Review: YouBar (YouBars.com)

March 20, 2009 by admin

YouBars.com is a “build of bar site” founded by and run by a mother (Ava) and son (Anthony) team in Los Angeles, CA. They originally set out to create homemade bars as an alternative to the many processed tasting bars that are on the market. A few years later, they’ve got a business that crafts custom nutrition bars – and shakes – to the masses. Being based in LA and right across from CBS Television City (we stopped in at the shop), it’s no surprise that they’ve also achieved a celebrity following, which they’ve listed on their site.

The ordering process is pretty easy, with a one page “Build-A-Bar” form that lets you check off the ingredients that you want. Compared with the competition, YouBar’s interface isn’t as fancy, but it’s more functional and intuitive. List of options require only a mouse click, while a real time nutrition panel floats along the right.

After you choose from one of three different bar sizes, there are eight categories of ingredients, bases, and boosts to choose from. Each category, depending on what it is, allows for a different number of choices. YouBar has a large selection of ingredients – and also take special requests (we’re told they’ll try and get it, assuming what you ask for is available at a store like Whole Foods) – which means the possible combinations are almost limitless. You can also specify how much of a given ingredient goes into a bar (e.g. “Less Fruit”, “Normal Fruit”, “Extra Fruit”), giving you almost complete control of the process. And of course, the site will kindly tell you if the ingredients aren’t going to work out for the best. Perhaps our only gripe is that the bar sizes, which are listed in grams, aren’t obvious – some other point of reference might help.

If you’re not up for the challenge of building your own bar, there are plenty of premade bars that are available in the “Popular Bars” section of the site. (We weren’t fans of the “Breakfast Bar,” but “Honey Cashew” is possibly one of our favorite bars of all time)

The ordering and delivery process was efficient. Phone “support” is available and easy to use and emails are responded to quickly. We had a chance to speak with the Anthony Flynn, co-owner, who was very friendly and passionate about bars – definitely our kind of guy.

A visit to the shop in Los Angeles showed an operation that is focused on delivering a high quality, artisan made product. It’s essentially a commercial kitchen, not a factory, with workers diligently hand crafting each batch of bars to order.

As for the bars, they are definitely a notch above what you’ll find at other “custom bar” places. Each bar comes wrapped in a professionally designed label, with the bar name printed down the middle. It certainly doesn’t look like something that was batch made. The bar inside the wrapper is clean and well-executed, with straight edges (assuming it’s not a date based bar, which is sticky) and a consistent taste and look throughout. If that’s not enough, each batch of bars comes in its own YouBar cardboard box, making you feel like a lot of effort went into making your order.

Overall, we liked the YouBar process from start to finish — and the bars themselves are quite impressive as well.  These guys are definitely the kings of the “build your own bar” market!

Build your bar now: http://www.youbars.com

Rating: 5 of 5 stars