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- Say Hello to YouBar
Say Hello to YouBar
A food bar mfg in LA
Hey Founders & Friends! 👋
I know you’ve experienced sour relationships with your copackers. Did you know that both of y’all are to blame though? 🤐
Come on! It’s 2023. Self-awareness and EQ are the norm.
The key to a successful B2B relationship is doing some thorough vetting before committing to the partnership. This takes time. Like a lot. I do this for a living and love it, so I don’t blame you for not executing a thorough vetting process. It’s not for all of us, which is also why I’m sharing this newsletter with you.
So today I introduce you to YouBar - a food bar manufacturer that is well suited (IMO) to service a startup or emerging brand.
FYI - Here’s the google doc version for convenience
That Juicy Juicy 🍑
Lawsuits
The one lawsuit that interests me is the case versus Schoolyard Snacks. I’ve reached out to Helen Guo, co-founder of the brand, to see if she could share some background. If you’re not familiar, she grew Schoolyard Snacks to over $30M in revenue before her exit! I would love to know more about this lawsuit. Especially if I were getting ready to drop $10k+ of bootstrapped cash.
Customer Reviews
My Thoughts on this review are… Meh. When I read reviews that have a ton of typos/grammatical errors, it kinda tells me more about that person than it does about the company being reviewed. Also, I couldn’t find a ton of lawsuits.
7 - 1 star reviews compared to 44 - 5 star reviews - Total 4.5 stars
It's strange and could be that we live in a cynical world, but the 1-star reviews generate more likes than the positive ones… maybe I should start creating supplier profiles casting a negative light. I’ll get more subs, but suppliers won't want to work with me anymore and there goes my career! 🤣
I do like that YouBar responds to the majority of these quotes. They especially take their time to respond to the negative reviews and provide further insights. I can appreciate this!
Employee Reviews
3.6 out of 5 stars
6 - 5 star reviews
4 - 1 star reviews
3.5 out of 5 stars
2 - 1 star reviews
1 - 2 star reviews
3 - 3 star reviews
3 - 4 star reviews
4 - 5 star reviews
I like to look at what employees are saying about the company. Yes. We have to take these reviews, both positive and negative, with a grain of salt, but generally speaking, companies with a lower rating will have higher turnover.
A high turnover rate means retraining staff, which means your production becomes riskier. Your lead times could take a hit. Your quality could take a hit. Your levels of service could take a hit.
YouBar at one point, employed a little over 60 employees. Everything I’m finding online now indicates they are probably around 30-40 employees. They could hire temps seasonally, which also carries risk with it.
So what are they saying… Looks like being overworked is a common theme between negative and positive reviews. We have a small sample size, so we need to keep that in mind. I think over the past 2-3 years, we’ve all taken 4-5 plates full of work to the dinner table. That said, if I were a brand owner, I’d be asking YouBar about employee headcount, capacity, temp hires, and turnover - I’d want to sit down with their HR leaders to discuss all things employee related, and I’d want to sit down with the production manager to discuss capacity.
Social Media Activity
Youtube 569 subs, 8 videos, last video 3 years ago
Twitter 7.5k followers, 1k tweets since 2008, seem to tweet about twice a month
LinkedIn 1.1k followers
Interesting Interview (7 years old and it's where I found out they had over 60 employees and no MOQs)
I wish they were more active on social media…this is an area where a lot of contract manufacturers can improve. It would be amazing if they went behind the scenes, or recorded a factory tour.
Emily (if you read this) if y’all are willing to fly me out, I’d love a tour and get to know more about YouBar.
So, why is this significant? Well, it sheds light on who they are and what they believe in as a business. The superficial posts are fine, but I want the meat and potatoes post! I want to see your good days. I really want to see your bad days. I want to see what others are saying about you on social media. I want to see it all!
Customers
Based on some of their videos, here are a couple of their customers.
WhoaDough & KetoFit Nutrition Bars (not familiar with this brand)
I really wish brands would be ok with their copackers sharing who their customers are. There’s a lot of value here in doing so. Oh and just because it’s not public knowledge, the industry talks. If someone really wants to, they will find out. Your copacker is not proprietary information. 🤫
Costs
R&D
$4,750 - $9,000 depending on what you need.
