XCEL is truly an accident turned business. It was spring 2021 when I was making a bowl of oatmeal, and I wanted to add chopped dates. But all I had on hand was pitted dates. So I figured if I put pitted dates in a food chopper, I would have chopped dates. What I ended up with instead was a gooey clump of dates that was nowhere near suitable for my bowl of oatmeal. But in the spirit of not being wasteful, and some know-how in the kitchen, I was able to remix this goo into what is now known as XCEL.

 

I did a trial run by selling bars at an upcoming group fitness class that I was hosting and got great feedback. I even handed out samples to families that were attending recreation league soccer games.

 

A friend once told me that once you sell one of something, you have a viable product. You just have to scale. And that's just what we did. From there, we signed up to vend at various community events. Later in 2021, we became vendors at local farmer's markets in Charlotte, NC, which we still do to this day. 

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Today, XCEL bars can be found at the locations listed above, with more to come!