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Len Hoffman was a retired baker from Entenmann's Bakery.
And the first thing he said, he goes, stop calling these recipes.
He goes, these are formulas.
And I was like, okay.
He goes, this is scientific now, boys.
So we get Lynn to start helping us with these products that we're working on.
And we're also starting to do some private label for a pretty large coffee chain here in Southern California.
And they're like, well, hey, I wonder what else these guys do.
So they asked us about doing some scones.
And we told them we made the best scones in the city.
Which was not a total lie.
Which is not true. Just completely.
He did not even make scones.
Guy wouldn't even know what the hell a scone was.
Welcome to How I Built This, a show about innovators, entrepreneurs, idealists, and the stories behind the movements they built.
I'm Guy Raz and on the show today, how a former American gladiator found his true calling, lost it and then found it again by building a top -selling protein cookie brand, Lenny & Larry's.
If you follow food trends, protein right now is an exploding category.
Just to put it in perspective, in 2024, the global market size for protein -fortified foods was around $27 billion.
But by the end of this decade, it's expected to reach close to $50 billion.
Just take a look at the aisles of Whole Foods or even Costco.
You will start to notice more and more products that tout their protein content, whether it's crackers or nut butter or even ice cream.
But back in the days when protein was kind of out of fashion in the 90s, two former bodybuilders entered the space with a pretty revolutionary product.
It was a protein -packed muffin.
This was in 1993, when Barry Turner and his friend Benny Graham were out of work and struggling to make it in Hollywood.
A few months earlier, Barry finally caught a lucky break when he was cast on the TV show American Gladiators.
But just a few episodes in, he got injured and that was the end of his TV career as an American gladiator.
So one afternoon, Barry and Benny were talking about how boring their bodybuilding diets were, mainly chicken breasts and egg whites.
And they wondered, could you take protein powder and just mix it into things that are more interesting, like muffins or brownies?
A few days later, they started to experiment, literally dumping protein powder into muffin mixes.
And eventually they found a recipe that worked.
They decided to start a small business selling their muffins to local coffee shops around Los Angeles.
The muffins did pretty well, but the business never really took off.
So in 2001, they sold Lenny and Larry's for a small amount of money and moved on.
But Barry Turner would come to regret that decision almost immediately.
And it would take him six years to buy most of the business back.
And that's when he started to turn Lenny & Larry's into a national brand of cookies, brownies, and other protein -packed treats.
Today, you'll find Lenny & Larry snacks at thousands of locations across the country.
The brand was really a pioneer in protein -fortified food.
And Barry's path to building that brand was a windy one.
He grew up in the 1960s and 70s in Hickory, North Carolina.
He was a pretty talented baseball player, but an injury on the field left him deaf in one year.
So when he started college in Georgia, he set his sights on wrestling.
I was living in a little town called Cartersville, Georgia, and my mom had seen a guy had a wrestling ring in his backyard.
started and she told me about it.
So I kept going to his house every day for two straight weeks, leaving notes, knocking on his door.
And I kept saying, I want you to train me.
I want you to train me.
And he doesn't respond.
So finally he calls me one time and he just said, he goes, look, dude, I've been traveling.
I've been on the road wrestling.
You know, all I kept saying was just see me.
I said, okay, just see me.
And maybe you'd want to train me.
So I show up and he sees me goes, you know, I think I could probably help you.
So we trained for two weeks, nonstop, seven days a week we're just training and i learned i learned everything i can about professional wrestling you know how to fall how to you know how to do a sunset flip how to come off the you know the top rope fly elbows everything and it was so much fun and so within two
weeks uh he gets me a match and you became a character or or were you were you barry turner and no well when i showed up i was barry turner but when the uh promoter saw me he goes this guy's too pretty we got to put a mask on him because I can't look better than the actual guy who's going to beat me
and the coolest thing about that is man when they put a mask on you you just become someone else yeah so they put a mask on me they called me Mr.
Olympia and they gave me a manager I got a guy's name is Diamond Dave he's wearing a red tuxedo with a red top hat it was it was full -on like a major production and I uh I was getting picked up by a bigger group they were going to send me on the road like immediately.
And this was like NWA, WCW type wrestling at the time.
And that's where I was heading.
