How Griffin Spolansky Built Mezcla From a College Classroom Into a $20 Million Protein Bar Brand

Griffin Spolansky grew up in a family of entrepreneurs and started his first food business at thirteen. By his senior year at the University of Virginia, he had spotted a gap in the protein bar market and cold-pitched a stranger in a university hallway on building it together. That stranger became his business partner, and together they built Mezcla, a protein bar brand that went from a kitchen experiment to one of the fastest-growing names in the category.

Five years after that hallway conversation, Mezcla does $20 million in annual revenue and sells in over 10,000 stores including Target, Whole Foods, Publix, and Costco. Getting there was harder than it sounds, and the road looked nothing like what Griffin had planned.

This is the story of how that hallway pitch became a co-founding partnership, the two and a half years of kitchen failures that nearly ended the company before it launched, the COVID curveball that wiped out their entire launch plan, and how they scaled from $250,000 in their first six months to $20 million today.

How Griffin Spolansky Came Up With the Idea for Mezcla

Griffin Spolansky got the idea for Mezcla in 2019 during an entrepreneurship class at the University of Virginia, when a guest speaker presented her granola company and sparked a question he could not let go of. He grew up surrounded by entrepreneurs, his grandfather, father, and uncles all built their own businesses. By the time he was thirteen, Griffin was already bottling and selling his grandmother's salad dressing. He always knew he wanted to build something. He just needed the right idea.

He found it during that class in Charlottesville. What caught his attention was the thinking behind Coco Sotelo's granola company. She was taking a boring food category and making it feel exciting and special, and Griffin thought the protein bar aisle had never gotten that kind of attention.

"A light bulb went off in my head. If you look at the protein bar aisle, it's not super exciting. It feels very generic to me. Why can't we bring innovation and excitement to that aisle?" — Griffin Spolansky, Mezcla

Within weeks, what started as a cold pitch in a hallway had turned into coffee meetings. Only a few weeks later, Griffin and Coco had formed a partnership and begun building Mezcla together, with Griffin balancing startup life alongside a full Division I lacrosse schedule, spending four to five hours at practice every afternoon and another four or five working on the brand every evening throughout his senior year.

How Mezcla Was Built Before It Ever Made a Sale

Building Mezcla from an idea to an actual product took Griffin Spolansky and Coco Sotelo two and a half years of work before they sold a single bar, and the process was harder than either of them expected. They spent months in a home kitchen with no food science background and no real understanding of how keeping food fresh works at scale. Every few weeks, they thought they had the formula figured out, and then the bars would go moldy or come out too firm or too soft.

"We were spending months making bars in the kitchen and every two weeks they would go moldy or they would go stale. We couldn't figure it out. Certain points we were like, Can we even do this or not?"

There were stretches where neither of them could see a way forward. What kept Griffin going was a combination of stubbornness, the entrepreneurship he had watched his whole life, and the athlete mentality he had built through years of lacrosse. Eventually, they found a food scientist who had connections to a manufacturing facility and could take their kitchen experiment and turn it into something that could actually be made at scale.

Getting from the first classroom idea to the first finished bar took eighteen months. From there, they spent another full year setting up the supply chain, raising money, designing the packaging, and figuring out how to sell before a single product went on sale anywhere. Two and a half years of work with no revenue, all while Griffin's parents were wondering when something was going to happen.

How COVID Canceled Mezcla's Launch and What They Did Instead

Mezcla was set to launch at a major food trade show in early 2020, but the event was shut down by COVID just one day before it opened. They had produced 10,000 bars for it.

With 10,000 bars sitting in a warehouse and no event to bring them to, Griffin had to come up with a new plan fast. Through a connection with a marketing specialist named Alex Sunshine, Mezcla sent product to about 3,500 people with social media followings, asking nothing in return and just getting the bars in front of people who might talk about them. Creators started posting about the product, a waitlist began to form, and by the time Mezcla officially launched in August 2020, real demand was already waiting.

