LIFESTYLE AUTHOR
Emily Effren
PHOTOGRAPHY
Courtesy of Real Food Bar
REAL FOOD BAR n How a local, mission-based food bar is
working to be a more sustainable brand.
T
hrough our Zoom call, Anna Sullivan held up the palm of her hand. “If you’re [not] familiar with how we do things there, we always like [to] point to a hand,” Sullivan says. Anna Sullivan and her husband, Sean, founders of the Austin-based food brand, Real Food Bar, are both originally from Michigan and grew up in the Great Lake State. “I’m from northern Michigan,” she explains, pointing to the top of her hand. “So I’m from up here, and my husband’s from down here in Detroit. We met kind of in the middle after graduation.” After graduating from Michigan State University with a degree in Political Science and International
JUNE 2021
Relations, Sullivan had hoped to join a mission-based volunteering organization like the Peace Corps or the Foreign Service. “That had always been my dream,” she says. “And then life kind of hits you.” In 2012, the couple met while they were both volunteering at a call bank for the presidential election. A year later, they got engaged and have now been married for six years. At a certain point in her life, Anna found herself in a demanding position that required working 60-hour weeks, and she found that she didn’t have time to put together a nutritious meal. “My sweet husband would try to prepare lunches and … we would often be running out the door. We
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