Founder Feature: Yaniv Simpson of The Conscious Bar

In this episode of the Startup CPG Podcast, Caitlin Bricker welcomes Yaniv Simpson, founder of The Conscious Bar, for an inspiring conversation about redefining the chocolate industry through radical transparency and intentionality. Yaniv shares his unique journey from getting banned from a candy store at age five to building a date-sweetened craft chocolate company committed to proving that chocolate isn't candy.

Yaniv discusses the inspiration behind The Conscious Bar—a mission to create chocolate that's truly good for you, not just "better for you." He explains how combining two ancient superfoods, cacao and dates, with zero additives creates an indulgent experience that doesn't compromise on health, ethics, or environmental impact. The conversation explores the complexities of sourcing ethical, organic cacao that meets strict Prop 65 standards while maintaining phenomenal flavor profiles.

They also delve into The Conscious Bar's commitment to 100% compostable packaging, building transparency into every aspect of the supply chain, and the decision to invest deeply in direct-to-consumer and social media education before scaling to retail. Yaniv reflects on the importance of intentionality in every decision—from nine months sourcing compostable materials to building a full creative agency in-house to educate consumers on why sugar isn't just sugar.

You will also hear about The Conscious Bar's community-building approach through educational content, their VIP Circle, and upcoming limited edition SKUs launching in early 2026 as they expand into natural grocery retail.

Tune in to learn how The Conscious Bar is challenging decades of cultural programming around chocolate by building trust, transparency, and a brand that refuses to compromise.

Listen in as they share about:

• Origins of The Conscious Bar and Yaniv's Candy Store Ban
• Why Chocolate Isn't Candy: Redefining the Category
• Sourcing Ethical Cacao and Compostable Packaging
• The Nine-Month Journey to Perfection Before Launch
• Building a Creative Agency In-House for Education
• Direct-to-Consumer Strategy and Community Building
• Retail Expansion Plans for 2026
  
  

Episode Links:

Website: https://theconsciousbar.co/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theconsciousbar.co
Personal LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/yaniv-simpson-aa72b22a/
Company LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-conscious-bar/ 

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Show Links:

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• Questions or comments about the episode? Email Daniel at [e-mail]
• Episode music by Super Fantastics
  
  

Creators and Guests

Host

Caitlin Bricker

Editor @ Startup CPG

What is The Startup CPG Podcast?

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Yaniv Simpson
There's a minority of people that do not like chocolate. And it is what it is, Right. But for the most part, most people do like chocolate, all forms of chocolate. And so you kind of, you know, I like to say you kind of come into the world loving chocolate and you exit the world and loving chocolate. And so it's a very nostalgic thing and it's a very culturally relevant item. Right. And so there's been a tremendous amount of culture and associations that have been tagged to chocolate, and we're trying to shift that slightly.

00:45
Caitlin Bricker
Hey, everybody. This is Caitlin Bricker, editor at Startup cpg. We are back with another founder feature. Today we're talking with Yaniv Simpson, founder of the Conscious Bar, a date sweetened chocolate company, claiming to redefine the category. After getting banned from a candy store at age five, Yaniv is now building a chocolate company that aims to break chocolate out of its candy shell. He's on a mission to prove that transparency matters. And it's not just what's inside the bar that counts, it's the packaging too. Enjoy. Hey, everybody. Welcome back to the Startup CPG podcast. This is Caitlin and today I'm here with Yaniv Simpson, founder of the Conscious Bar. Yaniv, welcome to the show.

01:29
Yaniv Simpson
Thank you so much. I'm excited to be here.

01:32
Caitlin Bricker
I am very excited to have you here. I think everybody who's been listening and who knows me knows that I'm a freak for dates. So it's no surprise that I have a date sweet and chocolate bar company on as a guest. So before I give too much away, can you tell us what is the Conscious Bar?

