Binge Snacks: The snack you grew up on without the junk you grew out of.
- KLS
- Jun 24
- 10 min read
For the 194th feature of our "Together Talks" campaign, we collaborated with Binge Snacks and Co-Founder, Chris Annoual.
Binge exists to rewrite the story around indulgence.
In a culture where "binge" is a dirty word, tied to shame, overconsumption, and guilt, we flip the script. We're here to challenge the belief that enjoying food means losing control, that nostalgia has to come with consequences, or that health means sacrificing joy.
The problem: Today’s snack options force a choice, fun or function, flavor or nutrition. Most “better-for-you” brands feel clinical, while the fun ones make you pay the price later.
We live in an era of extremes, restrict all week, binge on the weekend. Shame around food is baked into society, especially for millennials and Gen Z who grew up with toxic diet culture and wild childhood snacks. We’re still healing.
Our why: Binge is here to reclaim joy. To create snacks that hit like your childhood favorites, but love you back. So you can snack hard and feel good. No shame. No trade offs. Just pure, nostalgic, plant-based pleasure. Binge without the bad.
"Together Talks" feature # 194: Binge Snacks presented by KLS - Your Trusted Shipping Solutions In The USA
What aspect of entrepreneurship do you appreciate the most? Share a decision that you made that was detrimental? What is your why?
Story of how it was created?
It pretty much started because of my wife's health issues. In 2018, she was diagnosed with an autoimmune condition, a very rare autoimmune condition. Almost essentially overnight, she was allergic to most allergens, so eggs, milk, soy, wheat, sometimes even meat. From one day to the next, she just couldn't eat anything. It took her about, I want to say like five years for her to really get diagnosed with anything. The doctors and everybody thought she was pregnant and nobody really took her serious. Then after years of throwing up nonstop, they eventually started testing her blood and her markers and everything.
Then they realized that she was overproducing white blood cells, which caused it to attack all the allergens in her body. She did a blood panel one day, an allergy panel and she was allergic to literally everything. Some things more than others, but she reacted to almost everything. That caused us to do more research on what she could actually eat and what you couldn't eat. Then we started developing products.
One day we were on vacation in Greece and we asked why don't we make something that you could actually eat and enjoy and something indulgent that tastes unhealthy, but is healthy and that you don't react to. We ended up just doing some research and seeing if there's any white space in the market. Then we found one of our old school childhood snacks that we both fell in love with. She could no longer eat. We ended up just reformulating it and just creating a better version of it.
That's how we ended up with the product we're making now, which is a cookie and a frosting snack pack. Think about a Dunkaroo, it's a similar form factor, but it's gluten-free, it's vegan, high protein, no additives, no artificial ingredients, and fiber and all the good stuff. That's where we are now. We have three flavors. We've been doing R&D for about a year and formulating for about a year. We're comfortable with the flavors we have now. We're happy for what's next.
What separates you from your competition?
It's tough because there's nobody doing the exact same form factor that we're doing. The closest competition we could think of is really Dunkaroos. They're creating a product that's very high in sugar, very high in fat, has just loads of additives and artificial ingredients.
We're trying to create the exact opposite of that. We're trying to create a similar product, but something that's extremely healthy, that doesn't have any of those bad additives. That's why we came up with the name binge. But we wanted to create a product that you could binge without any of the bad stuff. And that's what we did.
But we also want to create a product that's fun. Part of our brand philosophy is creating a unique product that tastes good, but doesn't have antiquated branding. Something that is new and vibrant and fun and something that you're proud to carry around with you, something that stands on the shelf. That's kind of how we view the competition and how we're trying to differentiate from them.
Do you recall the first time she tried it?
We started formulating it in our kitchen and it didn't go as well as we expected it to go. There's a lot of food science involved in creating this product and it seems like a simple product to make. It's a cookie and it's a frosting. We went on YouTube and watched how do you make a cookie and a frosting. But when you're making a healthy product with healthy ingredients, it's a lot harder than expected. There's certain temperatures that we need to pour the ingredients. There's certain temperatures that need to mix the ingredients. There's certain baking temperatures. It was incredibly hard to formulate it and it didn't come out too good when we made it ourselves.
When we started really exploring food scientists and formulators, that's when we actually got a sample that we were blown away by. Then when we first tried it, it was just like, wow, wow. This is incredible. We made an indulgent product that is super healthy. She was happy that she was able to eat it. And it really plays with your mind because you eat it and it tastes unhealthy, but it is healthy. You're just like, this is crazy.
It was a fun moment.
What have been the biggest challenges?
The biggest challenges have been trying to find a co-manufacturer to produce our product. There's not one co-packer that could create this specific product unless you're Dunkaroos. Nobody has every machine that we need the to create the mold of the cookie, we need a rotary mold machine, and then we need a frosting filling machine. We need all the machines to produce the frosting, to produce the dough. Nobody really has every machine. We've been trying to find a co-packer that has the majority of the machines, use some capex, buy some machines, put it on their floor, and then get it produced. But also in the process of that, we need to find a good co-packer that could take on our minimums, that has an MLQ that's not too high.
Goals for upcoming year + Next phase of the company?
Right now we're actually in the middle of a rebrand. We're rebranding the entire company. We're changing the name. We're actually creating a whole brand identity because the branding you see now, me and my wife did it ourselves. But we didn't want to go through a rebrand later on. We wanted to just right out the gate, have everything that we need to launch and have the right name, have the identity, and just launch the right way.
