Our Story
It all started back in 2017, in Bozeman Montana....
I was a student at Montana State University at the time. During the week I’d spend long hours on campus studying, and on the weekends I’d explore the mountains of Montana with my friends. I was having a hard time packing enough quality meals with me, and I wasn’t finding many good solutions available.
I started tinkering with a no-bake brownie recipe in my kitchen. I substituted in calorically dense all natural ingredients until I had something that looked more like a meal and less like a desert. After many botched attempts, I finally stumbled upon a recipe that produced a tasty, compact, and ultralight meal bar that would be an ideal meal on-the-go.
After several weeks of toting my wax paper wrapped concoctions on campus and weekend adventures, friends took note and asked me if I could make extras for them. The bars proved to be the perfect meal for in between the gym and a lecture, or as a quick and ultralight backpacking meal on the weekends. As graduation approached, several people told me I should do something more with the idea.
It took a while, but after working full time as an engineer for a bit over a year, I decided that my friends were right; I should do something more with my Zach bars. I started by taking a food entrepreneurship course from Oregon State University’s Food Innovation Center in Portland Oregon. Over the following months I’d go on to obtain a food processing license from the state, find wholesale suppliers for my ingredients, and sign the lease on a commercial kitchen where I could make my bars.
In June of 2022, I made my first batch of what were finally known as Range Meal Bars. I went on to sell them in several local outdoors stores, and on this website. Over the following three years, I made bars by hand with friends and family, released a second flavor, and attended several trade shows. By the end of 2022 demand for Range allowed me to move my production into a much larger facility that should support our growth for years to come.
It’s now February of 2023 and it’s amazing to see how far Range has come in the past three years. I still work full time as an engineer but still have the same passion for sharing my no B.S. meal replacement bars with the world. I look forward to releasing several more flavors (at least one of which should be gluten free), and continue to see where this wild ride takes me.