Mar 19, 2018 · 53m · how-i-built-this
LÄRABAR: Lara Merriken
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gold bands on the timeline = statements, start to end. Hover to read, click to jump. CC turns on captions
In this episode of How I Built This, Lara Merriken shares how she transformed a personal passion for whole-food nutrition into LÄRABAR, overcoming manufacturing hurdles and eleventh-hour trademark crises to build a multi-million-dollar snack brand acquired by General Mills.
How this conversation actually went
Every chapter scored 0–10 on four independent dynamics. Hover any point for the reasoning behind the score. Guy holds 31.9% of the talking time here. How this is scored →
Guy as informed peer 4.2 Guest teaching 2.3 Guest disagreement 1.2 Guy pushing back 1.3
speaking balance: gold is Guy, purple is the guest (3 minute bins)
Sharpest disagreement ▶ 26:14 Lara rejects Raz's assumption about early funding
Lara bluntly interrupts Guy's premise that she had already raised investment capital, firmly correcting him that all early investors had backed out.
Hardest push from Guy ▶ 16:50 Raz challenges kitchen preparation feasibilityGuy leans on his own culinary experience to push back on how Lara could blend raw nuts and sticky dates in a domestic Cuisinart without it turning into an unusable ball.
Biggest teaching moment ▶ 33:41 Lara educates on market resistance during the Atkins eraLara explains the severe consumer dietary paranoia around fruit carbohydrates and nut fats during the peak Atkins diet phase in 2003, detailing how free sampling was required to overcome consumer hesitation.
Guy holds their own ▶ 18:19 Raz demonstrates industry knowledge via Ben and Jerry's parallelGuy demonstrates deep founder knowledge from previous interviews by drawing a specific parallel between Lara's Whole Foods job and Ben and Jerry's manual street traffic counts.
the scores for every segment, with the reasoning behind each
| Chapter | Topic | Guy as informed peer | Guest teaching | Guest disagreement | Guy pushing back | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Collegiate Athletics and Early Social Work Career | 4 | 2 | 1 | 1 | Guy Raz frames Lara's early social work as her informal MBA and management training, demonstrating interview preparation on her athletic and professional background. Lara shares the intense emotional challenges of being a social worker in her early twenties. | |
| Personal Health Awakening and Dietary Discovery | 5 | 2 | 1 | 1 | Raz contextualizes Lara's volleyball career at USC as top-tier Pac-10 Division I athletics and highlights the rarity of whole foods like quinoa in the mid-1990s. Lara explains how her wheat allergy forced her to discover natural nutrition. | |
| Career Crossroads and Naturopathic Medicine Ambitions | 4 | 3 | 1 | 1 | Guy probes into Lara's personal crossroads during her divorce and clarifies the scope of naturopathic medicine. Lara details the legal regulatory hurdles facing naturopaths in California in 2000 that dissuaded her from that career path. | |
| The Mountain Hike Epiphany and Business Inception | 3 | 1 | 1 | 1 | Raz asks whether the mountain hike spark was immediately conceived as a business venture or purely culinary experimentation. Lara describes her naive initial belief that she could start the company in three months. | |
| Kitchen Prototyping and Informal Focus Groups | 5 | 2 | 1 | 2 | Guy uses his own cooking knowledge to challenge the mechanics of pureeing dates and nuts in a Cuisinart without creating an unmanageable sticky mass. Lara explains her rolling pin and pizza cutter method. | |
| Working at Whole Foods and Managing Early Uncertainty | 6 | 2 | 1 | 2 | Raz draws a sharp historical comparison to Ben & Jerry's strategic location scouting to validate Lara's choice to work at Whole Foods as a paid vendor apprenticeship. He also presses her on managing stigma from former peers. | |
| Sourcing Equipment and Navigating the Rebranding Crisis | 4 | 3 | 1 | 1 | Lara describes discovering the commercial name for industrial mixers (vertical cutter mixer) and navigating a sudden trademark conflict over the name Manabar. Raz guides the timeline toward product launch. | |