And that's what I really thought my career was going to be.
I was going to become a professional wrestler and be very successful at it.
So what happened? My girlfriend at the time thought wrestling was beneath me.
I thought I could be, I could do better.
So I chose a girlfriend and didn't work out.
So. Right. But you did take her advice not to be a pro wrestler, right?
And I guess instead you, You decided to go back to school to Georgia State University where you wound up meeting this guy, Benny Graham, who would, of course, factor into this story.
So who was Benny? Well, Benny was – I actually met him at a gym, and he said, hey, I heard you're doing – you used to do a little bit of pro wrestling.
Would you want to consider it again because I really want to get into it?
And I said, yeah, I'd love to.
So he and I started training together, and we just became instant friends.
We were just kind of goofballs and having fun.
And he was a personal trainer, too, at the time.
And so he said, I'm training this lady and she has this movie script written for two guys that would be you and I.
And she'll move us to California.
She'll pay for everything.
Do you want to go? And I go, sure.
Let me finish my schooling so I can get my degree.
He goes, we got to go next month.
And I was like, let's go for it.
And so we packed up and we went to California.
Wait, let's just unpack this.
Somebody was working on a movie script.
Yeah, she had a – this lady, she was – she had a little bit of money.
So when people find people with money at that time, everybody's pitching a movie script around the country.
You know that guy. What was the premise of the movie?
It was similar to the movie Warrior, if you remember the movie with Tom Hardy and Edgerton guy.
Back then it was about – that was like UFC -type fighting for that movie.
All right. And so it's kind of similar to that.
It was like, you know, two guys, we were going to be wrestling.
And so the idea was that you and Benny might star in it.
Like you might be the warriors.
Yeah, we might be the guys and be the main characters.
And kicking some ass and kicking some ass.
And we're big. We're big guys.
We're growing our hair really long.
So we just we had we had a look.
So, yeah, it was just it was just one of the things where you just go, you know what?
It's it's a once in a lifetime opportunity to move to California.
I never in my heart believed a movie would ever get made if I'd ever start in this movie.
I just had an opportunity to go to California.
And you were a semester away from graduating from getting your degree.
Yeah. Because at that time, I was like, it was one of those things.
I'm still kind of young.
I'm like 29 or something at that time.
Yeah. I can finish later.
All right. So you get to L .A.
1991. And with the hopes and dreams of being in this film, what happens?
Well, obviously, the film never gets made.
So we're literally – Benny and I are just being paid by this person to just work out.
We worked out twice a day.
We ate. That's all we did was just get bigger and bigger and bigger.
Wow. Yeah, seriously.
Like, can you give me a sense of how big?
Like, what's your height and what was your weight at the time?
Well, six feet. The biggest I ever got weight -wise was 250, 250 pounds.
Wow. That's insane.
I mean, can I ask you, this is not a very polite question.
No, it's okay. I'm honest.
Were you using steroids to get that big?
To get, yes. Yes, I did.
You have to. You can't.
You have to. You can't eat food and protein powders without - Cannot.
My natural body, I could get to – I got to about 217, I think, was the biggest I got to naturally.
It's still a lot. It's still big.
I'm still a professional athlete.
Yeah. And most people will not tell you the truth when you ask questions like that.
But I just believe in being honest about everything.
And by the way, does it have long -term consequences?
I think it does for people who use it for a long time.
I didn't like it. Mood swings galore.
I mean you could be happy one day and you could just be, you know, throwing stuff at a wall the next.
Yeah, it's not – especially if you're a pretty high -strung person anyway or just very aggressive.
It makes you volatile.
Volatile. Yeah. So you – but that was your job is to get really jacked for this movie.
How long did that last before it became clear that this movie was never going to pan out?
I got paid for about a year.
Wow. Yeah. That's a pretty good deal.
Not bad. Meantime, okay, so once you kind of find out this is not going to happen, you're already in L .A.
You're this jacked dude, and you have long hair.
Tell me about your hair.
Yeah, I kept growing my hair to the point where it got down to my waist.
What was that guy, Fabio?
Fabio. Fabio, yeah.
Were you like Fabio?
Yeah, he had cool hair.
His hair wasn't as wavy as mine.
He was like massive with long hair.
Yeah. So you had this really long hair and that was your look.
