Ep. 101 7 Summits Snacks. With Kristyn Carriere

“Our vision is that sports nutrition should taste amazing. Not that it should taste good. It should taste amazing. There's no reason why it shouldn't. And so we're on this quest to bring functional sports nutrition to folks and we're doing that in the realm of chocolate.”Kristyn Carriere has spent her life working in chocolate. So when 7 Summits Snacks was launched, she knew what she was doing when it came to creating the product but selling the product was a whole new endeavor. How hard can it be to sell chocolate right?Hard. Like most things actually, it turned out to be much harder than anticipated. 200 stores from coast to coast in Canada later, Kristyn and the team are finding their way, but it’s been tougher than she expected. She’s a runner as well so the challenge of finding their way has been a welcome one, even if it’s more than she expected. “The competition out there in both the chocolate and the nutrition space is huge so building a brand has been a lot harder than I thought and convincing folks that chocolate is actually a functional food or can be a functional food is also way harder than i expected it to be. So there's lessons every week when i'm just like “oh yeah I can't take it for granted that everyone's like me and just thinks that chocolate is the best thing on earth”. They'll eat chocolate flavored stuff. But the thought of having a chocolate bar is still a huge barrier for a lot of folks mentally. Just based on our programming as children and being told like, oh, this is only a treat. So we're trying to break down really deep belief systems for folks and just reeducate them that it can be a functional food as well.”Kristyn was so much fun to chat with as I loved how open she was about competing in the space, especially after having such an emotional launching of the business. I hope you enjoy the conversation as much as I did and you will think about chocolate a little different now that 7 Summit Snacks is changing the game! #Naaksquad - Try it and get 15% offI enjoy the Naak products, even if the sauces took a few tries to grow on me. They get the job done and they don’t give me any issues, and isn’t that the point? So I applied to be part of the squad to get a discount on the products I plan on using a bunch. Reach out to me if you have any questions and I’ll do my best to answer! They give me a referral code, so I’m including that today.If you’re gonna check it out, click through this link (CTR15 for 15% off), I appreciate it.Listen where you listenSpotify: Click HereGoogle Podcasts: Click HereApple Podcasts: Click HereMusic by Paolo Argentino from PixabayWe’re on the journey to 2,000 subscribers, help us get there!If you enjoy this podcast, I would really appreciate it if you could like, share, subscribe, or comment! I’m trying to make this the best trail running podcast it can be and I certainly appreciate your time. Thank you all and happy trails :) Get full access to Community Trail Running at communitytrailrunning.substack.com/subscribe