01:52
Yaniv Simpson
Yes. So in a nutshell, the Conscious Bar. So we're a date Sweden Craft chocolate bar company. I started this company four and a half years ago at this point, and the goal was to reimagine the category and to redefine the category. It's an extremely audacious statement and it's an extremely audacious goal. I and the entire team are extremely aware of it. But it's where the fun is, right? On the surface level, yes, we're a date Sweden chocolate company and there's a lot that's coming past only chocolate bars. But I'm sure we're going to dive into it today in terms of what we're actually looking to do and how we get to live up to that very, very far fetched goal, which a lot of people kind of roll their eyes.

02:35
Yaniv Simpson
But that's why we're here, to do something special and make sure that we start tapping into some reprogramming of a lot of associations that have been literally ingrained into every single person who's alive. And the reason I say that is because you really come in. There's a minority of people that do not like chocolate. And it is what it is, Right? But for the most part, most people do like chocolate, all forms of chocolate. And so you kind of come into the world loving chocolate, and you exit the world's loving chocolate. And so it's a very nostalgic thing, and it's a very culturally relevant item. Right. And so there's been a tremendous amount of culture and associations that have been tagged to chocolate, and we're trying to shift that slightly.

03:22
Caitlin Bricker
It does seem like a very lofty goal to redefine chocolate. I mean, when I find myself standing in literally any grocery store that carries a chocolate bar, it's a lot of space on the chocolate shelf. Tell me how you're going to redefine chocolate. What does that mean? We hear that word redefine reinvent a lot in cpg. Tell me what it means to you to redefine chocolate.

03:48
Yaniv Simpson
Yes. Innovation is cool. Reimagining things is cool. Redefining stuff is cool. I think where a lot of us get lost sometimes in those big statements and big promises is that it tackles apart from of the problem or kind of statement versus the entire experience. I will get to the answer of that, I promise. Just to give a little. A tiny bit of a backstory. So I got banned from a candy store when I was five years old. I always tell people that there's a very big distinction between getting banned from a store and getting kicked out. Getting kicked out, it means you did something wrong on that one instance. Getting banned means that my dad figured out that I am visiting. I'm a frequent visitor at a specific Candy store at 5 years old, this was in England at the time.

04:33
Yaniv Simpson
Dragged me by the ear, took me to the store and asked the guy, like, do you know this kid? And of course, he's like, of course I know him. You see it all the time. And so when people say, like, oh, I've always had a sweet tooth, like, this has been a very real thing for me, going back over 30 years at this point, disclosing the ballpark of my age here. And so for me, chocolate growing up was candy. Right. It was a conditional thing. It's like, if you finish your homework, I'll give you some chocolate. If you're a good boy, I'll give you some chocolate if you eat your meal. It's just a very conditional thing. Obviously, fast forward 30 years from then they are better for you. Chocolate bars, chocolate companies.

05:12
Yaniv Simpson
The better for you category is something that we can definitely tackle. Another question. But I wanted to create an experience that's good for you, not similar to what has always existed and not better for you, but just good for you, period. And there's. It sounds like a small nuance, but it's a massive difference. And so yes, it does start with picking ingredients that are actually good for you. So I grew up in England and the Middle east, so dates for me was always a no brainer. We used to cook and bake with dates and date syrup my entire life, pretty much. And so I started this company four and a half years ago, but the R and D started a year before that. So we're talking five and a half years ago. Taking two superfoods, like actual superfoods. Cacao is a phenomenal superfoods.

05:53
Yaniv Simpson
It's a. I hate the term because it gets abused and. But it is what it is. It's a. It's a food that is phenomenal for you. Let's just put it that way. Dates is the same. Both of them go back thousands of years. Right. And so combining those two and nothing else, not like you have those two and there's other stuff creeping in at the same time creates a masterpiece for an indulgence, whatever it might be. But it's a. If you take this bar very right. And you have cocoa and dates and nothing else that is good for you, it's not just a little better for you. On top of that, there are a lot of different things that kind of people take into consideration when trying to associate themselves with a brand or purchase a single product, the entire supply chain.

06:37
Yaniv Simpson
When it comes to the ethics around a extremely disturbing industry such as Kakao, you have it in coffee as well. But Krakow is a serial offender when it comes to just poor practices and having a lot of ethical issues. And so tackling that is one thing. Excess plastic. Obviously we understand that CPG is a massive offender. CPG in general, when it comes to contribution for what happens in terms of plastic waste in the entire world, it.