Yeah, that was it. And meantime, Benny was also doing this, right?
Correct. And you guys were sort of on this parallel path of you're in L .A., so you might as well keep auditioning for parts, right?
That's exactly right.
One thing I'll tell you is I'm not an actor.
And I didn't want to become an actor.
I just had a look. I was big with long hair.
You could put me in things.
So I could audition for parts.
I read that you were on Doogie Howser.
I was a guy in a pool with a girl on my shoulders.
Benny and I both were on Doogie Howser.
We did The Bodyguard with Kevin Costner and Whitney Houston.
You were in The Bodyguard.
What did you play? We were kind of nightclub kind of bouncers.
There's a scene where they're coming in from the limousine, come into the Mayan Theater downtown L .A., and we're kind of holding back the crowd because they're trying to get to them, whatever.
And then in the scene when she's performing, we're right there at the stage.
So how many seconds do you get on screen during the bodyguard?
Honestly, it's maybe three, four seconds, five seconds back.
Yeah. I was in another movie too called Death Becomes Her, and I still get residuals for that.
Isn't that with Meryl Streep?
Meryl Streep, Bruce Willis.
Yeah, it's like Bruce Willis, Barry Turner, Meryl Streep.
We were all featured actors.
But if you had a look, they could use you.
What's funny in Death Becomes Her, our titles were beefy guy.
I'm not kidding you.
So I was beefy – I think I was beefy guy number eight.
And we got – it was such – I had so much fun because the other beefy guys in the movie, we were all just big hams on the set and we didn't have to work that much.
It was a lot of hurry up and wait.
And we just – we hung out.
That's all we did. We hung out, we ate, and we just messed around.
It was a lot of fun.
All right. So this is also the era of, and those of you under the age of 40 will have a harder time remembering this, but American gladiators.
This is a show on television where you had a bunch of like really strong men and women.
And then you have contestants who'd have to battle them out in different scenarios, like trying to get a touchdown or trying to win a wrestling match or a jousting match.
This is a huge, massive show.
you find out about an open casting call in 1992 yeah and and and when you found out about it what did you think well the first thing i thought was i'm gonna go become an american gladiator prior to that i auditioned for a show called knights and warriors it was like it was like a knockoff show yeah
knockoff shawl medieval setting it lasted one it lasted one year and benny and i both go and audition for for knights and warriors yeah and they wanted both of us and i said no thank you i said i'm gonna go become an american gladiator huh so what was it was it a one -day audition and they were going
to make a decision at the end of the day or was it a multi -day thing well it turned out to be a multi -day multi -month process and we do all the events we're doing powerball we're doing jousting we ran 240 yard dashes in front of these executives okay but it It wasn't – but Gladiators wasn't like boxing
and stuff. No, no, no.
It wasn't violent. It was like jousting with like padded jousts and wrestling.
Yeah, but it was – but God, that is violence.
Yeah, I guess you're right.
You hit somebody with a giant Q -tip, we'll call it.
Yeah, that's true. And it doesn't matter if it's padded.
It's like when you're hitting it at that speed.
Very violent show. And so that day we went through all these different events, and I could do them all.
And so they narrowed it down to 10 people that day, and I was one of the 10 people.
And then we all kind of come back and do some things, and they narrow it down to three people.
I expected to be in that top ten, but now when you get to, like, you've got a 33 % chance of being on this show, your heart's racing a little bit.
You're saying, like, holy cow, dude, I'm a Hickory, North Carolina guy.
I'm just this guy from the south.
And I'm just thinking, like, I'm about to be on – at that time, the hottest show on TV.
I'm looking at a photo of you at the time.
You were selected. I think people are going to make that assumption now.
and you become Cyclone.
That's your character.
They called me Cyclone.
They thought I was big and I was very fast and that's just the name they came up with.
You were like 31. About 31, 32, yeah.
Giant. You were just a giant.
Your bicep is like the size of an adult head.
I had some big arms.
I still have a big arms guy.
Alright, so you get the job.
