She Built a $100 Million Business in 7 Years. Here’s How She Scaled From Scrappy Startup to Costco and Whole Foods.

She started alongside a wooden tray from Bed Bath & Beyond, a fistful of protein bars and a uncomplicated proposition for local businesses: Put these on the counter, and see if customers buy them.

They did. Then the small businesses ordered more.

That scrappy test would rotate into the basis of Trubar, the better-for-you snack business Erica Groussman built into a endeavor now in 32,000 U.S. retailing locations. The company’s journey has included first retailing wins, a stint under the umbrella of a community business and an eventual $173 myriad acquisition. Trubar has shipped nearly 46 myriad macromolecule bars in 2026, and the endeavor grossed concerning $100 myriad in 2025. 

Through it all, Groussman says that her concealed is difficult work. 

“I think that among the biggest secrets is operating your butt off,” Groussman says. “Really getting it into all hand that you can perchance get it into.”

The origins of a improved macromolecule bar

Groussman didn’t commencement out in the food industry. Early in her childhood, her mother gave her a newspaper route, an first instruction in earning prosperity and showing up for work. 

Groussman ended up studying communications at UCLA, afterward worked in movie backing and genuine asset before getting wed and having children. She was a stay-at-home mom raising two children whenever she got the idea for Trubar.

It all began during a family trip to Disney. Groussman had packed snacks, including a macromolecule bar from an established brand. It tasted good, she recalls, but it did not create her awareness fine afterward.

“I recall fair emotion extremely ucky,” she says. “My belly was extremely distended and uncomfortable. That was my epiphany. There have to be a improved way.”

Her goal was not merely to create a macromolecule bar alongside a health-forward label. It had to fulfill a additional difficult standard: tasting akin a dessert during avoiding the unpleasant consequence she connected alongside another bars on the market.

To create it, Groussman worked alongside a food scientist, relying on research, conversations and group in her individual network to discover the correct collaborator. The activity was iterative and sensory. She motionless approaches merchandise betterment by tasting, evaluating texture and diagnosing aftertastes.

“We’ll sensation the bar, and I’ll say what I taste,” she says. “What am I getting afterwards? What’s the aftertaste? What do I desire to see additional of? Do I desire additional crunchy?”

Getting products to customers

After evolving the concept, Groussman raised finances from family and allies and partnered alongside a food researcher and co-manufacturer to bring the merchandise to life. Trubar officially launched in 2018, alongside Groussman serving as CEO.

The earliest flavors included Daydreaming About Donuts, Oh Oh Cookie Dough, Saltylicious Almond Love and Smother Fudger Peanut Butter. The biscuit batter sensation was an first bestseller. 

Groussman’s first evidence of petition came from getting products into people’s hands. She placed bars on counters anywhere local businesses would let her. Juice shops, delis, beauty salons and autonomous stores became her archetypal revenue channels.

“I put it on any oppose I could perchance get, and I would fair be like, ‘Here, market these,’” she says.

The shops set their own prices, mostly about $3 to $4 a bar, and ordered additional whenever the first inventory sold through. For Groussman, that uncomplicated iteration validated the concept.

“That’s how I knew it was fine since they were selling,” she says. “People were buying them and afterward asking to buy more.”

Making a costly mistake

Groussman felt it was period to develop beyond small stores. She says she initially sought assistance from an idiosyncratic she believed had more experience operating a macromolecule bar business. At the time, she was balancing operating the business alongside raising her children and construction a home.

Groussman brought the idiosyncratic on to assistance oversee Trubar, although she remained CEO. The institution ultimately proved costly; the person’s spending outpaced the company’s first sales.

In retrospect, she says, she underestimated her own capabilities.

“I knew additional than I idea I knew,” Groussman says. “We continually doubt ourselves.”

The exterior operator, she says, “ran it into the ground,” leaving the endeavor alongside $7 myriad in debt. Trubar had made several first revenue to smaller retailers, but that paled in difference to the millions of dollars of debt the endeavor had accrued.

Groussman’s hubby urged her to view the project as a loss and move on. But she could not let it go.

“It’s a part of me,” she recalls telling him. “I really desire to keep it going.”