07:04
Caitlin Bricker
Is what CPG is. It's fast moving consumable goods. So they're meant to be replaced.

07:10
Yaniv Simpson
Exactly. But they are better solutions. Right. You don't. Are non plastic packaging a little bit more expensive and harder to find? Yes. Right. But are they there also? Yes. Right. And so the way for us to redefine a category is to, number one, help people understand that chocolate isn't candy. Those are two totally separate things, right? There's candy dressed up in chocolate and it sometimes is flavored in chocolate and it might have 10 to 15% of this thing that we call cacao, but everything else is loaded with other stuff such as sugars, preservatives, oils, et cetera. That is not chocolate in the way that I define it. Okay. And so having a phenomenal product that people can truly indulge in and feel good about is number one.

07:53
Yaniv Simpson
Tackling the supply chain and the ethics around what you do and how you do it, and storytelling around that and putting it in the forefront and actually having feet on the ground, which is something that we're now really getting into. We haven't even scratched the surface is number two. Number three is today is chocolate bars. Tomorrow it's going to be something else. There's going to be a lot of packaging around that thing. Right? Like chocolate doesn't just fall from the trees or from the sky. It would be nice if that was the case, but you have to package it in something. There are alternative solutions and you can have a zero plastic or 100% plastic free brand. And so that's how we plan on doing it. We want to cater an experience that's truly different, that is innovative and that people can trust. Right.

08:33
Yaniv Simpson
At the end of the day, I think there is a major trust issue between the consumer and the brand and everything in between. And people are looking for transparency and they slash. We are holding brands and companies to a higher standard and that's part of what we're trying to inspire in the chopper industry. But within CPG in general, I think.

08:52
Caitlin Bricker
That transparency is very inspiring because it can get lost very easily, especially when you look at a set like chocolate bars and when you're not only looking at ingredients, but then you're looking at packaging. And it sounds like you're looking at health pretty holistically here. I just can't believe that you're sitting here telling me chocolate is not candy. Until this very moment. I have always looked at chocolate as candy because it's always associated with a sweet tooth, it's always associated with sugar. You and I both know that if you were to bite into cacao on its own, it's very bitter.

09:28
Yaniv Simpson
But.

09:29
Caitlin Bricker
But pair it with dates, it's just the perfect match. So I'm very curious because you're talking a lot about your supply chain here. How did you go about Securing your supply chain for cacao and then also your supply chain for your packaging too. Because those are two things that I feel like, even though I've seen other date sweetened chocolate bars, the packaging is not something that people are really hitting on. And you are.

09:53
Yaniv Simpson
Yeah, great question. I'll tackle the cacao side first. And so up until recently, probably up until a year ago, we relied on our chocolate manufacturer, right, to have insight into their relationships and where they're sourcing their cacao from. For us, the distinction between fair trade, which is something that was established a while ago, very well intended. But unfortunately there's a lot of loopholes and some issues, let's say, within the fair trade program and what that means, again, it bridges outside of cocoa, but especially in cocoa. And so we relied on those relationships to understand and ensure that is direct trade versus fair trade. Direct trade implies exactly what it sounds like. Farmers are getting paid more than fair.

10:38
Yaniv Simpson
And up until the madness that has taken place in the last couple of years, where prices are everywhere and shortages are everywhere and mother Nature is doing its thing, right? It was the perfect storm. Farmers were also getting paid 2 to 3x of fair trade. And so as a small company, as an emerging company, as a company who's new to the industry, we relied on our chocolate manufacturers to do that. And for us to have visibility into what they're doing now, most recently in the past year, and moving forward, it's us having relationships with the farm level itself, with the cooperatives, with the brokers who are at the farm level. They have full traceability programs, traceability reports. You have a really good understanding. It's never perfect, by the way.

11:19
Yaniv Simpson
So the reality of a brand, right, literally a brand and a company writing a check or exchanging cash directly with the farmer is just something that never really happens because there's exporters, importers, and a ton of logistical stuff that gets in the way of that. But you do have as much transparency as you can. And so I'm not going to go down the rabbit hole of why it's so incredibly difficult. But let's just say that sourcing cocoa in general is very hard. Sourcing phenomenal organic certified cocoa is extra difficult. Making sure that it matches and is coming underneath the Prop 65 for cadmium extra difficult, right?

