Chapul: The World's First Cricket Bar
We were drawn to Chapul cricket energy bars because they were a Kickstarter project which had been a success. Kickstarter is a crowdsourced funding website — anyone can have a business idea but may not have the funding to see it succeed, so Kickstarter lets you crowdsource funding, often in exchange for a free product on launch, exclusive designs, or the chance to meet the founders.
This is exactly how Chapul started. Pat Crowley, Chapul's founder, was intrigued by a TED talk on entomophagy entitled "Why not eat insects?"
In the Western world there's a psychological aversion to eating insects and bugs, but water is a precious resource which may not always be available to feed farms and fields, so could bugs be the answer? Insect protein is a dramatically more efficient choice — ten pounds of grain can produce about one pound of beef or three pounds of pork, or more than 8 pounds of insect protein, without the cholesterol and fats that come with meat-laden diets.
So what is a Chapul Bar?
Chapul Bars are all-natural energy bars with protein from an innovative cricket flour. Inspired by techniques used by the Aztecs, Chapul bake crickets and grind them into a fine powder rich in protein, calcium and iron, and very low in fats and cholesterol. That cricket flour is then mixed into bar recipes with dates, nuts, agave nectar and ginger. The cricket flour is a very small (and tasteless) portion of the recipe, but packs a powerful punch — a third more protein per ounce than leading protein powder products at the time.
Pat Crowley's vision came to life thanks to the help of Kickstarter funders, with Chapul releasing two flavours of their bar, Thai and Chaco, available to buy direct from Chapul or through a growing network of activity stores.