You're on this massive show and you've got a serious career ahead of you that's exactly what i thought i was like this is it this is the pinnacle of my sports career i didn't make it baseball football whatever but this this was my pro sports everything had led me to that moment right i felt like if anyone
had earned it it was me yeah and uh but then god has a way of saying let me uh let me deal you another blow what what happened on my i did eight shows and on the day that they call it they said this is your coming out party cyclone they were gonna they were gonna make me a known I mean I was gonna become
I felt like I was gonna become a star and so they said you're in every event today that means they're gonna they're putting you out there the best event was powerball people love powerball so that's basically the guys that contestants are sticking a ball into these little cylinders and there's three
of us trying to tackle two of them and so I dive there's two guys they come together I dive between them I extend my arms and i wrapped them up and at that and my bicep popped when i did that yeah and my bicep was just gone it had rolled up and my arm complete complete yeah complete detachment sorry
to be gory but it's what it's what happened and i wanted to hide it from the from the producers it was like hanging meat off your arm well it just guy what it does is it rolls up like a like a shade it just goes up into your up into your body towards your towards your shoulder weird yeah it's just complete
it attaches at your forearm and painful up to that point one of the the most painful thing i'd ever gone through i was it was just like burnt like somebody's taking a match and they're they're lighting your arm on fire for 24 hours a day i could not stand but i would not i would not stop i kept i kept
taping it and trying to shut off the pain i didn't take pain pills or anything but i was doing because i you understand this was my moment yeah there's nothing that would ever kept me off except a liability issue with the actual producers of the show.
They said, you got to go.
You got to go to the hospital.
Wow. So they ended that end of my career as a gladiator.
So you were done. That was it.
I was done. Which must have been crushing because you worked so hard to get that job.
Yeah. If there's ever a if there's ever a time in my life being depressed, that was it.
So here you are, 31.
Yeah. You kind of taste this moment of like stardom, like just the beginning of it.
And, you know, you're probably thinking, OK, here we go.
And then it's over.
Yeah. So what did you, I mean, obviously you had to rehabilitate your arm.
That was priority. Yep.
And when you say you were feeling like down, like what does that, what does that mean?
Feeling like a failure.
I worked my whole life, I felt like from the time, you know, being a kid, being an athlete, to pick up the weights, going through becoming a bouncer in nightclubs and wrestling.
Everything was just like leading towards.
There was something.
There was a pinnacle somewhere.
And American Gladiators was my pinnacle.
You could have cast me in a movie with Arnold Schwarzenegger.
I wouldn't have taken that over being an American Gladiator.
And depression is like not even.
It's funny I'm talking about it.
I've never really shared this with anyone.
But when you're a proud person from the South, you don't talk about your feelings.
You just swallow it, and you go on with life, and you pick yourself back up.
But, man, behind the scenes, I didn't know what I was going to do.
I was like, how do I top that?
Basically, how do I get that feeling of being a success again?
All right. So you're going through this and trying to figure out the next step, I guess.
Yeah. And Benny, he was on Knights and Warriors, that sort of low -budget spinoff of American Gladiators.
Also had an injury, like something that kept him from – Yeah, he tore his shoulder, his labrum or something.
And you can't make this up.
We're sitting – we're literally two guys on these two opposite shows.
We both get injuries.
And it's just like – I'm like, are you serious?
How does this happen?
Yeah. So you guys are – you and Benny are not sitting around trying to brainstorm ideas of, hey, what should we do together?
You're just – you're two jacked guys trying to recover from your injuries and still eating probably insane amounts of protein and egg whites and chicken and rice and whatever you can just stuff in your body.
That's it. And I guess one afternoon, you're just kind of eating all this food and having a conversation.
Yeah, just having a conversation.
We're at Coffee Roaster Cafe in Marina Del Rey.
It's our favorite little spot.
And eating chicken breast and egg whites.
And our thing was we always like to, like before we'd work out, we'd always like, you'd have like a peanut butter and jelly sandwich with a cup of coffee, a muffin with a cup of coffee, something sweet with the coffee.
That was just our thing.
So we had a muffin sitting on the table and we were going to split that muffin and have a cup of coffee.
It's just a regular muffin.
Just a regular muffin.
Yeah, just kind of a natural type muffin, nothing in it.
And I'm eating chicken breast and egg whites.
And I point to the chicken breast and egg whites.
And I said, why can't we put that protein in that muffin?
And I looked up and it's like Benny had saw a ghost.