12:01
Yaniv Simpson
So it's like you take all of these different components of like giving you kind of the North Star of like, what can you and what can you not source on top of that, of course, you put on the fact that we go for a very specific flavor profile because as you can imagine, you know, you meet a Venezuelan person when you use cacao from Venezuela. Some of the most unique in the world. Same from Brazil. And it's about the flavor, right? At the end of the day, this has to be phenomenal chocolate. It can't just be like better for you or just good from a health profile. And so there's a lot of constraints.

12:30
Yaniv Simpson
I always tell people we are the masters at making things difficult for us because there just are so many guiding principles, that there are things that are negotiable and that we're flexible on those things that we're not. And so, yeah, securing cacao is very hard. It's actually never been more complicated. You're going to hear this from the biggest guys out there to the smallest guys and a lot of them who have probably just haven't made it and they're not even in business anymore. And part of it is because of that, right? It's not just the prices, it's the scarcity. It's an arm race, right? Like, it's literally like who can get it first. We were waiting on containers for the first part of the year pretty much, which meant that we have to turn everything off.

13:12
Yaniv Simpson
So that was very painful and were playing catch up. But still, it's been a great year. So that's on the cocoa side, on the packaging side. I started sourcing compostable materials and just eco friendly materials in general 5 1/2 years ago. I can tell you with a pretty great level of certainty that it's improved a little bit, but not that much. You would be really surprised, like how difficult it really is to source eco friendly materials again, specifically for what you need, right? Stand up pouches, other stuff are probably a little easier. But when you need a two piece packaging, fully compostable, it's out there. It's just, it's not easy. And so I was looking at green eco books, paper companies, and looking at the fine print of everything and they will send you those books and say, hey, these are eco friendly materials.

14:01
Yaniv Simpson
Check it out. You read the fine print, it says 30% post consumer waste. And you're like, what's the 70% made up? They're like, oh yeah, that's other stuff. It's like, what other stuff? So you just have to ask another question, another question. Until you get to the point where it's like, you should have never sent me this book, right? Because it's, there are no options that meet what we're looking for. I will say it's. I understand why people don't go that route. I don't justify it. I do understand it. There's a big difference between the two. It's not easy at all. But there are options. There are definitely options. And I just mentioned that it hasn't. The needle hasn't moved as much as I would have hoped it would. But it has gotten a little better in terms of availability and just options.

14:41
Yaniv Simpson
It's not always going to be exactly what you're looking for, but for the most part, Where There's a World is a Way. That was a long winded answer, but the short answer is that yes, where there is a world, there is a way. It's much more complicated and it does cost a little bit more, of course.

14:56
Caitlin Bricker
And long winded is fine. You gotta, you gotta get your thoughts out there. I am curious since you're mentioning if there's a will, there's a way. Has this always been the thought in your mind for the Conscious Bar to have that transparency with the chocolate, to have the compostable packaging, or did you pivot at some point to go in that direction?

15:18
Yaniv Simpson
I worked for other companies for 10 years before starting the Conscious Bar. And you know when you're working for other companies, you always, you're sitting with your thoughts and you're like, oh, one day when I have my own company, I will do things in this way. And yeah, no, it was from again, right. Like the Conscious Bar is a very heavy, loaded name and we often get that question. It's like, oh, the Conscious Bar. What is so conscious about you and what is so conscious about the company? And it's like at the end of the day, it's intentionality and everything. It's awareness, it's wanting to do the right thing. Everyone has the reasons for pursuing their goals and what they want to do with their companies and the sudden angles they take. Sourcing the materials took nine months.

15:58
Yaniv Simpson
And working on the R and D for the actual product for the date sweetened chocolate, because at the time no one was out there. A lot of people like to say that, you know, there was something. No one was on the shelves, I promise you that. It took eight to 10 months. So pretty much the same time there were options, right? There were opportunities to kind of not perfect it or come out the gate with like it's almost compulsible packaging. The recipe is almost there. Let's just launch. Most people are not going to notice. And I got that feedback quite a lot from Everyone. But now I wanted to do it the right way. It's something that is just a personal thing for me. It's like I want to do it right.

