Carne Bar Wins Gold for Outstanding Product
at "From the Ground Up" Trade Show

Eight months ago, Carne Bar was just an idea between two friends.

  • No finalized product.
  • No finished packaging.
  • No polished pitch.
  • Just a name, a stubborn belief, and a simple question:

Why does every protein bar have to be sweet, chalky, or packed with ingredients we don’t actually want to eat?

We wanted to make something different. Something built from real food. Something savoury, satisfying, and made for people who need more than another candy-bar-in-disguise pretending to be nutrition.

So we started building Carne Bar.

A meat-based protein bar made with beef, fruit, nuts, seeds, and bold flavour. A bar designed for real life: long workdays, busy families, road trips, hikes, trade jobs, workouts, and every moment when you need something convenient that actually feels like food.

At the beginning, it was all theory. Recipes scribbled out. Ideas tested. Flavours debated. Texture problems solved, then solved again. Packaging measured, redesigned, changed, and changed again. We were still figuring out what Carne Bar would become when we made a decision that now feels a little ridiculous:

Dave Allard and William Milk from Carne Bar

We signed up for the "From the Ground Up" Trade Show before we had the product finalized.

  • We did not have finished packaging.
  • We did not have every production detail locked in.
  • We did not have a perfect version of the bar.

What we had was belief.

We knew the idea was strong. We knew the market was missing something like this. We knew people were tired of the same sweet protein bars, the same artificial flavours, the same “healthy” snacks that never really satisfied. And we knew that if we gave ourselves a real deadline, we would have no choice but to make it happen.

So we did.

We tested. We refined. We dried beef. We blended batches. We adjusted flavour. We learned more about water activity, shelf stability, packaging, food safety, and production than we ever expected to learn in such a short window. We built the brand around the idea of being bold, honest, and real — not another protein bar, but a return to recognizable food with meat as the main character.

And then we brought Carne Bar to From the Ground Up.

This weekend, Carne Bar won Gold for Outstanding Product.

For us, that award means a lot more than a ribbon or a title.

It means people understood what we were trying to do.

They tasted the difference. They saw the potential. They recognized that Carne Bar is not just another snack trying to fit into an existing category. It is something new: savoury, protein-forward, shelf-stable, and made with real ingredients for people who want real food on the go.

Winning gold at this stage is both humbling and energizing. We are still early. We are still learning. We are still improving. But to go from “what if we made a better protein bar?” to standing at a trade show with a gold award in hand less than a year later is the kind of milestone that reminds us why we started.

Carne Bar was built by two friends who believed there was room for something better.

Something bolder.
 Something more satisfying.
 Something real.

Thank you to everyone who tasted, supported, encouraged, questioned, challenged, and believed in this product before it was fully formed. Thank you to the From the Ground Up organizers and judges for recognizing Carne Bar with Gold for Outstanding Product. And thank you to everyone who stopped by our booth, tried something new, and helped confirm what we have felt from the beginning:

Carne Bar is ready.

This is just the beginning.