{"id":277477,"date":"2026-02-02T21:54:11","date_gmt":"2026-02-02T21:54:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/277477\/"},"modified":"2026-02-02T21:54:11","modified_gmt":"2026-02-02T21:54:11","slug":"niall-harty-on-starting-all-real-nutrition-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/277477\/","title":{"rendered":"Niall Harty on starting All Real Nutrition \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Starting any business is a challenge, but trying to break into a field dominated by brands such as Fulfil and Grenade \u2013 which are owned by confectionery giants Ferrero and Cadbury\u2019s<\/a> owner Mondel\u0113z<\/a> \u2013 is setting an ambitious goal.<\/p>\n

For Niall Harty and his natural protein bar company, All Real Nutrition, it is all about having a David-versus-Goliath mentality.<\/p>\n

The difference between All Real and what he describes as \u201cfaceless corporate brands\u201d is that \u201cyou are seeing me and Ross [McDowell, co-founder] and people in the factory\u201d.<\/p>\n

For a growing business, the key is \u201cclever relationship building with our retailers\u201d and developing a brand with consumers. But at the end of the day, \u201cyou cannot argue with rate of sale\u201d.<\/p>\n

Creating natural protein bars is a \u201creal technical challenge\u201d, he says. \u201cThere is a reason why there are not many natural bars that have 20gof protein and low sugar, because technically, it is a very hard thing to pull off.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYou might be able to produce it today,\u201d he says, but by the time it makes its way into the customer\u2019s hand, the protein in the bars will have hardened and rendered the bar nearly inedible.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat we have done really well at All Real is we have got the Holy Trinity together: simple ingredients, nutrition that actually works, and the taste.\u201d<\/p>\n

The company is looking to appeal both to nutrition-focused people, with a competitive mix of macronutrients, and the general consumer audience, which Harty says is more focused on having natural contents.<\/p>\n

He characterised many of the big brands in the space as being more akin to chocolate bars: \u201cThe healthy halo of that [type of] product is starting to go now. The veil is lifting.\u201d<\/p>\n

[\u00a0Who are the young food innovators of Ireland?Opens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

\u201cSome of the other natural bars, where the nutrition might be great, they taste horrible; or they taste nice, and it\u2019s basically just a block of dried fruit with 50g of sugar per 100g of product.\u201d<\/p>\n

Harty believes the company\u2019s offering is carving out its own share of the market due to getting \u201cthe balance right\u201d after between 500 and 600 iterations of the recipe.<\/p>\n

He presents All Real as firmly in contrast to the big brands, many of which are produced in the same factories.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re hands-on, we\u2019re producing the product. We\u2019re innovating every little thing, looking at the ingredients, changing suppliers, and making all minor tweaks.<\/p>\n

\u201cEvery time we have a new run of packaging, we\u2019re tweaking it a little bit, making it a little bit better, making [the bar] softer, reducing the sugar, improving the taste,\u201d he says. <\/p>\n

\"InIn 2016, Niall Harty handed in his notice to work on the business full-time. Photograph: Alan Betson\/The Irish Times <\/p>\n

The idea for the company came after his time in college, having felt his own diet had suffered. His first idea was to make paleo-friendly energy balls \u2013 before it was popular, apparently. <\/p>\n

The enterprise had to be scrapped after a trademark issue over the name, so it was while working for Enterprise Ireland that Harty refined the idea.<\/p>\n

His thinking at the time, he says, was \u201ccreate a brand, start in Ireland and go to America\u201d. Looking to take advantage of the reputation of Irish grass-fed dairy overseas, he looked to develop a milk-powder bar \u2013 an idea he subsequently pivoted away from.<\/p>\n

\u201cTypically, the big trends in the [United] States follow over here to Ireland after about four or five years. So maybe I can get ahead of the market and get a jumpstart.\u201d<\/p>\n

He began developing the bars after work and, in 2016, handed in his notice to work on the business full-time. <\/p>\n

Harty went to the local Supervalu chain and successfully pitched his product, on the back of which he secured a loan to fund the beginning of the company.<\/p>\n

With a customer and some cash, all he needed now was a business.<\/p>\n

I was actually pretty bad at making bars, but I was a bit better at selling and marketing them<\/p>\n

\u2014 \u00a0Niall Harty<\/p>\n

After renting a premises, he recalls writing down the goal of being the number one natural protein bar brand in Europe, but didn\u2019t \u201chave a clue of how to get there\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cFirst day in the office \u2013 I\u2019m not joking when they say this \u2013 I sat down, set up my table, set up my desk, opened up the laptop, and Googled \u2018how to start a protein bar company\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n

The search didn\u2019t return much information on the matter, he laughs, \u201cSo I figured, I\u2019m going to have to figure that one out myself!\u201d<\/p>\n

Even without the help of Google, the company began to come together. Listings in local shops grew into participation in the Supervalu Food Academy programme, which gave the company access to locations across Munster.<\/p>\n

A \u201cone-man band\u201d, Harty was up at 4am most days, making batches of product, packing them and delivering them to shops. He would sit nervously outside the shops, hyping himself up to make the sale, but slowly distribution grew to 50 outlets, and the business could afford to hire its first employee.<\/p>\n

[\u00a0\u2018I started a food business but there were bigger companies making similar product\u2019Opens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

\u201cIt just made me realise I was actually pretty bad at making bars, but I was a bit better at selling and marketing them.\u201d<\/p>\n

It was not until Harty met his now co-founder Ross McDowell that the business truly fell into place as a joint venture between the two: \u201cWe are very much Ying and Yang.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHe made me very busy with all the sales he was doing!\u201d<\/p>\n

Marking the change, the branding was later shifted from Origin Bars to All Real Nutrition. In the first year of the new name, 2021, they saw sales of nearly \u20ac400,000.<\/p>\n

The investment helped to grow sales, which tripled to around \u20ac1.2 million in 2022, but that was followed by \u201cslowish growth\u201d over the next two years. It was a move to focus on direct-to-consumer that shifted the needle.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is now our biggest sales channel by far, and we\u2019re growing nearly 200 per cent year on year in direct to consumer,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe found that people really valued authenticity, so we doubled down on our strategy with advertising on Meta. We have so many ad campaigns, we spend a tremendous amount of money on videos, advertising and so on.\u201d<\/p>\n

But the move seems to be working for the company, which has shifted its focus to \u201cthinking a bit more like a tech company, focusing on customer acquisition, cost, and retention\u201d. He describes this as \u201ca game changer\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat helped us go from \u20ac1.7 million in 2024 to last year, when we did \u20ac3.2 million; [that is] 80 per cent growth last year.<\/p>\n

In 2026, the company is projecting more than \u20ac5 million in sales, and although 2027 is \u201ca long way away\u201d, they are hoping for \u20ac9 million in turnover then.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Starting any business is a challenge, but trying to break into a field dominated by brands such as…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":277478,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[13355,103,61,60,446],"class_list":["post-277477","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nutrition","tag-food-production","tag-health","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-nutrition"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/277477","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=277477"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/277477\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/277478"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=277477"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=277477"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=277477"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}