Did you know your favorite Date Lady products are found in delicious snacks all across the US? That's right! Our date products are used to create many different kinds of healthy and delicious goodies! We strongly believe living a healthy lifestyle doesn't have to taste bland and unexciting. Dates offer many nutritional benefits and can be used to enhance flavor in baking, adding to your coffee and much more. Our customers are proof of that with their ingenuity and creativity when developing new recipes! We recently chatted with Amanda, founder of AMG Snacks, to share more about her company and how they use dates in their energy bites.
Sounds Delish! Where Can I Find Them?
Where is AMG Snacks located and where can we purchase your delicious energy bites?
"We’re based in Massachusetts. You can find our bites online, many independent stores in Massachusetts, Market Basket, Gelson’s (West Coast), Faire.com (wholesale), and we recently launched with Snack Magic! We’re also in lots of juice bars and cafes, such as all Caffe Nero locations in MA."
What did you do before starting AMG Snacks and what inspired you to start your own business?
"Prior to AMG Snacks I worked at an investment bank as a balance sheet strategist for financial institutions. While working in the corporate world I was always searching for a great textured, clean ingredient, pre-portioned snack to keep on my desk or grab on the way to client meetings. I would be stopping in the airport to buy snacks and I was finding either really dense meal replacement type bars or high calorie bars with processed sugar. So I just started making energy bites with a short list of high-quality, all-natural ingredients and focused on texture and portion. Everyone loved them! As I became excited about building a business on something I created and was passionate about, I took the leap to launch AMG Snacks with a goal of providing clean ingredient, better-textured and portioned options for consumers. There are no sneaky ingredients you can’t understand and we’re sticking to that. Our mission is to shape the way consumers snack, and educate them on why our unprocessed, nutritious products are important. It’s a truly functional food."
What About The Ingredients?
What do you look for when you source ingredients to make your energy bites and why did you choose date syrup as an ingredient?
"I currently use date paste and date syrup but probably will shift over to date paste completely for simplicity and consistency. I was searching for an all-natural, low glycemic sweetener and binder that tasted just as good as any other sweetener out there. I really believe you don’t have to compromise the use of natural, healthy ingredients for taste and wanted to prove that. People who love sweets are always going to turn to something sweet, so why not make it better for you? With date based products you don’t see the sugar spikes and crashes you do with processed sugar and it just makes you feel better and satisfied overall. I fell in love with the Date Lady’s products and quality and have been using them since I launched."
How did you hear about us at Date Lady?
"I had been using the Date Lady’s products on a consumer level for a long time! I can’t even remember how I found them because it’s been so long but I used to buy date syrup or date sugar to sweeten up lots of my recipes - oatmeal, açaí bowls, smoothies, granola, the list goes on and on!"
What are your future plans/goals for your company?
"Still being such a new company, I am currently focusing efforts on my core flavors and brand awareness. As an entrepreneur I get asked all the time, what’s next? What product is next? What flavor is next? I think I was always thinking that way too but as I have launched into retail I have realized you really need to have a core flavor set of skus and build up brand awareness on what you’ve currently built before you focus energy on expansion. It takes a lot of “no's” before you hear a “yes” and it takes months to even launch into a store. So my current focus is making sure my expansion goes well and we really develop a core customer base around our core flavor line. My ultimate goal is to be a household snack food brand and expand on products from there, you have to stay focused but obviously goal setting helps motivate and drive you to get to where you ultimately want to be."
Grab yourself a bag of Energy Bites or learn more about AMG Snacks by clicking the link above.
Thank you for taking the time for an interview, Amanda! We wish you and your company great success!