Expanding into Whole Foods and Costco

Groussman turned to scrappy strategies to get Trubar into bigger retailers. One pivotal breakthrough came at Whole Foods. Groussman says she reached out persistently to a communication on LinkedIn and secured a test in 30 locations about 2020. With no promotion budget, Trubar became the top-selling bar in those stores, she says, competing alongside established brands specified as RXBAR and Kind.

Costco was another first milestone, although not an contiguous victory. Trubar archetypal entered Costco in Canada alongside a sole truckload during the Covid-19 period, Groussman says. The brand struggled there, partially since it was small established in the Canadian market and may have faced a pricing disadvantage as a U.S. brand.

The U.S. rollout came afterward and proved far additional successful. That cognition reinforced a applicable item for CPG founders: A difficult initiate in one market does not necessarily invalidate the product. Distribution strategy, brand familiarity, cost positioning and timing all matter.

Becoming the CEO of a community company

While Trubar was expanding into larger retailers, Groussman was simultaneously making behind-the-scenes changes.

In 2021, Trubar was acquired by a publically traded holding business as part of a broader company transaction. Groussman accepted to this construction since it allowed the endeavor to develop and her to remain CEO without taking on individual debt.

The holding business had a portfolio that included a skincare brand and a CBD company. Eventually, the another businesses unsuccessful during Trubar emerged as the strongest brand in the group.

Groussman says the cognition was frustrating. She describes a duration whenever prosperity generated by Trubar was used to assistance another businesses in the portfolio, equal as her own brand was gaining traction.

But the upheaval additionally reshaped her role. She remained originator and CEO of Trubar, a heading she had held since the brand’s inception. In 2024, she added an additional role. She became CEO of the publically traded company, which was renamed about the Trubar endeavor and included Trubar alongside another businesses in its portfolio.

“I was the lone one standing,” she says. “I was a CEO of a publically traded company.”

A hands-on CEO

Today, Groussman says Trubar has about 28 employees. Her administration method is deliberately hands-on. Rather than positioning herself as a distant administrator alongside a high-level perspective of the business, she stays closely engaged in operations, merchandise decisions and emergencies.

She says workforce can arrive to her whenever they need help, and she tries to lead by example. “I volition not ask you to do item that I wouldn’t do myself,” she says.

That doctrine lately played out during a new merchandise initiate for Walmart. One of the shipments was expected to attain late, threatening the timeline. Groussman began calling packaging contacts exterior the company’s normal provider network and established a provider that could complete the job in two weeks.

“I akin to create certain the wheels are moving,” she says. “When item is slightly going wrong, I’m like mama bear. What do I have to do? Who do I need to conversation to?”

Another matter engaged a mislabeled merchandise box. The products and component catalog were correct, she says, but a front-facing component incorrectly referred to cashews alternatively of almonds, or vice versa. The squad immediately originated green circular stickers from nearby Staples stores and applied them on-site to accurate the error before delivery.

The contiguous reply mattered, but so did the follow-up investigation. “The next week following we fixed it all and it’s all okay, that’s whenever you go back, and you say, ‘Where did this mistake happen?’” she says. “What is damaged in our path?”

Advice for CEOs

Groussman’s larger functioning doctrine is to solve first and diagnose problems second. She says teams can rotate into paralyzed by a desire to have all item in location before acting. She says that intuition can rotate into a liability for founders.

“Just get 80%, fair go,” she says. “Just start, fair do what you can do and fair commencement etching distant and moving in the direction.”

She has a likewise pragmatic perspective of hiring. “You interview for your resume; you employ for chemistry,” Groussman says. In a fast-moving and sometimes disorderly environment, she looks for group who can create decisions, obtain undertaking and thrive. 

“I desire my squad to be capable to create decisions and to grow,” she says. “If they arrive up alongside an idea, try it. What’s the harm?”

Scaling following an acquisition 

Earlier this year, Trubar was acquired by Eti Gida, a Turkish snack company, for $173 million, according to Groussman. She remains at the helm as CEO and continues to run day-to-day operations. Her team is additionally motionless intact, a circumstance she viewed as essential in evaluating possible partners.

For Groussman, the acquisition marks a new phase fairly than an ending. Trubar launched Trubar Kids final twelvemonth and lately introduced Trubar Pro. She additionally sees area to broaden the brand into another categories. 

“It was continually known that they wanted to keep me as fine as my team,” she says. “I’m not done. It’s my baby.”