It first debuted as Moon food for astronauts in 1962
Twenty three years later this couple turned it into a business worth $2.9 billion
On Thursday, May 25, 1961, at 12:30 p.m., before a special joint session of Congress, President John F. Kennedy took to the podium in the U.S. House of Representatives and delivered a 45 minute speech that would change the course of human history.
That’s the day he told Congress and the 46 million people who watched him live on their television sets that “this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth.”
Yet it’s a speech that almost didn’t happen.
Less than a day before he gave that speech, President Kennedy had no intention of actually delivering it. Instead he was just going to send it to Congress as a printed message … one that could be read aloud by clerks, to any members who wanted to sit and listen.
However just 21 hours before delivering the now famous speech, Vice President Lyndon Johnson convinced President Kennedy the message would have much more power if he delivered in person.
Good thing President Kennedy listened to his VP because his speech set in motion a race to the moon.
Not only did NASA engineers have to build a space craft capable of putting men on the moon, but they also had to figure out how to feed those astronauts.
The No Crumbs Zone
Whatever foods were created, NASA engineers knew that it had to be nutritious, but also contaminant-free and could not produce crumbs. You see they feared that even the smallest of crumbs could interfere with the performance of the spaceship’s electronics or somehow get lodged in the spacesuits the astronauts wore as they walked on moon.
Any one of these things could be fatal to the overall mission.
So NASA turned to the Quartermaster Food and Container Institute (QFCI) of the United States Armed Forces for help. Their task was to develop a food that would in essence be “crumb free,” while also tasting good and loaded with nutrients.
But the QFCI doesn’t exactly make foods.
Their job is to make sure that foods stored in containers that are shipped to military bases around the world are properly sanitized and sterilized. In other words their job is to ensure the packaged goods don’t have any germs.
What the QFCI needed to do was find someone to actually make “crumble-less” foods. At the time the only company they could think to ask for help was one already selling premixed biscuit and cookie dough in tubes … the Pillsbury Company.
Well the Pillsbury Company jumped at the opportunity to work with the QFCI and NASA to create food supplements the astronauts could eat with their helmets on and leave no crumbs behind.
On their first attempt, the Pillsbury bakers focused in on making cube-sized foods for the astronauts … something they could easily pop into their mouths. And the first astronaut to eat one of the cubes was Scott Carpenter while on Aurora 7 in 1962.
But over time, NASA requested that Pillsbury create something that could fit nice and neatly in an astronaut’s spacesuit, especially as they were walking on the moon. So the company switched to making a food that was thinner and shaped more like a bar yet still highly nutritious.
The truth is what they wound up creating was the world’s first energy bar, which Pillsbury called Space Food Sticks.
The sticks accompanied astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin when their “Eagle” spacecraft landed on the moon on July 20, 1969.
Later on in 1970, Pillsbury filed a trademark for Space Food Sticks. Then the company repackaged the little sticks as bars and advertised them to consumers as a “nutritionally balanced between-meal snack.”
Consumers gobbled them up. If we’re being honest, the reason they sold well is because the space program itself was so popular with the public. But as the space program began to fissile out so too did the public’s desire for Space Food Sticks.
And just like that, they faded away into the deep dark corners of outer-space … I mean obscurity.
Baker, Biker and Saddle Seat Maker
Gary Erickson might be a bit of a nerd but he’s a brilliant one.
I say this because he graduated from Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, which generally attracts a lot of math and science geeks. That’s because it’s got one of the best engineering program in the country, which by the way ranks sixth on News & World’s Report best undergraduate programs in the U.S.
After graduating Gary took a high-profile position with Avocet, a Palo Alto company that made bicycle seats. He was appointed as head of the company's saddle research, development, and manufacturing division.
And it’s in this role that Gary actually invented the gel saddle, the world's first truly comfortable bicycle seat.
Bikers loved his invention. The gel saddle quickly became one of the more popular bike seats sold. In fact his invention has even been displayed at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City.
But our boy Gary was much more than a bicycle seat inventor, he was also a baker at heart. And that would become his next profession.