Right now, our biggest focus is getting this rebrand. And after that, we're still trying to find a co-packer. We found a few of them that we're talking with, but we're trying to find the right co-packer to launch. Then just really dial in on our go-to-market strategy. We're not running ads. We really plan on earning our customers instead of paying for them. Our goal is to really create organic founder-led content, which is what we're doing now, which is why we hired a creative director and a videographer. We really want to go out there and put a story our there. Hopefully inspire people to have an outlet like my wife. My wife was a nurse about five months ago. We kind of want to be a beacon of hope for people who have an idea and just go for it. That's our goal, to really just tell our story and just dial in on a go-to market strategy.
How did your previous experience help?
My wife was a nurse before this, I actually did have experience in e-commerce. I did have a D2C brand. It's a product I invented a long time ago. But I did not have experience in CPG or food. I felt like a brand new entrepreneur all over again. I've been an entrepreneur for three years, but creating a food brand, it's a different ballgame. There's a lot of regulations. There's a lot of different strategies that I didn't understand. Getting into food has definitely been tough.
What were your concerns about starting the company?
The concern was definitely regulations with food. We're in a new territory. Starting a brand is hard enough, but when you start getting into food and regulations around food and just making sure that you're up to date with everything, that's been really hard. But we're figuring it out day by day.
What aspect of entrepreneurship do you appreciate the most?
With her, it's been fun because we could just brainstorm at all times. We're in a shower, we're listening to podcasts, we're talking about strategy and our go-to-market. Just building a company in general has been fun because I really believe in building companies that solve problems. I think if you start with the why, if you start with why you build a new company, then if you're solving a big enough problem, then it's very fulfilling. To me, that's been the best part.
Initially it was tough because she would come home at like 4 a.m., 3 a.m., and I'd still be working. I would try to tell her what I accomplished, but she just wanted and needed to go to sleep. It was challenging. As soon as she quit, the whole company just changed. It just skyrocketed because now we can spend all day long together working on the business, working in the business.
Share a decision that you made that was detrimental?
When we first launched the company, when I first had the idea about a year ago, we started reaching out to branding agencies that we loved. We reached out to one who we ended up speaking with and we knew we couldn't afford them. We just said, "We really love your branding and your style and some of the companies you created. We'd love to work with you guys in the future. But the rates are way too much." They ended up saying that they liked us so much they wanted to invest six figures into us with their services. After a year of talking with them back and forth, the deal kind of fell apart.
We ended up having to pull out of the deal. I had to say this is not the right opportunity for us. It's not good for our business. We basically walked away from a six-figure investment. It was hard for us to do, but it ended up being the best decision we've ever made.
What is your why?
Building a company and building a brand that we're proud of, building a company that could change somebody's life one day.
There's so many people out there that cannot eat the food that they once ate before. And you're seeing them more and more. More and more people are getting diagnosed with these autoimmune conditions. When my wife first went to her doctor, she was the first case, literally the first case that her doctor saw. After that, they've seen hundreds of cases of her same exact condition. It goes to show you, there's more and more people out there that are suffering from this. Even online, she was telling her story on social media and people would reach out there and say, "I have the same problem or my mom is sick and she can't swallow because her tongue is inflamed." They're asking for advice because they saw that she dealt with the same issues. More and more people are out there that can't eat the food that they once enjoyed. I think being able to create food for them and products for them, it's one of our biggest driving factors.
Do you have a milestone you are most looking forward to reaching?
I think retail.
We dream about it and honestly, it doesn't even matter which retailer. Just to get into retail, we're just ecstatic about the opportunity to walk into a store and see our product on the shelf. It could be a mom and pop, it could be a small independent store, but to walk into any store and just to see our product sitting on a shelf. And then even to watch somebody pick it up, that is like something we fantasize about all the time. We have an idea of a few retailers we want to get in, but just getting on a shelf to begin with, it'd be such a cool moment.
It's something that we're going to cherish forever.
Piece of Advice
Ask for help earlier. Ask for help as soon as possible.
When I first got into entrepreneurship, I was so scared to ask for help. We have this thing in our minds where if you ask for help, it makes you seem weak or it makes you seem like you don't know what you're doing. The truth is you don't, you're starting a business. I know people that are making $50 million a year that are still asking for help. As a matter of fact, they ask for even more help because they have more issues and more fires to put out.
I would say just get out of your mind that asking for help makes you look weak or it's just something that I think everybody should do as early on as possible. I started doing it, I think, probably three years ago and it's been the biggest decision. On LinkedIn, I'm always asking people for help. "What's a good place to find machinery?" "Who's a good supplier for this ingredient?" "Or how do you do this?" And almost 9 out of 10 times, I get the answer through LinkedIn just by asking. I think asking for help sooner than later is probably the best thing you could do.
Community Callout
Jesse Barruch - Whims He played a big role in a really big decision we've made in our company. Just off of a whim (no pun intended), I spoke to him one day on LinkedIn and I asked a question and then he called me.
He gave us a piece of advice that probably changed the whole trajectory of our company. He gave us some really hard advice, and he even, it's funny, we're on a Zoom with him, and he's like, "look, I'm going to say this, take whichever we want to take, I'm just going to be honest, I know it sounds like hard". And he gave us this piece of advice and we listened to him, and it's probably the best decision we've ever made.
That's what I'm saying, I love LinkedIn, I love the CPG community, I love how collaborative they are, how willing they are to help.
Yeah, he definitely changed the trajectory of our business.
In Closing
KLS wants to thank Binge Snacks and Co-Founder, Chris Annoual, for today's "Together Talks" feature. Follow along for their journey with their social handles below!
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