And he just goes, oh my God, he goes, we're doing this.
And I was like, you're damn right we are.
And that's all we needed.
That was it. Okay, this is the light bulb moment.
And you're like, why can't we put that into that?
and now this is 1993 there were some protein powders existed whey powder existed at the time yeah there was metrics was big metrics was kind of doing their thing but it's funny though there was protein powder and there was protein bars but there was nothing else metrics is metrx right metrx correct
yeah yeah yeah GNC existed GNC existed you get protein powders yep but there was no one putting protein in anything other than a protein bar.
You didn't have to.
If you wanted protein, you ate tuna, you ate chicken, you ate steak, you ate eggs.
Which is a pretty great way to get protein, let's be honest.
The best way to get protein.
It's just not convenient for everybody.
Correct. You can't take a steak on the go with you.
Just munch on it while you're driving.
Like red flintstone.
Hang on, I got a steak in my pocket.
I need to eat it. But there, then and there, you guys are sitting there And both of you are like, this is it.
And it's funny, you said light bulb moment.
I always look back on it and I go, this was a giant halo.
It was like, this is not your moment where you can maybe go make a little bit of money.
This, I think, is something bigger than that.
I thought that from that very day.
This is like a Renaissance painting.
This is like Fra Angelico's Ascension.
It is. The halo right there on the angel.
That's it. It was our moment.
But two podunk guys from the South are going to go change the world.
When we come back in just a moment, Barry and Benny build a business, but not a brand.
And Barry makes a deal that he regrets almost as soon as he signs it.
Stay with us. I'm Guy Raz, and you're listening to How I Built This.
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Hey, welcome back to How I Built This.
I'm Guy Raz. So it's 1993, and Barry and his friend Benny are sitting at a cafe in L .A.
where they've just come up with the idea to start a business selling protein muffins.
There was no turning back, Guy.
It was just, we're going to do this.
We didn't know how we're going to do this.
No consumer product good.
experience. There's no marketing experience.
There's no business experience, nothing.
And we just, we knew that day that was it.
And so we didn't leave that table until we drew out what we thought the logo was going to look like.
And we left there and went straight to a little natural food store, Rainbow Acres, and picked up some protein powder.
We bought some muffin mix, went back to my kitchen and started baking these muffins within two hours.
We opened up a bank account that day with $1 ,400.
I don't know why it was $1 ,400.
Maybe that's all we had.
And we did a DBA doing business as.
So this all happened the very first day.
And the business was going to be called what?
Lenny and Larry's. You decided it right then and there.
You're going to call it Lenny and Larry's?
Right, right then. Even though you were Benny and Barry.
Yep. We always called each other something different.
And it was, again, something goofy.
We just – our names would change every day.
It was just something stupid we did.
And so we wanted to create these characters.
And we said Benny and Barry sound like real people.
Lenny and Larry sounds like two characters.
And that was it. I think people overthink things now that I look back on this.
I think people overthink trying to get the perfect name or the perfect design or whatever rather than just doing it.
All right. So it's going to be Lenny and Larry's.
Yeah. And what – when you guys were talking about this in that initial, did you say a snack food brand or did you say let's just make baked goods or what do you remember thinking?
Yeah, we were thinking we're going to put protein in everything.
Just protein powder, like whey powder.
Whey powder is going to go in cookies, muffins, brownies.
We started crazy ideas of popcorns and granolas.
us we're just we're thinking of everything we can put this put protein in what did you guys do just got like muffin mix and like from the grocery store that's that's all we did apple cinnamon muffin mix and some whey protein seems like a seems simple enough same simple okay you just you take out some
of the flour and you replace it with protein and it's got to work right of course yeah and and uh it did not they the muffins actually baked but they were hard as a rock and we weren't discouraged we go we can find somebody that can do this that's what we kept saying we knew it was it wasn't out there
but we said we can we can do this yeah so we find a bakery in Santa Monica called Montana Bakery Small Little Bakery and said hey here's what we're going to do can you guys help us we said we just need help uh putting these recipes together did you know the the owners of the bakery we did and we just
we met them and they were just two brothers so we just struck up a friendship and they they started baking muffins for us so they agreed to help you figure this out and what you said to them look we want what did you say to them well we just said we're trying to get a certain amount of protein in these
muffins we didn't want to really use refined sugars we wanted to use something healthier we are now we're already thinking about how healthy these things can be yeah so we're thinking we want to use like a fruit juice concentrate in place of sugar.
