Lori and Scott Levine, founders of Scott's Protein Balls, discuss how Lori's breast cancer diagnosis inspired them to create a healthy, whole food snack, plus how they turned it from a tasty home recipe into a thriving business. They also offer their tips for separating healthy food from junk food as we enter into the indulgent holiday season.

Use code 'Cheddar20' for 20% off of your order at ScottsProteinBalls.com. 

<div class="block">Lori and Scott Levine, founders of Scott's Protein Balls, discuss how Lori's breast cancer diagnosis inspired them to create a healthy, whole food snack, plus how they turned it from a tasty home recipe into a thriving business. They also offer their tips for separating healthy food from junk food as we enter into the indulgent holiday season.</div><div class="block">Use code 'Cheddar20' for 20% off of your order at ScottsProteinBalls.com. </div>

Wake Up With Cheddar

Turning a Breast Cancer Diagnosis Into a Thriving Business

Well, if you've been searching for a healthy snack. Look no further because Scott and Lori Levine, founder of Scott's protein balls, have you covered and this all looks amazing and delicious. I can't wait to get to this. Thank you guys for joining us. Let's start off with why you guys decided to create this because I had a lot to do with your health concern that you had right. Um in 2017 out of nowhere I got diagnosed with breast cancer. Um so I'm good now, but you know, it was quite a quite a time for us. It was upsetting and scary, but I realized afterwards that you can control some things when you're out of control. So I control what I could eat and I control it I think. And I got in great shape, but my nutritionist said no more protein bars. She said their protein their their process, they have sugar, they have chemical soy. So I complained to scott, who's in finance and he said I'm going to create something for you. And he created the peanut butter Cacau protein ball. And I started eating them, carrying them around and everybody started eating them, stealing them, filling their own houses. They were leaving our house with ziploc bags full. That's love. He said, I'm going to create something that I'm very lucky scott. Let's talk about this. I mean, how did you make this jump from making your own protein balls that people were stealing in the finance industry and then starting a whole company. I mean that is a very big jump. Yes, well it was Laurie's idea. We, you know the pandemic hit, we were working at home. My son had come home from college, his internship was gone. No one was going to an office and she said, why don't we just start making some product and filling the freezer? So that's what we did. And then put a simple form up on instagram or google doc and people started ordering them and friends put him up on mom chats and next thing you know, we had orders coming in. Well let's get to some of these things you have on the table because you have eight different flavors and they're all made with clean ingredients, which is so important for me. So how do you ensure that they taste good and are actually healthy? I'm gonna taste this one. Yes, it's exactly, this is a lot of trial and error, right? Just tasting it really. A lot of times you have these artificial ingredients to make it taste sweet and good and it has the aftertaste is a lot of times the clean products and clean ingredients, they're not cheap to. You have to sort of add that into the price of the Yes, Yes, we, we make sure they're plant based, they're gluten free, dairy free, soy free, low sugar. All the things that my nutritionist wanted me to have or not have ingredients. I have confetti and it tastes really good. Who doesn't love that too sticky and by the way there's the the caloric intake on that. Only 80 g of calories and three g of protein. Which is amazing here. Your company now incredibly successful. What sort of the next step here? Where's the future go for you guys? Well, it was just my five year anniversary of my diagnosis in april. So we aligned ourselves with with our mission. We donate 1% of our sales to breast cancer research. So B. C. R. F. You could see it on the bag and we want to talk about it. We're we're gonna we're gonna blow it up in a good one. It's all about it. Sure. So you know, we're rolling out to other companies were were out on Long Island. Were in in supermarket chain there's a chain called Kane Cullen and and wild by nature and we're gonna be in food town in Bay Ridge Brooklyn. This this week we open there we'll keep on doing good and donating. And we got to also talk about some of the misconceptions involved because a lot of people when they're talking about eating healthy and what not to eat what you should eat. How do we separate fact from fiction with all the information out there with good food. Sure. Well the first thing we do is if we don't understand the ingredients, we avoid it. So that's keep trying to keep it simple. It's one of the things we do with our product is a lot of the same ingredients over and over again. Superfoods, chia seeds, flax seeds, whole grain oats, oat flour and you know again as few ingredients as possible and ingredients you recognize a very good point and always the first ingredient, always the first, the most important part on that thanksgiving week, this week, this is usually a week, everybody's go out the window. Yeah, there's so indulgent where diets go out the window. What sort of your advice to people? If there's one thing maybe they should avoid, what should it be? So avoid, I would say a lot of sugar. But if you want a nice treat to bring to wherever you're going brownie, you feel like you had a brownie ball and we have a promotion for you guys. Um cheddar 20. Like you go on our website www dot Scotts protein balls dot com. You can get 20% off your order with cheddar 20 and we recommend to people to shop the outer aisles of your supermarkets. Um you know everything in the middle has been sitting there, we sell with cut up fruit, we selling produce and that's really our just shop the outer circle, stop the outer circle and shop on their website, you get 20% off cheddar 20 right there on your screen and this is great for those grandma's and take forever to cook dinner and let me take a snack with because we won't be able to eat for another three hours, especially on the drive over. I'm eating all day on thanksgiving three of the flavors are also nut free, so that's good. Kids take them to school our customers, our ridge in age 92 to 92 and everyone in between. I think we're gonna be some of your customers and thank you so much. Thank you Laurie and Scott Levin. We appreciate the creators of Scott's protein balls coming in and make sure you check out their website for that special Deer cheddar 20 get your 20% off.