An interview with Joy Bauer | Founder of Nourish Snacks

You may know Joy Bauer from The Today Show, her column in Woman’s Day, or her list of best-selling books. Joy is a boss babe in literally whatever she does.

But, she’s also an entrepreneur and founder of Nourish Snacks, a company that makes healthy nibbles with purposeful ingredients.

And, they’re delicious.

I sat down with Joy to find out what motivated her to start her own company and the recent rebranding of Nourish.

Get ready to chow down on this interview!

“Find something that you love and that you have a passion for and figure out a way to turn that into a career because then when you are working hard, it is that much more rewarding.”

Joy Bauer: I’ve been in the health field for well over two decades and people have always been asking me to help them navigate the snack aisles at the grocery store. As you know, it’s so crowded and so confusing. While I love to teach people how to look through the ingredients and the labels and really know what you’re buying, most people don’t have the time. It’s not a priority for them. This is my career, it’s my passion, but not so much for other people.  I knew that I wanted to start an authentic brand people could trust, that was the best of both worlds: made with high-quality, nutrient-rich, wholesome ingredients but also tastes super delicious, so there’s no compromising. It’s one -stop shopping.

Jen Hacker: So you had this insight and you’ve been working in the industry …  where did you go from there to get to “I have a product; I really wanna have a snack that’s on shelves?

Joy Bauer: So, everything starts in my kitchen, my messy kitchen. And I’m always …

Jen Hacker: I love that honesty too!

Joy Bauer: No, no, full disclosure: my kitchen is a little bit messy. I love to cook but I don’t really have a passion for cleaning … but I try! I try hard. I’m always creating and concocting and then I use my husband, my three kids, their friends, and nieces and nephews as my guinea pig taste-test crews.

Jen Hacker: Perfect!

Joy Bauer: And then when  it gets a five star rating within my small crowd, I go out and I test it further with people from all walks of life. The cool luxury is that I have this ongoing conversation with so many people via NBC and Woman’s Day magazine and through social media platforms. So I have all of these taste-tester ambassadors of different ages and different backgrounds. I get their honest opinions on all sorts of things. So, when I first started and I knew that I wanted to come out with a snack line, you know, I took the best of the best. I made sure that the feedback was phenomenal before I started rolling it out.

Jen Hacker: You recently also took the brand through a complete re-branding and repackaging. Why did you think you needed to do that and what was that process like?

Joy Bauer: This was an interesting learning curve for me and the whole team. I really liked our old packaging but it was blending in. If you walked down the aisles at the grocery store, a lot of the packaging looks exactly the same. We had a different story to tell. I want to bring the fun back into wellness, I wanted our packaging to scream vibrancy and playfulness. I wanted it to be a bit disruptive on those shelves. So we went back, we worked with a brilliant branding company called Brian Collins and they helped us to sort of redefine ourselves. We still have the same message but we buttoned it up and they helped us to take the old packaging experience and turned it into this colorful, vibrant one. We’re having a lot of fun right now working on the packaging for the savory line that we’re going to roll out as well.

 

Jen Hacker: What role did you play while going through this process working with external an team? What did you as the founder bring into that conversation to make sure they got it right?

Joy Bauer: A lot of instinct, gut reaction and response. I’ve been working with consumers within this very pocket for so many years. So, as we were going through the experience, I made sure we did a lot of testing. I brought it into  NBC and the Editorial Department over at Hearst and I shot pictures and names of things like that too and the flavors we were going for on various social media just to make sure that we were going in the right direction. We’ve had an overwhelming response on the re-design and the new flavors. I’m so proud of being able to make this snack and be such a big part – a founder – of the brand. But really, the brand is the brand. I don’t want the brand to be Joy Bauer. I want the brand to be about the delicious snacks. I think the advice that I would give to anybody who’s starting out is to find something that you love and you have a passion for and figure out a way to turn that into a career, because then when you are working hard, it is that much more rewarding and fun and profitable. If you can figure out how to actually make money and have a career doing something that you enjoy getting out of bed in the morning for …  wow, that’s the golden ticket.

Jen Hacker: That’s the truth. Well, I think we make a toast to that, to getting out of bed every morning every day and loving what you do and maybe having a healthy snack on the way too.

Joy Bauer: That’s a great toast.

Want more examples of how to nail your branding like Joy? Read this next.