This Saves Lives Goes ‘All In’ On New Brand With A Fresh $4M

Kristen Bell’s snack bar brand, formerly This Saves Lives, is now known as All In Foods. The company emerged with its new moniker this month alongside announcing a fresh, $4 million cash infusion from Obvious Ventures to support its retail growth as well as a national rollout for its new Madagascar Vanilla snack bar at Starbucks.

The changes come nearly three years after its acquisition by GOOD Worldwide. In addition to the updated identity, All In changed up its leadership with CPG veteran James McGinnis now in the CEO spot, overhauled its formulations with a mandate for clean-label, organic and palm oil-free products, and iterated its impact model to better tackle its core mission for eliminating childhood hunger around the globe.

“Going through the fundraising process and a total rebrand and reformulating a bar and repositioning it and all those things has been such an awesome learning for me,” McGinnis told Nosh. “[But] then to be fortunate to have the initial partnership with Starbucks where [in terms of] awareness and generating trial, Starbucks is a pretty great initial partner for that… Seeing their response has been pretty rewarding.”

This is McGinnis’ first CEO role after spending nearly 24 years in the CPG industry. He came up through corporations like Unilever and said he has been following This Bar Saves Lives since its launch in 2013 when, at the time, he held a senior sales role at Clif Bar. He acknowledged it had a strong mission and position since launch, but the product itself never became a “sell through success.” He believes the Starbucks partnership will be integral to All In’s future as a trial driver and a way to provide a steady, low-lift path to “get bars in mouths.”

“There are a lot of brands out there that rely on other things to drive their sales, but we are really happy to rely on trial because we’re really confident in the experience. We are very confident that you will taste any of these bars and you’re going to come back,” he said.

Now with its brand house in order and an integral trial and sampling account locked in, All In is working to rebuild its distribution network, which once spanned retailers such as Kroger, Whole Foods, H-E-B, Rite Aid, Stop & Shop and Hannaford Brothers, among others. He emphasized that while the team is rebuilding its distribution, the company isn’t starting completely from square one and already has a pipeline of additional partnerships it will announce throughout the year.

“We’re trying to get back into places [which] is typically harder than getting in in the first place,” McGinnis said. “But all of the [retail] conversations have been so positive. It’s a credit to the prior team for sure – they ran things in the right way – but also to the product and the mission. We are changing a lot of things, but we hope… anything that we change… is an enhancement.”

The bar set is saturated, and within a grocery aisle, standing out on the shelf is a challenge. McGinnis knows that firsthand from his time at Clif Bar and highlighted the strategic advantage of partnering with a chain like Starbucks, which has locations inside retail stores such as Target, giving the brand, essentially, a dual merchandising opportunity across two different channels and purchasing occasions, but housed within one single physical location.

The bars now come in two varieties – Nut & Seed and Whole Grain – and include flavors like Peruvian Dark Chocolate & Peanut Butter, Smores and Chocolate Chip. The kid-focused Whole Grain line is also Top 8 allergen-free. The full reformulation also pushed the brand to go “all in” on its supply chain and ingredients, McGinnis said, noting how the name change also brought a shift to certified organic inputs as well as removing palm oil across the line, among other tweaks, to better align the business as a “world positive company.”

As All In continues to iterate the brand and the business, its impact model has also evolved. When the company first launched back in 2013, it started with a one-to-one donation model, meaning for every bar sold, the company would donate a pouch of a hunger relief supplement to malnourished children.

That has now evolved to where the company now instead “earmarks” a portion of revenue to send directly to support “small, local changemakers” so that they can purchase the food their community needs. He believes that by putting “dollars directly into local hands,” the company can have a larger impact.

Under GOOD Worldwide’s wing, All In also now has access to its sister company and media platform Upworthy. A core aspect of its mission will not only be providing funding, but bring awareness to the efforts of its partners on the ground, McGinnis said, while noting that this is a major hurdle for local nonprofits as they work to scale their own impact.

Although All In is part of this larger organization, the team itself is “lean and mean,” McGinnis said. He emphasized that, especially after bringing in VC funding, it has become “abundantly clear” how close an eye needs to be kept on cash flow as the brand rolls out with Starbucks and additional retail partners.

“That laser focus on cash flow and burn rate is still the most critical piece,” McGinnis said. “I vowed that what we will not do is get ahead of our skis on this, and we’re going to grow in the right way, and we’re going to make sure that customer service, quality, and our ability to supply is never jeopardizing that process.”

That is a lesson he has gleaned from both his time in corporate CPG as well as at places like Clif Bar, where he worked when it was still privately-held. But he also credits his entrepreneurial mindset to those around him that work outside of the CPG business, including his parents and life partner, who are all small business owners. He said being surrounded by these individuals has shown him what type of people are necessary to build a successful team.

“That’s another thing that All In means for me; just personally, it’s passion,” he said. “I’m All In on… fill in the blank. As you join the company, you tell me: What is the thing [you are passionate about]? And I don’t care what it is, but be passionate about a thing in your life. If I know you have that sort of passion, there’s something driving you, then I know you’re going to fit in right here. That has become a part of what I’ve decided All In means in my world.”