These R&D costs aren’t too ridiculous. From what I’ve seen, this is mid-tier. Living Ecology is around $2,500. Somebody like Nellson LLC will be up to $20k.
Unit Costs
“as low as 39 cents” - this varies.
I think it’s bold and awesome that YouBar is advertising costs online. This is where a lot of contract manufacturers fall short. I get it, it’s hard to guesstimate what a brand's product will cost, but they can give an average.
There are two strange things about YouBar’s costs:
It costs more for them to do R&D on an existing formula - $750 more
It costs more for them to source ingredients that aren’t on their master ingredient list - $650
I’ve managed tech transfers at no additional costs. I’ve sourced ingredients and introduced contract manufacturers to ingredient suppliers. This should not cost extra in my opinion. I have never paid extra for this.
I’d straight up ask if these costs (R&D and sourcing) could be credited back if I were going to do business with them. In some cases, the contract manufacturer will say yes. You can also get creative here and ask for volume rebates in your master service agreement that cover the cost of R&D+!
Anyways, they know you’re shopping around so they do want to get paid for their time. I’ll give them that. 😉
MOQs
10k Bars
*At one point, it appeared to be 5k, and at another point, there wasn’t an MOQ.
Their website advertises both 5k and 10k MOQs for bar manufacturing. Also, just because a manufacturer says an MOQ is 10k units doesn’t necessarily mean the MOQ is 10k units. It’s really about how much you are willing to pay for smaller runs. You feel me?
Everything is negotiable until you get a firm, “No.” So just ask.
Of course, there are reasons MOQs exist - set up time (time = money), tank sizes and MOQs from ingredient suppliers are just a few.
Lead Times
From ideation to launch = 6 - 12 months
Production = 4 - 6 weeks
The production lead seems quite long. Likely because they are batching your production with other customers given the 10k (or 5k) MOQ.
One note, the production lead time does not include R&D or sourcing ingredients / packaging components. I’d ask for a breakdown here - What are your typical lead times on raw ingredients? What are your lead times on sourcing packaging? That kind of stuff.
That Boring Boring (but Somewhat Important) 😐
Website
Don’t go to youbar.com, this is a website geared towards digital levels. I prefer good old-fashioned levels.
Location(s)
HQ 445 Wilson Way City of Industry, CA 91744
597 Monterey Pass Rd Monterey Park, California 91754
C-Suite Profiles
Contact Page
They get this part absolutely right. Emily follows up with you very quickly. In my case, it was less than 24 hours. Then I was able to schedule a phone call within a week. I actually need to schedule another one…
But back to Emily, she is great. She knows her stuff! She also shares pretty solid information on the company blog. I sense that if I were to actively do business with YouBar, Emily would be a proactive communicator. Which I appreciate!
Email Convention
[FIRSTNAME]@youbars.com
Just in case you want to send a cold email…🥶
Certifications
Revenue
$10.3M via ZoomInfo, my guess is this is higher
Employee Count
32 via ZoomInfo
35 via LinkedIn
*At one point they had 60+ employees, but this could have been temp hires
Year Founded
2006
Core Competencies
High Protein
Low Sugar
High Fiber
Non-GMO
Weight Management
Sports and the Science of Fitness
Health trends in ingredients and labeling
Utilizing trendy ‘superfood’ ingredients, such as grass-fed, pasture-raised whey protein, kale, and freeze-dried blueberries
Sourcing esoteric and unusual ingredients
Creating energy bars through the application of the most innovative bar manufacturing techniques developed by food scientists, and utilizing ingredients specifically and scientifically formulated to create bar recipes that offer industry-leading texture, taste, and nutritional composition.
CTA 👍
There you have it!
My first release of Copacked No Cap. I hope you enjoyed it and thank you for joining me in my goal to help make copackers more transparent.
This took a long time to prep, so I’d appreciate it if you shared this on social media or referred someone to this newsletter. I’d also love to hear your feedback!
Thank you,
Josh - Your CPG Supplier Insider