The Organic Snack Company: encouraging health and sustainability one bite at a time
By George Berkheimer
Doing the right thing for customers and the environment paid off handsomely for The Organic Snack Company, which manufactures and distributes Kate’s Real Food granola bars. The company’s focus on healthful, quality organic ingredients quickly attracted orders from Delta Airlines and other large corporate customers, which led to unexpected meteoric growth for the company. Now, TOSC can not only work the same magic for other likeminded snack food manufacturers, but also influence change in the local agriculture industry that could help some small struggling farmers. Mark Thaler, CEO of TOSC, said the odyssey began 10 years ago when Kate Schade developed a granola bar that wouldn’t freeze on the ski slopes or melt during endurance bike rides. The samples she handed out to customers while waiting tables in a Wyoming restaurant impressed Thaler’s father, an Altoona dentist, so much that he proposed a business venture. TOSC broke ground in 2019 and opened in 2020. Six months later, Delta’s offer accelerated the company’s growth plans by five years practically overnight, taking it from a seven-person team working four days a week to its current operations with more than 65 current employees. “Our initial building was 20,000 square feet, and we just completed a 30,000-square-foot expansion. We now have two production lines and extra production capacity,” Thaler said. “We still support the growth of Kate’s, but we’re starting to look for outside business to become a copacker for somebody else. They must be in line with our organic values, that’s something on which we won’t compromise.”
Location and foresight
Bedford has proven to be an ideal location for TOSC. “We have hardworking, honest people here who can compete globally,” Thaler said, recalling his pride in seeing a JLG scissor lift at a factory in Denmark while scouring Europe for manufacturing equipment. “The roads we have here are incredible and link us to the rest of the world,” Thaler observed. “We can reach 160 million people within a one-day truck drive.” Central Pennsylvania is also blessed with natural beauty and amazing natural resources, he added, but residents sometimes struggle for access. That’s something that TOSC’s Chief Operating Officer McKenzie Blair and Chief Production Officer Matthew Blair are working to improve by serving on The Growing Outdoor Recreation for Pennsylvania board. “I think it’s important that our mindset shifts in viewing the outdoors as an asset for our communities,” Thaler said. “If we can turn that into an economic driver of growth, we’ll be more inclined to protect it.”
Rethinking supply chains
Thaler frequently attends symposiums and the Pennsylvania Farm Show to promote the benefits of organic agriculture. “Cost is a barrier for a lot of farmers, because it starts with smaller yields and the scale of manufacturing isn’t there yet,” he said. “In our own little way, though, we’re trying to make organic products more accessible.” Sourcing as many ingredients as locally as possible is also a good insurance policy against supply chain setbacks like the one TOSC experienced when Russia invaded Ukraine, disrupting the global wheat supply. “Many of our organic oat suppliers in Canada switched to wheat farming to fill the void,” Thaler said, forcing TOSC to spend time tracking down other suppliers for its primary ingredient. Follow-on discussions with the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture led to a new joint initiative that could turn into an innovative and obvious solution, given that central Pennsylvania’s climate makes it one of the nation’s most ideal locations for growing oats. “We’re working with a farmer in Portage who planted 100 acres of organic gluten-free oats for us that are nearing harvest,” Thaler said. “If it works for him and works for us, we might be able to get more local farmers to participate and switch over from conventional to organic farming.” One of the biggest challenges all farmers face is finding markets for their products, he explained, and niche organic products present additional hurdles. “I’d rather buy my oats from Portage than Canada and save on shipping costs,” he said. “The government subsidizes some crops we shouldn’t be growing, in places we shouldn’t be growing them, and it’s taking too much water and degrading the soil. I think planting the right crops in the right places and developing different supply chains is going to be the future of agriculture in this country, and we’re proud to be a part of that.” Originally from Hollidaysburg, Thaler spent some time in Washington, DC, as a corporate attorney and returned with the intention of getting involved in corporate real estate before TOSC materialized. “Many of my high school friends left and never came back, but I was able to return and create jobs,” he said. “I didn’t go to school to make granola bars but being able to feel like I’m making a difference in a place that I love, that’s what gets me excited to come to work every single day.”