The Startup Mistake Early Founders Make

🔔🔔 Jayne Ronayne, founder of OAC Snacks, shares how she built a successful protein snack brand and reveals the realities of the modern protein and healthy snack industry 🔔🔔

Jayne Ronayne joins Business Builders to share the story behind OAC Snacks and the realities of building a food brand from the ground up.

What began as a simple idea - creating high-protein snacks with clean ingredients that actually taste good - grew into one of Ireland’s fastest-growing healthy snack brands. But the journey from kitchen experiments to supermarket shelves was anything but straightforward.

Jayne explains how the company started by hand-making and delivering protein snacks herself, learning directly from customers and retailers about what people really want from “healthy” food.

Along the way she discovered something surprising about the protein industry - many products marketed as high-protein or healthy aren’t always what they seem.

In this episode, Jayne breaks down how the food industry really works: from product development and manufacturing challenges to distribution, branding, and the importance of building a product customers genuinely love.

She also reflects on the mindset required to start a business, why founders often overthink business plans instead of testing real products, and how resilience, curiosity, and customer feedback shape successful companies.

This is a conversation about entrepreneurship, food innovation, and what it actually takes to turn a simple idea into a national brand.

“Spending months writing a business plan is irrelevant. The only thing that matters is whether someone will buy your product.”

🎧 In this episode, you’ll learn:

Why Jayne started OAC Snacks and the problem she wanted to solve
The surprising realities of the protein snack industry
How to develop a food product people actually want to buy
Why founders should focus on customers instead of business plans
The challenges of manufacturing and scaling a food brand
How branding and taste drive success in the snack market
Why many “healthy” snack products aren’t always as healthy as they appear
What it takes to build a consumer product from scratch
Lessons Jayne learned from the early days of OAC Snacks
Why resilience is essential when building a startup

⏱️ Timestamps

00:00 - Cold open
01:00 - Introducing Jayne Ronayne and OAC Snacks
03:25 - How the idea for OAC Snacks started
07:40 - Building the first version of the product
12:10 - Why founders overthink business plans
16:30 - Developing a product customers actually want
21:15 - The reality of the protein snack industry
27:40 - Manufacturing and scaling a food brand
35:20 - Branding, distribution and retail challenges
44:10 - Lessons from building OAC Snacks
55:30 - Advice for founders starting a business

Topics covered:

Entrepreneurship, food startups, OAC Snacks, protein snacks, food manufacturing, consumer brands, startup founders, healthy snack industry, product development, building a food brand.

Видео The Startup Mistake Early Founders Make канала Business Builders Podcast