or rather overwhelmed by the number of choices.
1:47.0	I mean for starters, there are hundreds of different types of energy bars, which is kind of crazy if you think about their protein bars and paleo bars and whole 30 and vegan,
1:56.0	and gluten-free, and cacao infused with matcha powder. There is probably an energy bar out there for each and every one of us.
2:05.0	And that whole revolution, it really got started in the 1990s with Cliffbar.
2:10.0	And if you've heard previous episodes of this show, you might have heard our interview with Gary Ericsson, who actually invented those Cliffbars.
2:16.0	Well in the early 2000s, Laura Merrican came up with a pretty simple concept that shockingly wasn't really out there in the world.
2:26.0	It was an energy bar made from two or three Rhine gradients like all men's or cashews, all bound together with dates.
2:34.0	Now Laura bars may not seem like a big deal today, right? You can get them pretty much anywhere at any 7-11.
	...

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