In 1986 he left Avocet to become a professional baker. He opened up Kali's Bakery, named for his grandmother, in Emeryville, California, where he specialized in making all-natural calzones and gourmet cookies. He also made a bunch of Greek pastries, which his mother taught him how to bake.
When Gary wasn’t baking, he was biking. In fact one of his favorite outdoor hobbies was going on long distance bike rides with his best pal Jay. Since the rides could take all day, Gary would bring food to snack on during their rides.
Actually that’s something most all athletes do.
For example, hikers snack on GORP (gold old raisins and peanuts). Alpinists like to sip warmed liquid Jell-O from their thermoses. Skiers usually keep frosted Pop-tarts in their parkas. And mountain bikers often munch on bananas and fig bars.
For Gary, his go-to snack was energy bars. Unfortunately back then, there weren’t many bars to pick from and most were not very tasty and hard as bricks to chew.
But they were slim enough to fit in a biker’s pack back. And so one day in 1990, Gary packed six energy bars for him and Jay as they got ready to embark on a 125-mile bike ride.
However halfway through the ride, exhausted and hungry, Gary realized he just couldn’t eat another unappetizing, sticky, hard-to-digest energy bar. He told Jay that he’d rather starve than eat another one of those bars.
It was right then and there, Gary had an “epiphany” that went something like this: I’m a baker, so why don’t I create a more flavorful and easier to digest energy bar?
Bake Me A Bar
The next day after that long bike ride, Gary called his mom and asked, “Hey, can we try making an energy bar?”
She replied with, “What's an energy bar?”
Gary explained what one is, but he also told her he wanted to make a new kind of bar. In fact what he wanted to make was one that tasted similar to the delicious oatmeal-chocolate-chip-raisin cookies she always made, except they couldn’t use three ingredients: no butter, no use sugar, and no oil.
She told him it would be impossible to do.
But Gary wasn’t about to let his idea go. And he convinced his mom to help him experiment with different recipes.
The first batch they made used oats and dried fruit and a sweetener made from rice.
As for the taste, it was downright horrible. It tasted nothing like the cookies she made.
So they went back at it again.
For the next six months they tried all kinds of different recipes until they hit upon one that actually worked … one that consisted of organic rolled oats, dried fruits, nuts, and seeds. Plus the bars didn’t have any trans-fats, high fructose corn syrup, GMOs, or artificial flavorings.
Now that they had perfected a more delicious tasting energy bar, Gary started selling them at bike shops all over the Bay Area. And people loved them.
In 1991 he decided to debut the bars at a Bay area bike convention. Again, the same reaction … people loved these new energy bars.
Before he could go all in on his new business, he needed neat looking design for the bar’s outer wrapper.
He turned to his friend Doug Gilmour for help. The two got together for dinner to talk over some ideas. As Gary was busy explaining his new business to Doug, Doug was busy drawing an image on a napkin.
What he sketched out was a rock climber, hanging on the edge of a mountain. It was the perfect design. Everything was now in place.
So In 1992, Gary and his wife Kit Crawford officially launched their new energy bar under the name of Kali’s Bar since they were baked in Gary’s own shop, Kali’s Bakery.
Popularity for the bars grew and they were being sold in grocery stores, convenience stores and other retail outlets nationwide.
In its first year, sales exceeded $700,000, fueled primarily by the growth of the healthy, more natural food movement. Sales doubled each year, and by 1997, revenue surpassed $20 million.
That’s also the year Gary decided to change the name of his energy bar to CLIF Bar in honor of his father, Clifford, the man who introduced him to wilderness adventures and encouraged Gary to follow his passions in life.
Also in 1997 CLIF Bar was included in Inc. magazine's annual list of the 500 fastest-growing private companies in America. The following year it increased 101 spots to land at 152 on the Inc. 500 list. And it kept on climbing up the list.
CLIF Bar is now home to over 300 employees. In fiscal year 2021, the company produced $360 million in revenue.
In June 2022, Mondelez International bought a huge stake in the couple’s company, one valued at $2.9 billion. But both Gary and Kit remain as active members of the board.
Awesome Quotes by Awesome People
“Every mountain top is within reach if you just keep climbing.” – Barry Finlay