"People started inquiring like, hey, when will these bars be ready? I'm really excited about this product. The first month we launched we did ten thousand dollars."

For a brand that had spent two and a half years building before anyone knew it existed, that first month was confirmation that they had built something people actually wanted.

How Mezcla Got Into Target, Whole Foods, and Over 10,000 Stores

Mezcla built its retail presence by starting small, with Griffin physically walking bars into local Boston stores himself in the fall of 2020 and asking owners to carry them. The plan was to get the brand in front of as many people as possible, both online and in stores.

Griffin started approaching local retailers in Boston in the fall of 2020, carrying bars himself and asking shop owners if they would give them shelf space. Many said yes, agreeing to carry the product for free and pay for more if the bars sold well. Once enough doors were covered, conversations with regional distributors became a lot easier. One distributor agreed to take on the brand, and through that relationship, Mezcla landed in the Fresh Market, a chain of 150 stores, within the first year.

"Literally walking into their stores and being like, hey, are you interested in carrying the bars? And a lot of them would be like, yeah, sure, we'll carry them, but we're gonna carry them for free. And if they sell well, we'll buy more."

Being willing to give away product for free in the short term turned out to be the right call. From there, Mezcla kept building, moving into new markets carefully and using

regional distributors who helped open doors at bigger retailers. Today the brand is in over 10,000 stores including Target, Whole Foods, Publix, Costco, Sprouts, and CVS.

How Mezcla Grew From $250,000 to $20 Million in Revenue

Mezcla grew its revenue every year after launching in August 2020, going from $250,000 in the first six months all the way to $20 million in annual sales. The first six months brought in $250,000. Year two reached $750,000. From there the brand kept climbing through two million, five million, ten million, and twenty million.

Mezcla has raised over $15 million in total to support that growth. Griffin is quick to point out that the company has always been careful with how it spent that money, focused on healthy profit margins and smart spending rather than trying to grow as fast as possible at any cost. He has watched other food brands burn through funding without building a real foundation, and that was never the plan for Mezcla.

"We went from $250K in revenue the first six months, then $750K, then $2 million, then $5 million, then $10 million, then $20 million in revenue."

What Founders Can Learn From the Mezcla Story

Mezcla's growth offers several lessons for founders building a consumer product brand, most of which come down to a handful of decisions Griffin made differently from most people who start a business.

1. He moved fast on a real insight. He didn't spend months planning what Mezcla could look like, he took the first step to figure it out quickly. Leaving class partway through to chase a speaker down the hall sounds like a strange thing to do, but Griffin had an idea, found someone who could help him fill it, and made his move on the same day.

   
   

2. He treated near-quit moments as information. Two years of kitchen failures weren't proof the business was impossible. They were proof he needed to find a different route, finding a food scientist. Mezcla would not be around today if it wasn't for them pushing through those difficult moments of uncertainty.

   
   

3. He found an upside in a real disaster. A COVID-canceled trade show with 10,000 bars and nowhere to sell them could have been a disaster for Mezcla. The influencer strategy that replaced it ended up working better than the original plan ever would have.

   
   

4. He was willing to do the work that does not scale. Griffin didn't try to sell a million bars in his first year. Walking bars into Boston stores one by one is not something you can keep doing forever, but it created the distributor relationships that eventually put Mezcla in 10,000 locations. Small steps made the big ones possible.

   
   

5. He protected his margins from the start. The fees that come with selling in major retail chains can destroy a brand that is not prepared for them. Griffin understood the cost of playing in that world before he entered it, and building with strong margins was a decision that protected the company as it grew.

   
   

Mezcla is a story about what happens when someone keeps their eyes open for the right idea and moves fast enough to make something real out of it when it appears. Griffin Spolansky grew up watching his family members build their own businesses, now his family gets to watch him do the same.

"It's really hard to stand out, but if you can stand out, there's a lot of opportunity to win."

To hear Griffin tell the full story in his own words, watch the full Bit of Business interview on Spotify or YouTube. Watch Now