He took a walk around the block, and came back $60 million in debt.

Who is he—and what was he like before everyone noticed?#

Gary Erickson spent years designing bicycle saddles at Avocet, a Palo Alto bike-parts maker; he's co-credited with the O2 AirGel saddle¹, now part of MoMA's permanent collection. He later ran his own bakery in Berkeley, years before anyone thought to call him a food-company founder.

What did his life look like before his trek began?#

He graduated Cal Poly² in 1980 with a business degree, then spent seasons working as a mountain guide before anyone paid him to think about food. The outdoors came first; every job after was just a way to stay near it.

What did he see that other people didn't?#

That the product everybody tolerated was tolerated, not liked. He was six bars into a 175-mile ride up Mount Hamilton³ in 1990, with a seventh in his pocket, and couldn't make himself eat it. The market read that as demand. He read it as a bar nobody enjoyed, bought because it was the only one.

What problem became his obsession?#

Make an energy bar a rider would actually want at mile 120. That's a baking problem, not a nutrition problem, which is why the next two years happened in a kitchen instead of a lab.

Why did this matter personally to him?#

He'd eaten the alternative for years, on the bike, in the cold, at the exact point where food stops being fuel and becomes a decision you have to make. He'd lived the complaint himself before he ever tried to fix it.

Where did the first money come from?#

His mother's kitchen, and two years of it. Mary Erickson was the best baker he knew, so they worked out the recipe together: mixing, baking, and throwing out everything that wasn't good enough. There was no outside money, and no plan that required any.

What made the economics work?#

It worked because the bar was the marketing. Riders passed them around, and the product spread through the sport it was built for instead of through a category buyer—the kind of distribution that's only available to something people actually like.

What was the decision or moment after which nothing was the same?#

April 2000. Quaker Oats⁴ had offered $120 million, the papers were nearly ready to sign, and Erickson told Kit Crawford he needed to take a walk. He circled the block once and came back with an answer: no. In his own words: "I had a moment of clarity, and said, this is not the time, this is not right."

What nearly killed it?#

The refusal nearly killed it. His fifty-fifty partner, Lisa Thomas⁵, wanted the sale, and when it didn't happen, she left. Buying her out meant matching the price Quaker had just set: $60 million, which he didn't have. He called it "the gamble of the century." The company he'd just refused to sell was now carrying the debt of refusing.

What happened that he couldn't have planned for?#

A bar built to solve his own problem on a bike ended up creating a market that had nothing to do with cycling. In 1999, Clif Bar launched Luna⁶, the first energy bar formulated specifically for women—an entirely different customer than the one he'd built the company to feed.

What showed that he was human after all?#

He named it after his father, Clifford, who'd taken him into the mountains as a child. The bar carries his first name: a thank-you note that ended up on a billion wrappers.

What was the change he brought about?#

When Clif Bar began buying organic oats and soy in 2003, it pulled enough farmland into organic production to add 30,000 acres⁷ of it, and by the company's own count kept more than 5 million pounds of pesticides off the land.

What did he believe that most reasonable people around him did not?#

That an athlete-focused company should treat its own employees like athletes, not like factory labor. Clif Bar built paid time for exercise and rest into the job itself⁸, treating recovery and fitness as core to the business rather than a perk bolted on.

What did his trek cost him?#

The sense that the worst was over. Years into repaying the buyout, sales fell short of what he'd projected, and Erickson kept fearing the bank would call in its loan⁹—the fear didn't end when the deal closed, it just receded for a while.

What's the takeaway?#

He treated a number as a data point, not a verdict. What a stranger's offer said the bar was worth didn't tell him what he thought it was worth, so he waited until a buyer would meet his own number instead of theirs. 22 years later, on his own terms, he sold Clif Bar to Mondelez¹⁰—proof he'd read the situation correctly the whole time.

Timeline#

• 1957—Born.

• c. 1980—Graduates Cal Poly with a business degree, then works seasons as a mountain guide.

• c. 1986—Leaves saddle design to open his own bakery in Berkeley.

• 1990—On a 175-mile ride up Mount Hamilton, can't stomach another bite of the only energy bar on the market.

• 1991–92—Co-designs the O2 AirGel bicycle saddle at Avocet, later acquired by MoMA for its permanent design collection.

• 1992—Formally launches Clif Bar, the recipe developed with his mother, Mary, in her kitchen.

• 1999—Launches Luna Bar, the first energy bar formulated specifically for women.

• 2000-04—Quaker Oats offers $120 million for the company; Erickson takes a walk around the block and comes back having said no.

• 2000—Buys out co-founder Lisa Thomas for $60 million, borrowing to do it.

• 2003—Begins sourcing organic oats and soy, eventually adding 30,000 acres of organic farmland and cutting more than 5 million pounds of pesticide use.

• 2010-06—Transfers 20 percent of the company to employees through an ESOP.

• 2020—Sally Grimes becomes CEO.

• 2022-06—Sells Clif Bar to Mondelez for $2.9 billion, staying independent for 22 years after first refusing to sell.

Side notes#

1. The O2 AirGel saddle—MoMA's own 1995 exhibition records credit Erickson, alongside designer Marty Holloway, for the Avocet bicycle saddle now held in the museum's permanent design collection. Learn more ↩

2. Back at Cal Poly—Erickson returned to his alma mater in 2017 as a commencement keynote speaker for two of the university's colleges, more than three decades after graduating from the same business program. Learn more ↩

3. Mount Hamilton—Erickson's 175-mile "epiphany ride" climbed a mountain southeast of San Jose via a 36-mile, 4,750-foot ascent built for mule traffic to the Lick Observatory, still a classic Bay Area test piece for endurance cyclists. Learn more ↩

4. Quaker Oats—The breakfast-food giant that offered $120 million for Clif Bar in 2000 was itself bought by PepsiCo just eight months later, for $13.4 billion in stock. Learn more ↩

5. Lisa Thomas after Clif Bar—She used her stake to found Katahdin Productions, a nonprofit film company; its first documentary, on Penobscot Nation environmental activism, produced a companion album that won a Grammy for Best Native American Music Album. She also co-founded Spiral Groove, a maker of high-end audiophile turntables. Learn more ↩

6. Luna Bar—Lower in carbohydrates than a standard energy bar and fortified with iron, calcium, and folic acid, Luna was marketed to office workers and mothers rather than athletes—nutrients and a customer base Clif Bar's own cycling-focused bar had never been built around. Learn more ↩

7. Beyond the acres—Clif Bar has also put $10 million into endowing five university research chairs focused on organic agriculture, a field that by one estimate draws less than 1 percent of public agricultural research funding despite tens of billions of dollars in organic sales. Learn more ↩

8. The paid-workout policy—Employees can trim a half hour off most workdays for a workout, or bank the time toward every other Friday off; those who stay seven years earn an eight-week paid sabbatical. Turnover at Clif Bar has run under 3 percent, in an industry where it's often far higher. Learn more ↩

9. Never looking for outside money—Erickson and Crawford never brought in outside equity investors, even in the leanest years of repaying the buyout. Asked how they'd managed it, Erickson said: "I don't know if it was naivete, or raw belief, or two individuals who had a high tolerance for risk. We didn't have anything to lose—just something to gain." Learn more ↩

10. Mondelez International—The snack-food giant behind Oreo and Ritz bought Clif, Luna, and Clif Kid from Erickson and Crawford in 2022, keeping the brands' headquarters in Emeryville, California. Learn more ↩