Who doesn’t like a snack now and then?
Often, we choose convenience over other criteria, but one local entrepreneur wants to elevate healthy options to convenient ones.
Austin Patry became familiar with the food industry as a child. Since then, he has longed to offer consumers healthy food options.
Born and raised in Dallas, Patry was immersed in the world of French cuisine. His grandfather came to Dallas from France to open The Old Warsaw restaurant, which specialized in what Patry calls “old school French cuisine.” Patry’s parents also opened up a restaurant of their own, Patry’s, named after their family.
“I knew I wanted to do something in food, but I think French-style cooking is very heavy often, [with] a ton of butter, a ton of cream, and although that’s great sometimes, I think I was always wanting something healthier and wanting something cleaner, so that’s kind of where it directed me,” Patry told The Dallas Express.
While French cuisine was always a large part of Patry’s childhood, his mother also played a significant role in reminding him to prioritize healthy and minimally processed ingredients in his diet. Patry recalls drinking cold-pressed juices and hearing his mother talk about her vision to open a juice restaurant in the 1970s.
Patry attended Texas Christian University and met his business partner, Sophia Karbowski, during his senior year in 2017. From there, the pair started a food truck, Rollin’ n Bowlin’, that turned into a brick-and-mortar cafe at the TCU Campus Recreation Center. Rollin’ n Bowlin’ quickly spread to other college campuses.
Then the pandemic lockdowns happened, leading Patry and Karbowski to temporarily close Rollin’ n Bowlin’ and eventually sell it to a competitor.
“[Rollin’ n Bowlin’] was a wild ride,” Patry told DX. “COVID was obviously a huge, life-changing moment for us. Now looking back, it was a blessing in disguise.”
That blessing in disguise was the beginning of realsy, a nut butter-filled date snack that prioritizes healthy and minimally processed ingredients.
The on-the-go date snack came after Patry and Karbowski tried to ship their popular smoothies across the country following the pandemic lockdowns, but they ultimately found this to be unsustainable.
“We realized pretty quickly that frozen [smoothies] were just really challenging, so we wanted to create a shelf-stable product that was just equally as nutrient-dense, equally as [minimally processed] as our smoothies,” Patry explained. “We started thinking about ideas and at the same time, Sophia, my business partner and I, would travel a lot and whenever we would go into a grocery store, we would always look for a healthy snack.”
It was on this quest for healthy snacks that the partners realized the limited options in grocery stores for healthy, minimally processed snacks.
Patry recalled going to the produce section of the grocery store and creating his own healthy snack at home using dates and nut butter.
“We saw this exact recipe, dates with nut butter, blowing up on social media as a healthy Snickers. We were making it at home but it was always a refrigerated or frozen final product,” Patry shared. “There was nothing you could take on the go, and therefore we said, ‘Hey let’s do something about this. Let’s create it.’ So we made it in our kitchen, and then we just started packaging it, and it took off from there.”
Their new company was not as profitable as the business partners had hoped. Luckily, a farm in Mexico approached the business partners to see if they wanted to use the farm’s dates in their products, leading to the partnership that is the backbone of the business today.
Soon, awareness surrounding realsy grew, especially in the world of sports.
“There’s been a lot of different channels and people who have tried [realsy] that have opened up doors for us. For example, in the sporting world, we’ve been starting to grow a lot because the nutritional profile of our product is really clean and great for athletes,” Patry explained. “We supply product to the Dallas Mavericks, the Philadelphia 76ers, a handful of national basketball teams, the Portland Thorns women’s professional soccer team, and a lot of other places like that.”
realsy is more than just a healthy product. The company also proudly supports several causes, including one that comes straight from their date farm partner in Mexico. The company’s date farm works directly with local farmers, who in turn support the local community. The date farm also employs 85% working mothers, a cause that realsy is excited to support.
Another cause that realsy supports is student entrepreneurship. While running Rollin’ n Bowlin’, Patry offered students working at the cafe an opportunity to apply for a scholarship to start their own company.
“I love student entrepreneurship,” Patry said. “I think it’s a big component that drives our society forward.”
When asked about where he sees realsy going in the future, Patry shared his vision for the company and how he sees it expanding.
“We called the company realsy with the intent of not naming it after a date company. So, we see ourselves growing as a company really focused on the values of its ingredients, its [minimally processed] ingredients, its sourcing and being able to grow our offerings to more snacks that are more centered around produce,” Patry shared. “We see ourselves growing to more products, growing obviously to more grocery stores, to more coffee shops, all over the world.”
Products made by realsy can be found at various stores across North Texas and on the company’s website.