Mood Food: Can Mindright Feed a “Happiness Hack?”

Mindright wants consumers to “get in a good mood via superfoods” and now it’s got an even bigger megaphone to do so. The snack brand, which was co-founded by former Buff Bake CEO and investor Chris Bernard and athlete Rob Dyrdek (via his venture studio Dyrdek Machine), last week announced it had raised $1.8 million from a star studded slate of investors. It’s just one more step in the brand’s quest to help Americans find their happy place.

Dyrdek himself has dabbled in the food and beverage world before, investing and helping create brands including Outstanding Foods, Momentous, Black Feather and Made By Science. The latest capital infusion comes from many of Dyrdek’s contacts including singer Joe Jonas (who now holds a board seat), “The Profit” Marcus Lemonis, musician Travis Barker, skateboarder Sean Malto and other entrepreneurs, athletes, producers and directors. Rather than simply trading equity for endorsement, Dyrdek said this model results in a more authentic partnership — and ultimately, upside for its investors.

“For celebrities, it’s a place to potentially put your capital to get a nice return,” Dyrdek said. “So supporting that with skin in the game, versus doing a relationship with celebrities based just off of their name type of thing.”

The brand launched last month with three bars: Blueberry Almond, Peanut Butter Cup and Toasted Coconut. Each bar contains mood enhancing adaptogens and nootropics (dubbed the “Happy Brain Blend”) including ashwagandha, ginseng, MCT oil, and cordyceps. Currently the line is sold online only with an MSRP of $32.99 per 12 count box.

Bernard said keeping the brand online for at least a year will allow the company to refine the concept while keeping risk low and costs down. In the second half of the year Mindright plans to debut new products, including a powdered beverage line that also contains caffeine.

Though the bar category is crowded, and has seen sales drop during the Covid-19 pandemic, Bernard believes there’s also a lack of innovation in the set, which has largely focused on energy or protein. And while consumers have needed fewer ways to get protein into their diets over the last year, he said, interest in brain health has skyrocketed.

“The reality of it is that basically every bar that came along and found success was at a point when there were too many bars,” Dydrek said. “To the mainstream consumer, nootropics are still a little daunting and clinical sounding.”

Mindright’s branding is whimsical and weird, offering a general promise of better mental health, without going too far into the science. The brand emphasizes high quality ingredient sources and a short ingredient list while not sacrificing taste, Bernard said. The end result is a website that talks about adaptogens next to tongue in cheek references to pop culture phenomena such as Tiger King. It’s a strategy that Dyrdrek says will allow the brand to stretch and reach more shoppers.

“For me, as someone who has created a lot of brands… it’s this idea of how do you build something that has the foundation of all of the qualities that you would expect, but build it in a way that appeals to a mass audience,” he said. It’s [about] more energy and more fun.”