Two Boston University grads turned their campus-made snack into a startup business
Their frozen treat is all natural and packs 10 grams of protein.
While Mariana Ferreira and Rachel Geicke were students at Boston University, the two friends would come back from cycling and yoga classes and make their own post-workout snack in their on-campus apartment.
It was a frozen blend of superfoods that could satisfy a sweet tooth but still provide protein.
“The two of us have always been very conscious of what we put into our bodies, but we’re firm believers that it’s about a balance,’’ Geicke, 24, said. “We’re always on the hunt for something that let’s you have your cake and eat it, too — that’s flavorful, nutritious, delicious — and we realized, especially in the frozen aisle, there wasn’t something that could meet our needs.’’
Pretty soon, friends of Ferreira, 21, and Geicke started asking for batches—that’s when they realized their snack could really be something.
Ferreira and Geicke just launched a Kickstarter to get their healthy snack company—now called Snow Monkey—off the ground.
The first product for Snow Monkey is their “Subzero Superfood.’’
It’s a plant-based frozen snack that comes in two flavors: goji berry (goji, bananas, apples, mixed berries, hemp seeds, and sunflower butter) and cacao (cacao, bananas, apples, honey, hemp seeds, and sunflower butter). The Kickstarter highlights the nutritional traits of Snow Monkey’s Subzero Superfood: It’s vegan, gluten-free, nut-free, all-natural, paleo, and contains 10 grams of protein.
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As for the name “Snow Monkey’’?
“We realized that the snow monkey itself as a species is incredibly intelligent. They wash their food, they have a pecking order of monkeys to get better food from the top of the tree,’’ Geicke said. “And we thought, since our first product is frozen and paleo: Snow Monkey.’’
Last year, Ferreira and Geicke participated in BU’s Start-Up Accelerator, a summer program designed to help students’ entrepreneurial ventures get going. The then-students got a stipend for their startup from the school and then used their network of resources — friends, professors, and others — to keep it going.
They hope to use their Kickstarter to get the funding they need to run sizable batches of their two flavors and hopefully expand the brand with new products. They hit 50 percent of their funding goal within 48 hours of the campain’s launch Thursday morning.
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Geicke graduated last May, and Ferreira, who already finished classes in December, will have her graduation ceremony this coming May. In the meantime, the women have moved to California, where their manufacturing facility is located.
“Personally, we both also wanted to experience the west coast in terms of the lifestyle we wanted to live,’’ Geicke said. “It’s not really optimal to run outside [right now in Boston], but now that we live in Santa Monica, we surf every day before work.’’
Still, they braved the Boston weather to return for their Kickstarter launch party Thursday night at Loco Taqueria in South Boston.
“We decided to come back because it’s the place that we’re really connected to,’’ Ferreira said. “We wanted to be around the people that helped [Snow Monkey] from the beginning.’’
The cold weather didn’t deter anyone from eating the faux ice cream Thursday. Before their launch party that night, Geicke and Ferreira set up sample stations in BU’s School of Hospitality Thursday morning. One man who tried the Subzero Superfood liked it so much, he wanted to buy it right then.
“I told him he could go and support our Kickstarter,’’ Geicke said. “But he was like, ‘No, I want it now,’ and he pulled out cash and bought the pint we had right there.’’
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