Realsy To Build Snack Platform After Separation From Rollin’ n’ Bowlin’ Brand

After nearly a year on the market, Rollin’ n’ Bowlin’ (RnB) officially separated its nut butter-filled date business from the brand’s brick and mortar smoothie stores last week, aiming to build the line out under its newly-established snack platform, realsy. The new brand and relaunch was driven by RnB’s founders, Sophia Karbowski and Austin Patry, time in the SKU Accelerator program earlier this year and will also see the brand refocus its distribution strategy on more “non-traditional channels.”

Realsy’s three-SKU line of nut butter-filled dates come in Almond Butter, Cacao Peanut Butter and Peanut Butter varieties and are sold in 3-count single serving pouches. According to Karbowski, who cofounded RnB as an acai bowl and smoothie food truck in Fort Worth, Texas in 2017, the move to CPG was entirely unintentional. By 2020, the duo had grown the business to eight smoothie storefronts located on college campuses, and like many foodservice operators, were forced to quickly pivot at the onset of the pandemic.

RnB began packaging the frozen ingredients for its smoothies into pouches, selling at retail and online. In early 2022 the team launched a nut butter-filled-date snack as a complement to its smoothie packs. Karbowski said the team saw both product lines as a step toward the problem they were trying to fix.

“When we’d go into the grocery store, or were traveling, and looking for an on-the-go snack, oftentimes we were going to the produce section,” she explained. “We’d buy an apple or banana and a nut butter on the side but it was messy and hard to take with you to say, the airport. We were avoiding the middle section of the store because even those better-for-you products are still not that good for you.”

While the two lines may both serve as alternatives to processed center-store snacks, the team’s mentors at SKU Accelerator pointed out these were two entirely separate businesses with unrelated supply chains and manufacturing processes. Although the product’s distribution sometimes overlapped, including at retailers like Central Market, Karbowski said in most cases the buyer or category manager was entirely different, which created additional hurdles to the emerging brand’s growth trajectory.

“[Our SKU mentor said] we weren’t big enough to be in multiple categories in the store – it was too early – and that we really needed to find a focus,” Karbowski said. “We thought really hard about where our next product innovations lie and what we want to do next. If we stuck with the frozen, we’d have to probably keep going the frozen route for at least a few years, which we did not want to do.”

Now, realsy will replace the original line on most shelves including at Sprouts and Fresh Thyme Market, Karbowski said. RnB will continue to sell the smoothie packs at its brick and mortar locations, online and at Central Market, but the team’s focus going forward will be about supporting growth for snacks.

The brand is looking for distribution partners that cater to consumers looking for convenient, whole food snacks on-the-go, like coffee shops; it’s set to launch in 36 Gregory’s Coffee locations on the East Coast in the coming weeks. While grocery retailers will also be a part of the growth strategy, Karbowski said realsy has found a loyal consumer audience among endurance athletes and aims to target nontraditional distribution channels like bike shops and outdoor recreation stores like REI.

However, going off the beaten path may present a new challenge to the emerging brand. Karbowski believes the move will help realsy differentiate itself in the clean ingredient snack space and reach new consumer groups, but it faces an initial hurdle of getting on the shelf.

“We’ve worked with a traditional natural food broker and things like that in the past, but that doesn’t come into play here,” she said. “There’s not really brokers for that [channel] necessarily. So it’s kind of just getting on their radar, and [we are hoping that] maybe starts with like those smaller coffee shops and seeing who finds it so we can get those consumer’s feedback and present that to the REI’s of the world.”

Looking to what’s next, Karbowski said the brand has not decided on its next innovation, but emphasized it will not be tying itself to date snacks. Each realsy product will be made with real ingredients and no “natural flavors.” Everything that goes into its snacks “you should be able to picture that food in your mind” when reading the ingredient label, she said.

“We are really here to be a good-for-you snacking brand, not just better-for-you,” said Karbowski. “Why be better when you can be great and [consumers] can be fully confident in what they’re eating. That’s what we’re here for and want to just put out unique, genuinely delicious but nutritious snacks.”