16:34
Yaniv Simpson
This is not a tech platform or a piece of software where you have your MVP and then you reiterate and it's like, I don't want to come out with a product that I myself wouldn't appreciate and wouldn't enjoy. And again, I'm not just talking about the flavor. I'm talking about the entire thing.

16:48
Caitlin Bricker
There's that saying done is better than perfect. But definitely in Yaniv's book, perfect is better than done.

16:54
Yaniv Simpson
It sounds like, yes, when possible.

16:57
Caitlin Bricker
Yes.

16:58
Yaniv Simpson
Being realistic and practical is also very important.

17:02
Caitlin Bricker
You did mention other date sweetened chocolate bars. I'm sure the million dollar question here, especially for any retailers who are listening, which I know they are, what makes the Conscious bar so different from these other dates, meat and chocolate bars that are on the shelves? And why should retailers introduce the Conscious bar to their consumers?

17:21
Yaniv Simpson
Absolutely. There are dates and cacao ingredients. And what you do with those ingredients is there's a lot of different things that you can do with them. Right. You can pack your bar with a ton of dates and so the no added sugar is still going to be there. How much of total sugar is there? How much fiber is there? Is it USDA certified? Is every single SKU USDA certified? What is the source? Does anyone know where you're bringing your cacao from? What does the sourcing look like? Is your packaging eco friendly, yes or no? There is no. We're trying. Is it eco friendly, yes or no? Is it certified, yes or no? I've seen a couple of things where it's like we try to be organic. It's like that's a no. Right. Like I'm. I tend to be very straightforward on certain things.

18:08
Caitlin Bricker
I appreciate that about you.

18:10
Yaniv Simpson
And these type of things are just yet. Yes or no. Right. And so the experience is always going to be different. Right. Hugh came out 10 years ago, Hugh Kitchen with coconut sugar sweetened chocolate. They were not the only guys with coconut sugar chocolate on the market. There's a reason they blew up at the time. It was a blue ocean. They just. There was no one else to really compete. They looked different, smelled different. And so they were able to expand and blow up the way they did. Yeah. I mean, our product, I will put it toe toe against any date sweetened chocolate bar out there. The flavor is different. Right. And it's because we know what goes into it. We Understand our recipe really well.

18:48
Yaniv Simpson
There's a North Star on the flavor, which I think, by the way, at mass scale, it's still not there. It's still not the 10 out of 10 that we know it can be. It's very good. But it can and it will get better. And so it's one of those things where dates is a trendy ingredient now. And so there's no surprise that now there's more competition. The brand that we're building and the intention behind it and what we plan to do in terms of storytelling and putting everything forward for people to really see what's going on, as well as building out the traceability program that we're going to build. And a lot of different things is why I think we are now very different. But for what's coming in the near future, I think you'll see from a product standpoint as well.

19:28
Caitlin Bricker
I'm excited and I'm sensing that there's some secrecy there. So I don't even know if that's a can of worms we want to open. But if you want to.

19:35
Yaniv Simpson
We can't spill the beans quite yet, but there's some interesting SKUs in the pipeline, let's just put it that way.

19:41
Caitlin Bricker
I am very excited.

19:42
Yaniv Simpson
And limited editions. Limited editions is not something that we've taken to retail quite yet. But yes. Oh, my God. For. I don't know when this is going to come out, but this is not going to come out in Q4. Right.

19:51
Caitlin Bricker
I think we're looking at January.

19:53
Yaniv Simpson
Okay. So maybe there'll be some left from this seasonality, from these limited editions that are coming, but they're going to be great. I'm going to make sure you get some. You have to. They're going to be phenomenal.

20:03
Caitlin Bricker
You know, I want to try.

20:04
Yaniv Simpson
Yes.

