Rebrand deal helped us raise the bar in the protein snack world

Niall Harty grew up in Patrickswell in Limerick and studied mechanical engineering at the Institute of Technology, Tralee. Being elected president of the student union, with staff and a budget, provided a business education too.
After graduating he submitted an idea for a subscription-based snack food company to the Kerry round of Ireland’s Best Young Entrepreneur — and won the competition.
“Turning it into reality was harder; I knew I needed help,” he says. He signed up for a postgraduate certificate in food, nutrition and health at University College Dublin and at the same time got a job with the local enterprise office in Kerry.
All the while he developed his idea for a healthy snack business, making trail mixes and protein balls in his kitchen. “I was looking at the market in the USA because health trends there land here five years later.”
By 2016 he had developed three protein squares and “a brand to wrap around them: the Caveman Food Company”.
He moved to a community kitchen, used the €10,000 he won in the IBYE competition for packaging, and started selling at a farmers’ market in Tralee. “They sold out. It was the best day of my life,” he says.
Two weeks later he got a cease-and-desist letter from a US company with a similar name: “That’s the day I learnt about trademarks.”
It sent him back to the drawing board but this time he developed a bar format, on the basis that the products would be easier to stack on shelves. Introducing milk-based protein to his recipe, he relaunched as Origin Protein Bars.
A €15,000 bank loan got him his first piece of equipment but that meant he needed his own production facility. He approached the local enterprise office, where he previously worked, for grant assistance. “They refused me four times but I kept coming back,” he says.
With the help of a priming grant he rented a unit at the Kerry Food Hub and got creative about packaging. “Most bar wrapper machines cost more than €30,000, which I couldn’t manage,” he says. Then he spotted a sachet of face cream stuck to a magazine. “I just thought, what if I put my bars in a sachet and just used a heat sealer machine, which was much cheaper, to seal it?” Problem solved.
On his first day of production he made 90 bars, put them in the boot of his car, and started selling.
When he had 40 supermarkets and cafés on his client list, he hired his first staff and together they produced 1,000 bars a day.
At that point he met and joined forces with Ross McDowell, founder of a cured-beef product that targeted the same customer base and of which Harty was a fan. Harty asked McDowell, who had recently sold his stake in that company, if he would join as a co-founder.
Together they participated in Food Works, a Bord Bia accelerator. But feedback from focus groups flagged up another issue. “People wondered why it was called Origin,” he says.
With no budget for another rebrand, he got creative, approaching a brand design agency, B&B Studio in London, to see if it would do the work in return for a small stake. It agreed.
“It was the best thing we ever did. They got 6 per cent of the business and we got €100,000 of design work and market research,” he says.
All Real Nutrition launched in October 2021. Today the business employs 14 people and sells to retail and food service across Ireland. Eighteen months ago it began exporting to America, where it sells in 600 stores, including the Sprouts Farmers Market grocery chain.
Now based in a 6,500 sq ft production unit in Farranfore, Co Kerry, it has a range of bars, a suite of automated equipment, turnover of €2.5 million and a full senior team.
“Up until this year we were still doing it all by hand. Production is not the issue now. Our focus is on growing.”