Healthy Snacks For The Office: Next Big Thing

 

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-HEALTH & FITNESS March 26,  2016

BY Pamela Harris Nutrition Editor,  RBRN

A new company is rapidly expanding, taking the business world by storm. 2016 has been a boom year for Culver City, California based SnackNation. The brain child of founder and CEO Sean Kelly. The concept is simple; provide low cost fun and healthy snacks to your employees at no cost to them.

People worked at a companies ten years ago, where the office vending machine was the only source of food and drink.” The 29 year old Bio Engineer said. “Now the upper class as well as the millennials-especially-expect to have free snacks in the office along with free coffee and candy in the bowl.” ~Sean Kelly, Founder

The parent company for SnackNation is the acronym H-U-M-A-N(Helping Unite Mankind and Nutrition). HUMAN was founded in 2008 with SnackNation making its debut in 2014. Currently there are around 1,000 active subscriber companies paying $300 on average per month for their streamlined efficient signature boxes  filled with healthy snacks.

Among the most popular items; Cliff Bars, World Peas, Harvest Snaps, Lara Bars, Pop and Stacy Chips. Healthier snacks make for healthier and happier employees” says Kelly. “It can be used as a recruiting and retaining incentive as well”,  he says. HUMAN was listed #168 on the Forbes Top Fastest Growing Companies and Kelly says his goal is to provide healthy snacks for every office in the Country.

"Millennials like to try new things" ~Sean Kelly HUMAN

“Millennials like to try new things”           ~Sean Kelly

The sector of office snack delivery is not as saturated or as wide open as one may think. A quick Google search of companies offering a similar service to SnackNation reveals 17 companies offering healthy snack delivery and there are ten pages beyond the initial search page.

Currently SnackNation accounts for 20-30% of HUMAN’s sales with Healthy Vending machine items and a concept called MicroMarkets( mini-markets with self serve check out kiosks) accounting for the rest. All items are stored and shipped from their Culver City offices.

Kelly says clients dont’ mind spending $300 dollars a month(though many larger firms get weekly or bi-monthly shipments) using the free time for more productive tasks. “We rotate items in the box every month, because millennials love to try new things and they get bored quickly.” Kelly says.

Snack Nation Emplys

SNACK NATION TEAM. CULVER CITY, CA

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Each snack is hand picked by Kelly looking for items low in sugar, salt and processing. There have been questions about some of the items-which are not considered healthy by the FDA-that are regularly delivered in SnackNation boxes. Everyday Health dot com recently posted an article about six snacks that are marketed as healthy but are far from it.

1)Veggie Chips; Don’t have any vegetables in them at all. Made with flour and have as much sodium as regular potato chips.

2)Energy Bars; Many made with chocolate, high fructose corn-syrup, saturated fat. If you must indulge look for a bar with no more than 200 calories and 20 grams of sugar from dried fruit.

energy BAR

3)Reduced Fat Peanut Butter; When fat is reduced from peanut butter its usually replaced with sugar to enhance the taste the trade off is negligible. More importantly monounsaturated fat found in peanuts like olive oil, is actually good for your health and should not be taken out of the snack. Natural peanut butter made from actual peanuts & salt is the healthy choice. Control your weight by cutting back on portion size not on reduced fat product.

4)Trail Mix; Pre-packaged, processed its actually one of the most unhealthy items in a vending machine. High in fat and calories, drenched in salt and sugar you’re better off eating cotton candy.

5)Smoothies; While not all smoothies are the same, you’re better off eating the raw fruit. Many have 650 to 1,000 calories. Most are loaded with fruit juice, ice cream, chocolate & whole milk.

6)Frozen Yogurt; While better for you than ice cream(lacking saturated fat) the two treats are closer than you might think when it comes to sugar and fat laden toppings. Fill up your cup at the self-serve aisle and you can consume 500 to 800 calories in yogurt alone.

In summery, the future for the business to business delivery of healthy snacks looks rosy. If the items thought to be healthy but aren’t can be eliminated from inventory this could be a win win for consumers and for companies like SnackNation. Research shows Americans snack 50% of the time during the day-that’s 20% of a full meal. With those kinda numbers its a viable business model one worth keeping our eye on.

Pamela Harris is a trained Nutritionist with a Bachelor of Science in Nutrition from Howard University. She’ll be a regular contributor to RBRN on issues related to health and wellness. You can follow her on Facebook.

 

 

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