Good, and healthy! How about some guilt-free Chocolate?

There are some people who just have a fitting last name. Christy Goldsby is one of them. With the success of her decadent Honey Mama’s Truffle Bars, the Portland, Oregon-based entrepreneur has fittingly hit gold – with the help of the nectar of a bee. Her Honey Mama’s Truffle bars are not your average chocolate bars by any means. Packed and sweetened with the healthy benefits of honey, the brand came to be with Goldsby’s own health journey – one that led to sweet success. Goldsby shared her story and Honey Mama’s journey with Beyondish.

Tell me how Honey Mama’s came about. 

I started Honey Mama’s in 2013, about four years after stepping away from a family-owned dessert bakery and during a point in my life when I was going through my own personal wellness journey. In 2010, I did a cleanse with my best friend to support her as she was looking for relief from a debilitating auto-immune disease (Mycenean Gravis). After three weeks on the cleanse, she learned she could manage her symptoms through food, and soon discovered she was celiac. I learned I had Hashimoto’s, an auto-immune disease that requires elimination of gluten and dairy to manage symptoms. This cleanse experience led me into a deep dive to better understand food as medicine and I became passionate about creating a line of delicious, nourishing snacks that would encourage people to choose foods as a resource to heal instead of depleting their body. I spent about 2 years on recipe ideas and discovery until I landed on my first batch of Honey Mama’s Truffle Bars. In November of 2011, I’ll never forget my first bite. I worked with my husband (a designer) to create a quick logo and colorful labels and applied to the Portland Farmers Market with a dream to build a regional brand. My first day at the farmers market was March 19, 2013. And from there, we’ve just grown.

What’s been the sweetest part of the experience?

 The most potent part about having a chocolate brand is to educate people about food as medicine. Most everyone loves chocolate and there’s so many inherently healthy qualities, especially one made from combining powerhouse nutrient rich foods: 100% pure cocoa, unrefined coconut oil, raw honey, nuts or coconut, and Himalayan pink salt. When I was trying to come up with a product line before I found my way to my first iteration of a Honey Mama’s bar, I was trying to create a line of fermented foods. Much more straightforward functional and not much of a comfort food element. With my background and passion for baking, a chocolate treat became a much more obvious and impactful vehicle to spread the word about taking care of ourselves with food.

How do you come up with the really unique flavors? Is there one flavor you could say is the most most popular?

I always start new flavors inspired by desserts or flavor combinations that I am passionate and nostalgic about. For example, our Salted Almond bar (the very first bar I made) is reminiscent of my mom’s brownie recipe growing up. The Chocolate Cake bar is a nod to my Grandma Vera’s German Chocolate Cake recipe. The Coconut Fudge is a celebration of the homemade family tradition holiday fudge my Grandma Marcie made and sent to us every year. The Oregon Mint bar was an ode to my obsession with chocolate mint anything and everything – and this is still my favorite of all time. Our longstanding bestselling bar was the Lavender Rose flavor – it has a touch of lavender essential oil topped with dried rose petals. Gorgeous and romantic. Our bestselling bar of all time is the PB Cup bar. Literally tastes like a next-level-to-die-for PB Cup. SOOO good.

Honey Mama’s founder Christy Goldsby.

Chocolate, as we all know, can sometimes be bitter. What’s been the most bitter aspect of this business for you?

One of the biggest challenges in business is to scale from a nationally distributed natural food brand to the more mass and conventional marketplace. This means crossing over from the Whole Foods/Sprouts/Natural Grocers and independent stores where we’ve become a leader in the refrigerated healthy snacking category into markets like Kroger, Safeway Albertsons, Costco, etc., where corporations dominate and shelf space is more expensive and competitive. But also where we will be able to impact healthy food choices of a much wider swath of households. This is not so much bitter but brings with it a myriad of stressful challenges/opportunities both internally (manufacturing and systems) and externally (as a brand, how do we show up selling a refrigerated “chocolate” bar with authenticity that also speaks to all consumers?). For a creative, lighthearted personality type this means continuing to build the right team with right partners. So far we’ve done that and stayed focused, lucky and are extremely driven to get it done every day.

What sets your truffle bars apart from others?

 Our truffle bars are different from traditional chocolate bars in both nourishing and textural ways.

–We use virgin coconut oil instead of cocoa butter as the fat. Coconut oil is a super nourishing, easy to digest, medium chain fat that is hormone balancing, anti-viral, anti-inflammatory and used as energy by our brain and body upon consumption instead of being stored as fat. Coconut oil also has a lower melting point than the traditional chocolate bar fat of cocoa butter, so our bars are sold in the refrigerator section.

–We use pure raw honey as the sweetener, a phytonutrient powerhouse that is antioxidant, anti-viral, anti-fungal, a support for healthy blood sugar levels and cholesterol and triglyceride management. I love honey so much I named the company in its honor.

–Incredible texture! They are ethereal: soft and decadent, more like a fudgey brownie than a chocolate bar and they are cold, which makes them wonderfully satisfying and differentiated. Magical.

–Clean, short, ingredient list. Made with a delicately balanced combination of about five Organic, clean, whole food ingredients as the foundation for all bars.

From opening the box to indulging in the sweet chocolate truffles, this is a special experience you’ve created. Was this something you felt was important in setting your product apart? 

I wanted to offer people the experience of connection, joy and a sense that what they are eating is something with tradition and thoughtfulness behind it, and that it’s just for them. I believe we all relate to the nostalgia of childhood treats: how it felt to eat birthday cake on our birthday, or get ice cream on a hot summer day with friends. Honey Mama’s is a celebration of all that, those moments we can just bliss out and celebrate and feel free in the simplicity of that moment.

Describe the ethos behind Honey Mama’s to our readers. 

It’s all about the people. Honey Mama’s is rooted in the connection and integrity as the heart and center from which all things grow. We thrive on our company culture and a commitment to the community. We are proud to provide employment to 40 individuals, 35 of which are based in Portland, Oregon. We’ve partnered with the Oregon Commission for the Blind to provide employment to blind individuals. Since August 2020 we have partnered with Urban Gleaners to divert over 25,000 pounds of product (that would otherwise have gone to compost) to hungry kids and families throughout Portland. This totals over 160,000 Honey Mama’s bars to date. We also work closely with our suppliers and retailers.

If you could envision the future of the brand, what does that look like? 

We’d be on every store shelf across the US and beyond – from gas stations to Costco, Whole Foods and Walmart, and still in the independent mom and pop’s that have been the lifeblood of our roots. I want Honey Mama’s to be a part of the set of growing brands who celebrate and push the status quo away from ultra processed inflammatory ingredients, towards real, whole foods that allow everyone to take care of their health from home.