| Overcoming Production Roadblocks and Raising Capital | 3 | 3 | 3 | 2 | Lara immediately interrupts and corrects Guy when he assumes she had already raised initial funding, clarifying that investors had actually backed out. She describes hauling a 400-pound mixer in her Land Cruiser. | |
| The Loading Dock Encounter at Whole Foods | 3 | 2 | 1 | 1 | Lara narrates her spontaneous pitch to Whole Foods regional buyer on the loading dock while taking out the morning trash. Raz reacts with conversational prompts as Lara describes securing Colorado distribution. | |
| Hand-Making the Launch Batch and In-Store Demo Success | 6 | 4 | 2 | 2 | When Raz assumes copackers manufactured the initial run, Lara corrects him that she hand-made all 500 launch bars. Guy provides industry context on the Atkins carb craze versus modern whole-food trends to explore why the product stood out. | |
| Scaling to National Distribution and Managing Rapid Growth | 4 | 2 | 1 | 1 | Raz drills into revenue numbers and operational strain during the company's rapid jump to five million dollars in year two. Lara describes the nonstop work ethic required to handle sudden retail demand. | |
| Corporate Suitors and the General Mills Acquisition | 4 | 2 | 1 | 1 | Raz explores the emotional and practical decision to sell the business around age 39. Lara recounts why General Mills felt like an authentic steward for the brand compared to competing suitors. | |
| Brand Legacy, Reflections on Risk, and the Umlaut | 5 | 2 | 1 | 1 | Guy references his previous interview with Kate Spade to discuss seeing one's personal name commodified across retail shelves, and asks the signature luck versus skill question. Lara reflects on taking calculated risks. | |
| How You Built That: Rahim Diallo and Jinjan | 3 | 2 | 1 | 1 | In the 'How You Built That' segment, Raz narrates Rahim Diallo's journey launching Jinjan. Rahim explains his bootstrap sampling tactics and how he played Whole Foods and distributors off each other. |
Statements from this episode (9)
Merriken: Early Skepticism from Family Strengthened Founder Conviction
“It was actually great that people questioned me and wondered why I was doing what I was doing, and especially my family, because it made me dig in more and recognize that I really did want to do it. That I didn't need to get approval from anybody, but that I n…”
Trademark Conflict With Manna Bread Forced 2002 Rebrand to LÄRABAR
“Well, the trademarking attorney called me at the 11th hour, and we were getting ready to launch. It was the year 2002, summer, and she said, I think there's gonna be a problem. And she said, there's actually manna bread, M-A-N-N-A. And I think it could be conf…”
Merriken Won Whole Foods Distribution With a Loading Dock Pitch
“And then like an hour later, he's sitting there, and he goes, Lara, this is the most innovative product I've tried In years. And I'm standing there, I couldn't even believe my ears. You know, I knew I made a great product, but he's a buyer, he's a regional buy…”
Merriken and friends hand-made LÄRABAR's first 500 bars in 15 hours
“It was me, my father, and then any friend that would help, and it took us about 15 hours to make 500 bars because I had to hand cut each wrapper off of the rolls of film, make the bar, you know, roll it out with a pizza, with a rolling pin and a pizza cutter, …”
LÄRABAR became a top-five selling item at Whole Foods within two weeks
“Within two, two weeks of being in Whole Foods, because one of my friends still worked there, he said, Lara, you have to go look at the movement chart upstairs, and I said, what? And he said, Larabar is the top five one through five selling products in the enti…”
LÄRABAR Received Its First Acquisition Inquiry 18 Months After Launch
“The first phone call I got from a really large company was in early 2005, so like a year and a half in.”
Ginjan Secured Retail by Playing Whole Foods Against a Distributor
“We were definitely relentless in terms of slowing them because we knew Whole Foods wanted us to get a distributor and the distributor was interested in us because they know we're talking to Whole Foods. So we kind of played them against one another and it work…”