Exclusive: Sophia Karbowski's Passion for Food Led Her and Austin Patry to Launch Their Company Realsy

Austin Patry and Sophia Karbowski were struggling to find snacks at the grocery store that were not only healthy but also clean, tasty and easy to take around.

"When traveling for our prior business, we felt like it was very difficult to find an on-the-go snack product that was void of all the ingredients we try to avoid in our daily diets — things like seed oils, added sugars and really any unrecognizable ingredient like gums, stabilizers, etc. We were often going to the produce section and pairing a piece of produce with a nut butter packet, and it was always such a mess," Karbowski exclusively tells Morning Honey. "We really LOVED the consumer packaged goods space, and after experience with our first product line in this industry — a frozen one — we wanted to create something that made genuinely clean eating easier and more accessible in the form of a shelf stable product."

"There was not a shelf stable, no sugars-added nut butter-filled date on the market yet, and since it had become such a popular combination to DIY at home, we knew it would be the perfect product-market fit since it wasn’t an entirely new taste experience for a lot of people!" she continues.

From there, realsy, which Karbowski is the Co-Founder of alongside Patry, was born.

"Our product is different because it’s really more produce-focused than 'snack' focused. We wanted to start with fresh produce (Medjool dates are actually fresh, not dried!), and innovate from there. We also are different because we work directly with our ingredient farmers, and know where and who each ingredient comes from. The final product is actually created and packaged on the date farm itself," she explains.

Fortunately, it looks like other customers were also looking for something similar.

"Feedback has been overwhelmingly positive, which is really why we took a leap to focus on realsy after it launched. We were actually running three businesses total at that time, and the response to realsy when we launched the brand in October 2022 was tremendous and super exciting. It has only confirmed our belief that cleaner snacks were/are so needed in the market," she says.

Karbowski started learning about nutrition at 8 years old since her younger brother was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes and then Celiac disease three years later.

"Both are conditions in which learning to read and decipher the nutrition label and ingredient list of foods is a necessity, so I took it upon myself to learn completely how to properly care for a diabetic and celiac child. I also come from a family of could-be-chefs, with my dad’s Italian-focused cooking and my maternal grandma’s, who moved from the Middle East in her 20s, Middle Eastern cooking," she notes.

Clearly, the entrepreneur was always destined to break out into the cooking world.

"Cooking and enjoying a delicious variety of home-cooked meals was such a staple of my childhood growing up — always having amazing food around the house was the norm! My personal health and wellness journey began in high school and college when I took all my knowledge of nutrition and applied it more specifically on the ingredients I was consuming every day. I continued learning more about how different foods affect your body and how they can make you feel from the inside out," she shares.

Since the businesswoman loves making food — she sees it as a way to "unplug" and avoid looking at her phone — things fell into place when she met her business partner in class.

"We simultaneously noticed the need for cleaner, more convenient food options on our campus. I think if you’d ask my friends or family now, they would say it makes a lot of sense based on the go-getter, risk-taker qualities I’ve really exuded my entire life," she says.

Before taking on realsy, the duo opened their first business, Rollin' and Bowlin’ in 2017. They grew that business from a single food truck to a national brand with 10 retail locations on college campuses, before selling it during the pandemic for a seven-figure deal.

Though running a company comes with challenges, she wouldn't trade it for the world. "I really try to focus and organize my days based on a mix of operational management tasks and keep some time open for my marketing goals whether it be social media, email marketing or trade show planning. Also, the overwhelming positive feedback we get almost every day on our product line is a huge source of motivation for me. I truly care so much about what people put into their bodies, and I feel so thankful and lucky to be doing something I am so passionate about!" she says. "As a college founder, I hope to inspire young people to start their own businesses. I think this is actually one of the best times to start a business and take risks, because oftentimes you don’t have a family and kids to support yet, and it’s usually easier to be dynamic, creative, and frugal at this stage of life."

"Our goal with realsy is to make cleaner, whole-food, produce-focused snacking more accessible. Over the next few years, we really hope to make realsy a recognizable brand name that consumers know they can trust, without having to even look at the ingredient label. We want our consumers to know that we will only use real, simple ingredients and that we are a transparent brand with a mission to create snacks as nature intended! More specifically, in the next few years we plan to be available in every grocery chain nationwide, grow our online reach, and also expand into more cafe chains and corporate campuses. It’s important to us to have a diversified mix of places consumers can find realsy at so that it’s hyper-convenient to have genuinely clean snacks while on the go!" she concludes.