20:05
Caitlin Bricker
So I do think something that I personally notice about your social media presence that's different from other chocolate brands is the educational piece around the health benefits of cacao of dates, rather than it's just better for you. And like you were saying earlier, it's not that it's better for you, it's good for you. How do you approach your social media and how did you enlist the people that are on your team, who are the faces behind what you're doing on social?

20:34
Yaniv Simpson
I got very lucky. I got very lucky. I'm not just saying this like I am beyond blessed to have the team that I have all the way from the CMO to our kind of brand ambassador and main spokesman, to all of our editors like we. So we have a full blown creative agency essentially inside the company. And this is a joint decision that was made by my CMO and myself a couple of years ago. We decided to build our brand online and we decided to go deep into direct to consumer first. It wasn't an easy decision because obviously velocity getting on the shelves, making sure that you're out there and all that stuff and people always knock on your deal saying, when are you going to be here? When are you going to be there? Which we are working on it, I promise you.

21:18
Yaniv Simpson
But the reason for that is again, when we started we also went through a rebrand. So we look different price point, relatively new concept in terms of what people were used to. We wanted to hear everything, the good, the bad, the ugly, what are the issues, what are the pushbacks? Anything and everything that people had to say. By doing that, were able to really kind of refine the messaging and really understand what is going on here. It's like I can't tell you how many times we've heard so many different common themes and one of them being sugar is sugar. People don't know, right? People don't understand. There's the cocoa piece which we can talk forever about. How was the food of the gods?

21:59
Yaniv Simpson
It's been this like incredible, I want to say superfood again, but this incredible food that people have indulged on forever, either in a form of a drink or something they ate. There's endless. There's a laundry list of health benefits, both mind, body and soul type thing and dates as well, right? But, but this whole sugar is. Sugar is just something that we're like, oh wow. Like people actually don't know, right? Like they actually think that a fruit and table sugar that's processed is the same and it impacts your body the same. And again there's the whole increase your risk for diabetes and gaining weight and all of these different things. But there's also, what does it do to your mood? How do you show up for your family?

22:42
Yaniv Simpson
There's a massive ripple effect for eating processed food and sugar loaded pieces of candy all the time. If you have it once in a blue moon, do your thing. We want it to be again, a source of truth. And in Today's world, it's 2025 today. But we've made that decision in 2022. Creative meaning, content is the variable of success. Attention is something that is the ultimate currency, right? If you can get eyeballs and many, many influencers and celebrities are proven that now, right? That you can just build a brand online and sell your own products and voila. Type thing. We wanted to make sure that we have the platform to tell the right stories and educate people. Again, on what journey are we going on and why?

23:31
Yaniv Simpson
We think it's worthwhile for you to tune in not just if you love chocolate, but if you are just anyone who's interested in the better for you space and then just having a little bit knowledge about like what you should consume, why you should consume it and which brands you should be associating yourself with. And yeah, I mean, again, I'm blessed cause I have a phenomenal team. They, they're very talented at what they do, but they're very insightful. They understand culture. Right. They understand this space, but they also understand culture and that beautiful intersection of the two. So, yeah, it's awesome.

24:04
Caitlin Bricker
It really is great. And you can just tell looking at the videos, everything is very highly produced. Everything is very well thought out. It looks gorgeous and I think it matches the energy that you're putting into the bars too. So well done.

24:18
Yaniv Simpson
Thank you, thank you.

24:20
Caitlin Bricker
Of course, I have to ask, 2025, right now, going into 2026, what do you think it will take to become the next go to chocolate bar?

24:31
Yaniv Simpson
So Omnichannel is next. I think we've made some great progress on dtc. Retail is top of mind. We are launching in a couple of retailers that I. I might be able to share, but I might also not. So we, without getting the full blessing, I'm not going to share it quite yet. But I promise you guys, whoever's listening, we will be in retail like natural grocer retails.

24:52
Caitlin Bricker
We like surprises.

24:53
Yaniv Simpson
Yes. Early in 2026. And then we're just going to build on that and make sure that our goal is. Yes. Can you find our bars in many, many independent stores around the country, all the way from Miami, all the way to Hawaii. Yes, we'll ship it to your doorstep all year round, including the summer. And yes, we have figured it out because it's very, very difficult to ship chocolate in the summer. But we also want to be able to meet people where they're at. Literally. Right. And that is on the shelves. And so that is something that we are working on very heavily and it's top of mind for me personally. So yes, you have my promise that this is something that is a major focal point for us in 2026.

