A Nouri bar for a student, a meal for a hungry child

With every Nouri nutrition bar bought, one hungry child will receive a meal in school. Behind the mission and the product are alumni and couple Veneka Chagwedera ’09 and Jared Crooks ’11, who created the organic, gluten-free fruit-and-nut bar in July 2012 and launched the product in August 2012.

A portion of the profit made from every Nouri bar sold pays for the cost of a meal for a hungry child. Since its launch, the Nouri bar has been featured on NBC and Bloomberg, and it has been sold at Whole Foods Market, various coffee shops and book stores, the Frist Campus Center convenience store and the Whole Earth Center in Princeton. The bar will also be featured at Dr. Oz’s HealthCorps gala in April.

The idea for the bars first arose when, after working for NGOs like the Rockefeller Foundation and Save the Children, Chagwedera wanted to focus on helping children and ending hunger. “She wanted to be able to reconcile that with a business, a product,” Crooks said.

Chagwedera and Crooks then proceeded to their kitchen, where they experimented with and taste tested various kinds of bars, trying to find a recipe for a delicious yet healthy bar. “A lot of energy bars on the market don’t taste that great,” said Chagwedera. “So we had this great-tasting product, and we really wanted to be able to differentiate ourselves in the market by taking this product and bringing it to consumers.”

Everything in the bar, from its ingredients to its wrapper, is made in the United States. Currently, three flavors are offered: peanut butter and wild cherry, chocolate cashew and apple cinnamon spice. Chagwedera and Crooks are considering new flavors in the future but are currently focusing on growing the brand and spreading to more stores.

In November 2011, Chagwedera and Crooks submitted the project to the University of Virginia’s i.Lab Incubator, which supports social entrepreneurship projects. “We got this tremendous feedback from the judges, who really thought that there was something there which they thought we should pursue,” said Chagwedera.

To pursue the mission of addressing child hunger, Nouri partnered with Stepping Stones International in August 2012. Katy Digovich ’08, who founded PING, an NGO that focuses on health and youth technology projects, introduced Chagwedera and Crooks to Stepping Stones, which focuses on helping youth in Botswana. “We wanted to find very efficient NGOs to work with and partner with. We spent a really long time on the groundwork, figuring out which NGOs would be able to do the school feeding in a very efficient way,” said Crooks.

Chagwedera and Crooks met at Princeton and were engaged when they first started the company. They have since married. “It’s really great being a husband and wife team working on a business,” said Chagwedera. The Nouri team also includes two other alumni, Vance Stephens ’11 and Sabrina Szeto ’12.

Having grown up in Zimbabwe, Chagwedera arrived at Princeton already aware of hunger issues. She became a Wilson School major and studied international development issues and poverty. “You know how they drill that motto about ‘in the service of all nations’? A lot of it revolves around that,” said Chagwedera. “I was pushed to think about how I could contribute and make the world a better place.”

Crooks, meanwhile, was an astrophysical sciences major and is continuing his University education as a graduate student in the Wilson School and in mechanical and aerospace engineering. He is currently in the middle of a two-year fellowship at NASA as a SINSI scholar through the Wilson School. “One of the things that really inspired me about [the project] was being able to take on really big challenges and problems. That’s what Princeton teaches,” said Crooks.

After a yearlong pilot program with Stepping Stones, Chagwedera and Crooks hope to expand Nouri’s reach to India, South America and Southeast Asia. Their goal is to provide meals for one million children by 2014.

Chagwedera also noted that Stepping Stones International communicates with Nouri about its work on the ground, allowing Nouri to update consumers on the effects of their donations. “We wanted to make sure that people really had a sense of being involved and engaged in the cause,” said Chagwedera.

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Reception and sales for the Nouri bar have been positive. Nouri sold over 10,000 bars in its first few months of operation. The Frist convenience store has sold about 100 bars since first offering the product in mid-October, according to Executive Director of Dining Services Stu Orefice.

“We’re on track for very rapid growth,” said Chagwedera. The company continues to promote the product through interacting with customers online via social media, as well as providing samples and talking about the product at stores, local food fairs and festivals.

“We’ve been thrilled to be able to get the message out to so many people,” said Chagwedera. “Starting this company was a very personal endeavor for us, and so to be able to have people learn about the product through all these different channels really helped us get the message out about addressing child hunger and how a small company can really make a difference.”