A young brand initially intended for those suffering from food allergies has taken the Swedish snacking market by storm, appealing to a wide range of customers looking for a healthier, fibre-packed alternative to traditional cakes and cookies.
It all started with a dietitian and an agronomist’s passion for oats, dietary fibre, and making nutritious food available for everyone. Therese Holmsten and Adam Bolay spotted a gap in the market for allergy-friendly bars, seeing that most protein and energy bars in Swedish retailers were based on allergenic ingredients or manufactured in a way that led them to carry the words “may contain traces of…”, and founded Fibr together.
The pair started to develop bars that use gluten-free oats as the main ingredient and adds xylitol (described on-pack as “birch sugar”), corn fibre and coconut oil. The bars are then flavoured to taste like traditional Swedish cakes and sweets, whether that means adding coffee and cocoa to bring out a mocha cake flavour or carrot and cinnamon to create a carrot cake flavour. There are 32 flavours in total, all being free from the top 14 allergens as defined by the EU.
NNB has tried three of the flavours and can confirm that they taste great, and surprisingly similar to the cakes they are intended to mimic. We are also big fans of the minimalistic yet colourful packaging.
One 25g Fibr bar contains on average between 90-100 kcal, 1-3 grams of sugar, 1-2g of protein and 4-5g of fibre. The ingredient lists are short, with most bars containing 7-8 ingredients, and the recipes are developed by the founders and made in a small factory in Edsbyn three hours north of Stockholm.
Fibr’s founders are driven by a desire to modernise the Swedish fika culture to make it more inclusive and more fibre-rich but without compromising on taste. The word “fika” refers to the Swedish custom of taking a break to sit down with a hot drink and a light snack – usually in the form of a cookie, cake or pastry – while talking to friends or colleagues. It is a daily occurrence in most Swedes’ lives. The brand strongly promotes itself on a taste platform but also for the products’ allergy-friendly nature, along with the fact that manufacturing happens in-house with no intermediaries. Fibr also connects to the Real Food and the Blood Sugar trend by promoting xylitol as a natural sweetener that “has a minimal effect on blood sugar”.
The company has been active for four years and sales are approaching 10m SEK ($1m/€0.9m), up from 4m SEK ($0.4m/€0.3m) in 2022