25:29
Caitlin Bricker
I am very excited for you. Before we close out, is there anything that you want listeners to know about yourself or your brand or your team or what's coming next for the conscious body.

25:41
Yaniv Simpson
If you love chocolate, like, if you actually love chocolate. And I would say anything that has to do with indulgence, right? Like, I don't think there's anything quite like chocolate. Wine is an acquired taste. Other things can be an acquired taste. Again, I think you're born loving chocolate somehow. There's just something that magical about it. I would definitely tune in. I'm not asking you to buy. I'm not asking you to do anything other than maybe interact. And that can just be as simple as just viewership. We do a lot for our email subscribers, anyone in our community. We have our circle, which is kind of a VIP closed circle where we do a lot of cool stuff. So there's a lot going on there. Email subscriptions, there's. There's just a ton of newsletters and phenomenal information there.

26:24
Yaniv Simpson
But Instagram, TikTok and some other future platforms maybe, as well as where I would definitely encourage people to interact with us and just see we're talking about and how we're gonna kind of carry on and evolve in this journey to live up to such an audacious goal, which is really to try and redefine this category and tweak certain associations that have been programmed into people and into culture essentially for decades. And I know I said if you love chocolate, but it really is for anything, right? Because we do share a lot of insightful content that I think is very functional and very insightful across the board, even if it's not specifically fit chocolate.

27:07
Caitlin Bricker
That's a great segue because my next question for you is, what's your website and your handles on social so people can stay in touch with you?

27:16
Yaniv Simpson
Absolutely. It's TheConsciousBar Co for both the website and the handle. Very strange Instagram handle, but the Conscious Bar was taken five years ago. Yeah, that is it. You can find us there. Yeah, Instagram is where you'll see a lot of our stuff.

27:31
Caitlin Bricker
Well, Yaniv, thank you very much for your time. It's been great getting to know more about you and the Conscious Bar. I'm excited to see where we can find you in 2026. Hopefully in some independent stores near me. If anyone's listening, that's a request. It's a demand.

27:48
Yaniv Simpson
Amazing. Thank you. And thank you, guys. Like, we didn't get a chance to cover that, but I personally have been tuning into startup CPG for probably three years at this point, maybe even more, all the way from fundraising to how to talk to buyers and law firms and legal counsel stuff. And obviously just a ton of founders that you guys bring on board and them sharing their insights and their journey. So it's an incredible platform. So again, thank you guys for what you do. Also interacting with you guys physically at events, which is.

28:17
Caitlin Bricker
It's how we met.

28:18
Yaniv Simpson
It's how we met. But no, thank you. Thank you guys so much for what you do. I think it's incredibly beneficial for anyone in this space, but especially emerging brands and people that are really trying to lift off.

28:30
Caitlin Bricker
Well, thanks. I mean, it really is a harmonious relationship. We couldn't exist without you. You couldn't exist without us. Maybe we're helping. We're helping. Our community would not exist without founders like yourself. So we really appreciate everything that you add to the community.

28:48
Yaniv Simpson
Appreciate it.

28:48
Caitlin Bricker
Thanks Univ. We'll talk soon.

28:50
Yaniv Simpson
Thank you. Bye bye.

28:54
Caitlin Bricker
All right, everyone, thank you so much for listening. If you enjoyed this episode, do us a solid and leave us a five star review on ratethispodcast.com startup cpg I'm Caitlin Bricker, the host of the Founder Feature series and editor at Startup CPG. Feel free to find me on LinkedIn or reach out to me on Slack and get on my radar. I'm always keeping my eyes peeled for new and emerging brands to spotlight. If you're a potential sponsor who would like to appear on the podcast, Please email partnerships startupcpg.com and finally, as a reminder for anyone listening, if you haven't already, we would love for you to join our free CPG community on Slack. You can sign up via our [e-mail] see you around.

29:39
Yaniv Simpson
Sat.