A Tahini Lemon Cranberry Bar Dreams of Whole Foods

With workers at home and stores stingy with shelf space, how is a new protein bar supposed to introduce itself? Even the food giants had to adjust.

Lupii bars were supposed to have a breakout year. Or, at the very least, be something people might have heard of. Early in 2020, Lupii’s founders, Alexandra Dempster and Isabelle Steichen, introduced the small and chewy protein bar, made from lupini beans and in flavors like Peanut Butter Cacao Nib and Tahini Lemon Cranberry. Success came early, with the bars landing in a handful of specialty and independent grocery stores in New York City, yoga studios and even the pantries of New York tech start-ups like Foursquare. The snack start-up was on the verge of a deal with a distributor that could put its bars on grocery store shelves all over the country. But Lupii’s big moment was sidelined by the coronavirus pandemic.