Standing 17 feet tall in a glimmer of white marble at the Galleria dell’Accademia in Florence is the statue of David, his musculature carefully chiseled by the hand of Michelangelo, a portrait of the biblical hero who, despite all odds, defeated Goliath.
The unlikely eponym follows more than 500 years later, gleaming from the shelves of most major supermarkets, gyms, and convenience stores across America today. It is, of course, the David Bar, easily identified by its shiny gold packaging and bold block letters. Its cofounder, Peter Rahal, started the company alongside Zach Ranen after selling his first, RxBar, to Kellogg’s for $600 million in 2017. Since David’s debut, it’s grown into a $725 million business. Its main investors include podcaster and neuroscientist Andrew Huberman and longevity guru Peter Attia (who now serves as the company’s chief science officer); their combined Instagram followings of 9.4 million helped catapult the status protein bar to mainstream popularity.
In the fall, David moved into a new office to accommodate their rapid expansion. Rahal emerges from his desk, tall, with a shadowy scruff, tousled brown locks, and piercing blue eyes. He’s dressed in his daily work uniform: a gray monogrammed “David” hoodie, black track pants, and sneakers. Unlike most CEOs of multimillion-dollar companies, there’s no swanky corner office, just a standard desk amongst a row of colleagues. “I want my team to be able to see what I’m doing at all times,” he says. Beside his computer sits a crumpled David bar wrapper—he eats at least one every single day. Taped to his monitor is a photo of his wife, the 29-year-old French model Charlotte Coquelin, their son, and their two dogs, all frequent visitors of the office.
Justin Campbell.
Raised in a Chicago suburb by two Lebanese immigrants, Rahal was shaped by a doting mother and an entrepreneurial father, guided by “the classic immigrant mindset” of “if you’re not working, what are you doing?” That, in combination with his dyslexia-fueled struggles in school, meant he rarely felt he measured up to his peers. “At 10 years old, I looked in the mirror and realized I was fat,” he recalls, prompting a fixation with nutrition, which, by the time he was in his early 20s, became a daily devotion to CrossFit.
After finishing college at Wittenberg University in Ohio and working and studying in Belgium and Beirut, he returned to the States with new entrepreneurial ambitions, hoping to eventually join his father’s juice company. “But first I wanted to sharpen my teeth,” he says, so he went to work at a transportation brokerage startup. “The company’s unstated mission was to make the founder as much money as possible,” regardless of anyone else, he says. Unhappy in his corporate life, Rahal worked on various unsuccessful entrepreneurial ventures after hours—including the concept for an upscale Dunkin’ Donuts called Cream and Sugar—until one day, he says, he came across an Inc article on how to start a nutrition bar business with just $10,000.
Because of CrossFit, Rahal knew consumers wanted simple, whole ingredients in line with the Paleo diet, which he calls “the religion” of the time. He started to put together recipes in his parents’ basement, enlisting his mother to help with sticking on the labels (she was later “fired” for putting them on incorrectly).
A few months later, Rahal began carrying cases of the bars to local CrossFit gyms in Chicago, convincing managers to stock a limited supply. Soon, they were flying off the shelves. In 2015, he invested that money in a rebrand that would become the iconic, metallic packaging the brand is known for today. In October 2017, he sold the company to Kellogg’s for $600 million.