By Sebastian Lopez
Ryan Devlin, CEO of This Bar Saves Lives, a bar company that uses its profits to provide life-saving food to children in need, has made the company’s home base in Culver City.
This Bar Saves Lives uses its profits to buy Plumpy’Nut, a peanut-based paste used to combat severe malnutrition in developing countries including Haiti, the Philippines and South Sudan. Since its start three years ago in Todd Grinnell’s condo, more than 1 million packets of life-saving food have been donated; enough to help save over 8,000 lives.
“We’ve got this really strong local vibe and strong local support,” CEO, Ryan Devlin, said. “Most of our first customers were from the west side and we’re true to our roots from starting on the west side.”
Beginning September 29, This Bar Saves Lives became available in every Starbucks location across California.
“Even though we’re growing really fast, we’re in Whole Foods, Target and Starbucks, we’re still a really small company,” Devlin said. “At any given time at our office in Culver City, there will be 10 people, three dogs and that’s it.”
Devlin believes that their success comes from the mutual support between This Bar Saves Lives and the local community.
“We try to be as involved as we can in the community because these are the people that are supporting us and we want to support them,” Devlin said.
This Bar Saves Lives supports the local Culver City community in a variety of ways such as giving out products at local events such as concerts, bike rides and races as well as contributing to charity events.
“We’re going against huge companies, and a way we are doing it is without give back mission as an impact company,” Devlin said. “It’s also because people are loyal and want to share our story.”
This Bar Saves Lives believes that an important factor to establish a good presence in a community, they must also be invested in the community at well.
“Knowing we’re local, give back, and support their backyard and their initiatives in the community will hopefully motivate them as well to support us as well,” Devlin said. “We’re also a dang good product.”
