Why the founder of David protein bars says controversy can be good for business

David protein bars went from startup to one of the hottest consumer products in America in under two years. But the ride has been anything but smooth. Founder and CEO Peter Rahal discusses building a breakout brand through lawsuits, a Jeffrey Epstein association, and the kind of social media heat most companies would run from. But can controversy—even the manufactured kind—be a net positive for a brand? Peter argues yes. This is an abridged transcript of an interview from Rapid Response, hosted by former Fast Company editor-in-chief Robert Safian. From the team behind the Masters of Scale podcast, Rapid Response features candid conversations with today’s top business leaders navigating real-time challenges. Subscribe to Rapid Response wherever you get your podcasts to ensure you never miss an episode. With David, it’s part of a new wave of bars with high protein and low fat. Few of them, though, pack the combination that David does. The package says 28 grams of protein, 150 calories, no sugar, which sounds impossible. And I guess it would be without the sort of special ingredient called EPG. If I understand it right, EPG is a kind of fat that’s hard for the human body to absorb. It’s a hard fat, so it’s a high-melt-point fat, and it’s a modified triglyceride. Your body has an enzyme called lipase that breaks off the fatty acids from the glycerol backbone, and that’s where all the energy gets released. If you prevent lipase from doing that, your body can’t digest it. It’s really like a biohack. Your mouth experiences it as fat, but then your body isn’t able to break it down. And because it’s a 104-degree melt-point, it’s a hard fat similar to beef tallow or palm oil. It goes through your body in a solid state. Were you already planning to do another protein bar, to do David, before you knew about EPG? Or was EPG like, “Oh, this enables me to do something,” and that made you think, “I’ll go back i