BOULDER – In 2003, Beryl Stafford was an unenthusiastic caterer looking for a more lucrative way to support herself and her then 14-year-old daughter, nicknamed Bobo. One Sunday afternoon, Bobo pulled out a cookbook and whipped up oatmeal treats to take to school. Her friends loved them, and their response got Stafford thinking. With a recipe makeover, she could create a better oat bar – one just as delicious – but with ingredients a cardiologist would love.

Now five years later, Bobo’s Oat Bars are sold in stores coast-to-coast, with sales of $500,000 annually. In 2008 so far, the company’s 5,000-square-foot kitchen/packaging/shipping facility in Boulder has shipped 400,000-plus oat bars in nine flavors to customers across the nation. “If I can do it, anybody can,” Stafford said. Until Bobo’s Bars came to be, she had “zero experience. ” After graduating from the University of Colorado at Boulder with a degree in history, she worked as a paralegal but retired from the working world when she got married. “ê spent the 10 years of my marriage playing tennis. “  The demands of single motherhood and dislike of catering stoked her ambition. “When I got divorced I had to make some money, and I didn’t want to go work at a bank,” she said.

When Stafford came up with the oat-bar idea, she went to her kitchen and got cooking. Her experimentation soon yielded a tasty and healthy treat. The oat bars are vegan and wheat-free and have substitutes for the original less-than-wholesome ingredients. She enlisted an artist friend to design a label and developed four variations of the bar, including the original flavor, coconut, cranberry and chocolate. Her first move was to offer her product to a select number of local shops. The managers at the Brewing Market, Boulder Co-op, Lucky’s and Lolita’s agreed to stock the bars, and customers bought them. Bobo’s was in business. Stafford got going with a small-business loan and then expanded slowly, keeping the financial risk minimal. “As sales grew, I borrowed more and paid off more,” she said.

About six months later, Stafford approached the bakery buyer at the local Whole Foods, and the response was unexpected. “The buyer said to me, ‘I have been buying your bars at the Co-op. I wondered when you’d bring them here. ‘”With that welcome, she made the leap to the big time. Before getting into Whole Foods, Stafford had to tweak her packaging to make it freezer safe, and include FDA-mandated nutritional information and proper UPC codes on the label. She learned the specifics of running her own business as needed. “You figure it out as you go,” she said. “I got advice, attended conferences. I asked questions. In Boulder, the natural-food manufacturers are a tight little circle. Everybody helps each other. “

One marketing tactic she employed early on was in-store product demos to introduce consumers directly to the distinct flavor and consistency of the Bobo Oat Bar – moist and chewy with more of a bakery flavor than the standard foil-wrapped energy bar. What immediately sets her bar apart, she said, is the clear package, which makes it seem like more of a home-baked treat than other oatmeal-containing competitors on the grocery shelf. She also thinks the taste helps. “I hired demo teams and did demos personally every single weekend. I was convinced if customers ate one bite of a Bobo’s bars, they would buy it because they are so yummy. “They are also healthy. One 3-ounce bar contains two servings of heart-healthy oatmeal. The bars are sweetened with sucanat (unrefined cane sugar) and brown rice syrup and are low on the glycemic index. “We call our bars a bowl of oatmeal to go,” Stafford said. To spread the word, she also took her treat on the road, attending the natural-products show Expo West and coffee trade shows.

By 2005, Bobo’s Oat Bars were stocked in regional Whole Foods and Vitamin Cottages and picked up for distribution in the Rocky Mountain area by UNFI, a natural-foods distributor. In 2007, UNFI East started distributing the bars to natural grocers throughout the eastern part of the United States, from Florida to Maine. In December 2008, UNFI West brought Bobo’s to the Pacific coast. The ever-increasing sales have meant that instead of procuring raw ingredients from a broker as Stafford did at the start, she shifted to buying directly from the manufacturers at a better price. Her staff has expanded to six, including four bakers, and baking goes on daily to keep up with demand.

Stafford now focuses on developing new bar flavors at a rate of about one a year, and she also handles direct sales to coffee shops and smoothie stores nationwide. Thanks to her efforts, Bobo’s Oat Bars are now in Nordstrom coffee shops, Seattle-based Emerald City and Smoothie King, a chain of 900 stores based in Louisiana. Jamie Stoller is the manager of the Brewing Market in the Basemar Shopping Center, and she said her customers are steady consumers of Bobo’s Oat Bars. “Many of them can’t eat wheat, and they are grateful for something that suits their diet. “As for the person who started it all, Alex (still known as Bobo to her mother) is 19 and attends college in San Francisco. Stafford sends her Bobos bars by the case to share with her roommates. Like her mother, Bobo’s favorite is the peanut butter bar. But among the customers for Bobo’s Oat Bars, all flavors are a hit, which means business, even in budget-constrained times, is brisk.

“In this down economy, people are still buying oat bars,” Beryl Stafford said. “That’s a good thing. “

Reference:
http://www. bcbr. com/article. asp?id=97907

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