As a student at Brown University, Gabi Lewis was the kind of health nut who made his own protein bars from scratch. His roommate, Greg Sewitz, got interested in entomophagy—eating insects, if you didn’t go to Brown—and on a lark, the pair tossed 2,000 dried crickets in a Vitamix with some dried fruit and raw cacao. They handed out their creations after parties and sold them at the campus farmers market. “We were doing it for our drunken friends,” Lewis says.
Greg Sewitz (left) and Gabi LewisCourtesy ExoPeople liked the bars, and when Lewis, 23, and Sewitz, 22, graduated last May, they started researching what it would take to ramp up production. They raised $55,000 on Kickstarter for their company, Exo, and worked with cricket farms, which traditionally cater to pet stores and bait shops, to raise insects for human consumption. They found a manufacturer to do the cooking and packing, and improbably, persuaded a former head of research at the Fat Duck, a U.K. restaurant with three stars from Michelin, to help improve their recipes. (The chef, Kyle Connaughton, now owns a stake in the company.) They plan to sell the bars for $2.99.