BumbleBar has been around for 21 rockin’ years, and we’re still going strong! But do you know everything about your favorite, gluten-free snack bar? Let’s find out!
1. When founder Liz Ward set out to build her gluten-free snack brand, she initially came up with the name Harmony s. (Her first logo was designed with cool purple tones, very different from the bright reds and yellows in today’s current logo.) However, after she realized the name Harmony s wasn’t available due to trademarking, Liz decided to call her business BumbleBar instead!
2. Now this is by far my favorite BumbleBar fact. The numbers in BumbleBar’s UPC codes actually reflect the dates of when Liz’s children were born – how awesome is that?! It’s a Barcode Birthday Bash!
3. When BumbleBar’s business was very first beginning, Liz hand sealed the packaging of every single snack bar by herself! Yep, that’s right! Every. Single. One. She used the machine pictured below to heat seal the ends of the wrapper together. By pressing on a pedal with your foot, the heat seal clamps shut around the packaging and that’s how the bars are wrapped! Before she owned the slab line, Liz would stomp away on her little machine and rock out to her favorite Grateful Dead songs!
4. As you probably already know, the sesame seed is the primary ingredient in all of the delicious BumbleBars. But what you didn’t know, is that Liz’s original idea, back in the 90’s, was to use soybeans in order to create an entirely different product! She had planned to combine brewer’s yeast, tamari, and the soybeans, to make a snack mix unlike any other. But after giving it some thought, she eventually decided to use the powerful sesame seed to create what is now known as, the BumbleBar.
5. In today’s busy world, we market ourselves through social media, such as Instagram and Facebook. Well, in 1995 we didn’t have Instagram. Liking each other’s photos, comments, and products consisted of nothing more than forming a fist and sticking our thumbs towards t
he sky. So, without the share button to help her, Liz recruited Glenn to pack up her BumbleBars and take marketing to the streets! Passing out BumbleBars to passersby, he visited festivals far and wide across the Pacific Northwest. A few years ago, Glenn and Liz both got to sell BumbleBars at the Hanuman Yoga Festival in beautiful Boulder Colorado!
