How this ex-Marine is revolutionizing healthy eating

In his current role as CEO of the health food company RIVALRIES and during his previous military career, Peter Barrick has always been drawn to applying his skills and talents to achieve the greater good. After graduating from UC Davis, I had a calling to serve our country,” Barrick said entrepreneur. “And so around 2005, I joined one of the toughest branches of the military, the Marine Corps.”

Barrick was selected for the Navy's jet aviation program and flew combat missions in Afghanistan. He then became a terminal joint strike controller, a complex and dangerous role that involves being on the ground with infantry and directing military aircraft supporting the mission from above. Barrick spent much time as part of the crisis response force operating in North Africa, East Africa and the Middle East, and in the final phase of his military career, he became a Naval flight instructor. “It was very challenging and scary,” he says of his time teaching the elite pilots. “You connect two rockets every other day and you're instructing a new student – it's very dangerous.”

When his time in the military was up, Barrick returned to UC Davis to get his MBA. He then worked at Mars Global, Wells Fargo and with entrepreneur Jon Sebastiani who started Sonoma Brands Capital. When Barrick connected with Harold Schmitz and Ralph Jerome, former executives at Mars, he felt the familiar urge to do something bigger. He heard their dream of bringing affordable food to the grocery market and was the catalyst he needed to branch out and “start something from scratch.”

Together with Schmitz, Jerome and Victor Friedberg, Miguel Reyna and Ilias Tagkopoulos, he co-founded Rivalz snacks. Crispy-on-the-outside, soft-on-the-inside treats are packed with 8g of protein, 4g of fiber and 7 essential vitamins and minerals per serving – no glutenwheat, nuts, milk, soy or animal products. (Imagine a super healthy bag of Combos.) “We're doing what General Mills and companies like that can't do,” he says. “We don't have any of the junk in our food.”

Credit: Rivalz

Rivalz will be in nearly 2,000 stores by the end of the year, they've landed a deal to be on the LA Unified School District vending machines, and their Amazon sales are up 8.4X year over year. “We're flying for sure,” Barrick says. Here are some of the key takeaways from Barrick's career and leadership style that entrepreneurs can apply to start or grow their dream business.

Embracing your strengths

“Everyone needs to understand who they are. You need to understand your strengths and weaknesses. I thrive when the environment is dangerous or chaotic. That's what I was built to do – to bring clarity to a situation with fog I get meaning from life by doing the most challenging things imaginable and not knowing if I will succeed or fail.

Getting inspired

“During my military service, I saw food insecurity at its worst, especially in East Africa. Children don't know when they're going to get their next meal, but they still want to play a soccer game on Friday. And the ball soccer is a tied plastic bag and the pitch is rocks. So that's where I got my passion. -Sub-Saharan Africa and other regions.”

Testing your idea

“At the start of a company, entrepreneurs do research and understand emerging trends and then assess whether there are current products on the market that meet those trends. If the answer is no, then you start a company. If the answer is yes, then don't worry We identified two main trends, especially the younger generation, they are moving away from the traditional three meals and you have the GLP-1 mania things like Ozempic, but they are losing muscle mass as well as fat hit on two main trends.”

Your company name

“We thought about our ultimate goal, which is to end a 50-year pandemic of malnutrition, diabetes and obesity. The only way to do that is to rival the norm. And that's where the name Rivalz came from.”

Decision making under stress

“In the Marine Corps and in the job I do now, being calm is king. The worst thing you can do is get angry or scared when something goes wrong. It doesn't help anybody. In the Marine Corps, they they train to separate and learn to think when there is chaos -Decide for the enemy They don't have to wait for the chain of command to tell them what to do I give them clearly defined roles and goals, then I give freedom to department heads to maneuver as they see fit to accomplish those goals.

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