The Making of Oat Haus

by Jenna Movsowitz

All CPG founders have their own food story. For some, it’s a story of continuing tradition through shared flavors and recipes. For others, it’s a story of innovation -- of creating the flavor or ingredient combination that they wish existed. For Ali Bonar, founder of Oat Haus, it’s a story of recovery. And now, this story has made its way from the humble jars of Granola Butter to national television. On October 20, Ali found herself pitching her CPG brand on Shark Tank -- a pinch-me moment for any emerging food founder, but especially for one who, just years before, spent her life trying to run away from food.

Throughout her teenage years and mid-20s, Ali struggled with eating disorders. “I struggled with everything you can imagine, from orthorexia and binge eating to anorexia and exercise addiction,” she reflects. Years after graduating college with a nutrition degree -- the irony is not lost on her -- she had a breaking point. She realized she couldn’t continue to live in that “mental prison” where every food she ate came with a numerical value. So she found a nutritional therapist who helped her shift her viewpoint on food, and started posting on social media to hold herself accountable in her recovery journey. Part of this journey included combatting her “fear foods” like nut butter. But after years of restriction, she found that her stomach could no longer tolerate nuts. She began searching for nut-free spreads to incorporate into her recovery, but nothing really resonated with her newfound mindset -- that food could feel like a celebration.

“I wanted something that would match my new viewpoint of food, as a form of nourishment for my body. But I also wanted something that tasted like a party,” Ali says. She started experimenting with this idea herself. She found that an oat base was the perfect solution, and had never been done before. So in her tiny San Francisco kitchen, Ali started working on nights and weekends to formulate an oat-based, party-flavored spread all while keeping up her full-time job. Throughout the process, she posted every step of the journey on her personal social media account, which had racked up 10,000 followers throughout her recovery. This proved to be the perfect jumping-off point for the brand, which launched direct-to-consumer as Kween Granola Butter -- an ode to Ali’s

Instagram handle at the time, @AvoKween, and the idea of treating your body like royalty. Quickly, the team outgrew their small

San Francisco space and moved to San Diego to expand, quitting their jobs to focus entirely on the granola butter business. Local, independent natural retailers began to pick them up. The San Diego Erewhon was the first larger retailer to put Kween on shelf, followed shortly by Whole Foods in the San Diego region. “These retailers really took a chance on us. They were excited by a product they’d never heard of. We couldn’t prove turns, but we learned how to communicate our vision and get buyers excited about our brand,” Ali says. She began seeking out new opportunities, now confident that Kween had potential for major growth. But with every win came an equal and opposite rejection; investors turned down their repeated proposals, ABC’s Shark Tank rejected their application three times, and still, Ali and the Kween team continued to believe in their brand’s success.

Less than a year after their first move, the team moved again in January 2021 to Philadelphia to double their facility space. Meanwhile, the national nut butter buyer at Whole Foods decided to expand Granola Butter to three additional regions. With a major retail expansion, the Kween team became more and more aware of the consumer’s challenge in understanding the product. Their ambiguous brand name didn’t do the work necessary to explain “granola butter.” They decided to move forward with a full rebrand, adding “oat” to their name to explain the base of the product, and altering their branding to better resonate with the energy of their company. “With Kween, everything was white, marble, monochromatic. It didn’t represent our personalities, our mission, or our company culture. We’re loud, bright, fun and playful and wanted our new brand to represent that.” This birthed Oat Haus: a name that aided in consumer education, and a complete branding 180.

Of course, the decision to kick off the rebrand process came at the same time as major news for the company; three applications later, the Shark Tank team reached out to Kween to tell them to apply for the show again. This was the final push that drove the team to complete the rebrand. They knew they wanted to be Oat Haus when they appeared on the show. On top of extensive preparation for the show (think: watching and rewatching every episode in existence, flash cards, countless powerpoint pitches, roleplaying as each of the Sharks), the team was working on creating new jars, a new website, and an entirely new social presence. They completed their rebrand (down to a pastel jumpsuit for each team member) just days before they were flown to LA to film their episode.

For Ali, nothing went by faster than the few minutes they spent filming with the Sharks in July -- and nothing went by slower than the three months of radio silence post-filming. “You don’t hear anything after you film until a few weeks before your episode airs.” So the Oat Haus team spent that time communicating their rebrand to their customers and retailers -- navigating the day-to-day while preparing for the unknown impact of an appearance on national television.

SPOILER ALERT: if you watched the episode, you know that Oat Haus came away from the Shark Tank stage without a deal. But following the theme of equal successes and failures, Ali sees this journey as a win in its own sense. For any emerging CPG founder, an episode on Shark Tank sounds like a pipedream. For Ali, the only thing greater than sharing her brand on television was the opportunity to share her story of recovery. For days after the episode aired, Ali received an endless stream of messages from viewers who connected with her recovery story. Many reported never having heard someone share their eating disorder journey so candidly, that they felt seen and heard. Ali knew then that everything leading up to this had been worth it. “Someone’s ‘no’ isn’t a personal thing. Not everyone will resonate with your brand, and that’s fine. But what is personal is a community of people who are rooting for you, who are connecting with your story, or even who are helped by your story,” she says. And despite coming away without a deal, Ali knows that this opportunity will grow Oat Haus in unprecedented ways. The Oat Haus team is excited to relaunch their limited edition Apple Pie Granola Butter on their website (https:// oat.haus/) for the holiday season. They also are thrilled to announce a major celebrity investor later this week.