So, we're just, you know, we're thinking even further down the road than just making protein muffins.
And by the way, in those early days, what were you using for protein in the muffins?
We started with whey, and that was our protein source initially.
And what happened, the muffins tasted great.
They just wouldn't have a crazy good shelf life.
And they started to bind up.
They started to get a little harder over like just too soon.
But we did It actually, we launched with whey protein muffins.
OK, so this bakery did make, they came up with a formulation.
Yep. And the plan was you guys bake these muffins for us, and then we're going to take them off your hands and do what with them?
We're going to go sell them.
We had no idea who we were going to sell them to, but we knew we could sell these.
And our first, it's funny, our first account was the coffee shop we dreamed up the idea.
That coffee shop in Brando, right?
Yeah, yeah. She said, Joni, and Joni goes, yeah, I'll give you a shot.
And I can remember a guy, our first invoice, we were selling these muffins for like $1 .20 a piece.
And our first invoice for our business was $13 .20.
That was the first invoice we ever issued.
And so they would just sell them like in their display case.
Yeah, or either put them right by the register.
We were big. I don't know why.
We were always big about, hey, if you could put these by the register, that'd be great.
And they always would.
And how many – and then presumably also going to some other coffee places or did you try gyms?
We did. We did Rainbow Acres, natural food store here locally, and we did Gold's Gym in Venice.
And we did a local health food store called Mrs.
Gooch's before Whole Foods.
Oh, yeah, which was eventually bought by Whole Foods.
And so how long was the shelf life for the muffin?
Probably like four days or something like that.
And it wasn't packaged.
Was it packaged? Yeah, it was packaged.
We had them in like a plastic wrapper, and then we had a sticker.
We had a label, like a label sticker put on top of it.
So you would hand -package them yourselves.
We would hand -package them ourselves, correct.
We had a machine. Muffins from the bakery.
Muffins from the bakery.
We would sit there at night with our little crimping thing, and we would crimp them.
You basically put the package into the crimping machine, crimp it, it would seal it, and then you'd slap a sticker on it.
Slap a sticker on it, yep.
And how – and what was the flavor of the muffin?
We did apple cinnamon, we did blueberry, and we did a lemon raspberry.
Those were our three flavors.
And how much protein in each muffin?
I think back then around 15 grams.
Wow. Yeah. So this is early 90s.
This is like really before the protein revolution, which is – we're going to get to it because it's – I would argue just starting now.
And only now are you really seeing an explosion in protein, protein, protein everywhere.
At the time, who did you think was going to buy these?
I'm assuming you thought it was going to be like bodybuilder types.
We did. But to be honest with you, we really were developing these, we said, for the average consumer.
We thought if we could make a – we coined a term later called better bad.
But at that time, we thought if we could get them to stop eating Little Debbie's or Chips Ahoy and come to this.
Because we thought bodybuilders would enjoy it as like a little cheat treat.
but we were really targeting the average consumer.
So the idea that you were trying, you were thinking was, hey, maybe we could, if we pitch this as a healthier for you muffin, because there's protein and, but there's still this sugar in it.
There's still carbs in it, but people didn't care about it that much.
But you thought, okay, if we can get people to think, okay, protein, fiber, was fiber something?
It was, yeah, we started, we had added fiber already to that product, yeah.
And they tasted as good.
They tasted fantastic.
People talk about it to this day, they go, that's still the best product you guys ever made was your protein muffin.
Wow. Yeah. All right.
But now this is a small business.
I mean, this is like a tiny business.
You're going, I mean, you were selling that 15, 20, 30, $50 worth of muffins at this coffee shop and that coffee shop and trying to collect that.
I mean, that's a tough business.
No, we were, listen, we weren't even small.
We would have taken small.
We were smaller than small.
We just it was just a crazy little idea that we were so determined to make it successful.
So tell me a little bit about what a typical day was like was the OK, you were not baking the muffins.
You had this bakery make baking the muffins.
So I had to bring in some money.
So I was doing some personal.
