Our Story
Brendan Conway
It was the year 2015. The corporate grind and stresses of every day life started to take a serious toll on my health, both mentally & physically. I was overworked, and with limited free time, it became second nature to make unhealthy choices out of convenience. After suffering a severe back injury leaving me virtually immobile, my home cooked meals quickly turned into takeout and my workouts & outdoor activities became nonexistent. I was unhappy, exhausted, out of shape and felt completely unfulfilled in my life – I knew it was time to make some serious changes. As I began to recover after surgery, I made a conscious decision to get my physical & mental health back on track.
The first step was to identify which foods did not make me feel good. It probably doesn’t come as a huge surprise that I realized gluten, dairy and sugar were not agreeing with my body and needed to be eliminated, so in the trash they went. I started to feel amazing and began to wonder what other changes I could make! I later lowered my meat intake, ate more plant-based foods & only bought natural, organic products. Between this new way of eating & consistent workouts, I was down 50lbs and felt incredible! My confidence was back, I was full of energy – I looked and felt great, if I do say so myself – and all by making minor, but healthy, lifestyle changes. I thought all my problems were solved except…. I was craving something sweet!
I spent countless hours surfing the web for healthy recipes to keep my sweet tooth happy. After hundreds of grocery store visits and more money than I want to admit, the results were still the same – terrible. Sure, there were healthy alternatives to the sweets I was craving but none of them actually tasted good; and if they did, they weren’t actually that healthy. I was lost but determined. My father, who was an excellent chef, passed down a great deal of his culinary skills throughout my life so with the knowledge he had bestowed upon me, I decided it was time to take matters into my own hands. I became obsessed – researching new ingredients, tweaking recipes, the everlasting hunt for perfection. After many trials and tribulations, I finally nailed it! The perfect cookie was born. After all the blood, sweat and tears that went into this creation, I knew in my heart I couldn’t just keep it to myself. it needed to be shared with the world, but I just couldn’t figure out how….
Anthony Scialdone
Leading a healthy lifestyle has been a priority of mine for as long as I can remember. From a young age, I was involved in competitive sports and was taught both the physical and mental benefits of working out & eating healthy. After a baseball career ending injury, I entered the “real world” and got my start in consulting. I was constantly on planes and living out of hotels, making it very difficult to meal prep and eat healthy. I found myself stocking up on as many protein bars and “healthy snacks” as I could find, however, I was still exhausted all the time.
A year later, the best and worst thing happened to me; after going undiagnosed for five years, I tested positive for Lyme disease. As any person would, I immediately began researching what this meant and what I should expect as a result of the news moving forward. It was from this research that I discovered the difference between ‘healthy’ and ‘clean’ eating. I looked into the foods that I had been consuming for years and realized that many of the listed ingredients were chemicals and preservatives and ultimately doing more harm than good to my body. I wasn’t ready or willing to give up my nightly routine of a cookie – and not just any regular cookie, but a protein cookie – and a glass of chocolate milk, so I began to search for alternatives but couldn’t land on anything that was truly clean AND tasty.
In 2019, I was visiting my best friend, Brendan, back home in West Hartford, CT. He’s always known my love for protein cookies so you can only imagine his excitement around having me act as his official ‘taste tester’ for his new masterpiece. While we were waiting for the cookies to bake, he shared the ingredients he used and explained how actually clean they were – and to top it off, I could eat the dough raw while I waited for the batch in the oven! Up until that moment, I had never heard of a protein cookie dough that could not only be eaten raw but also baked. Naturally, I was very intrigued.
After that first life-changing bite, I looked at Brendan and said, “that was the best thing I have ever tasted. We need to share it with the world.” And boom, here we are!