Hammer Nutrition celebrates 25 years

There was a time when Coca-Cola mixed with Gatorade was a go-to sports drink for endurance athletes. A Snickers bar was in every marathoner’s gym bag and nearly any sugar-laden product was the energy fuel of choice.

Nutritional science has come a long way since the 1980s. Hammer Nutrition founder and owner Brian Frank, 45, has been ahead of the trend every step of the way.

Twenty-five years ago Frank dropped out of college to start a small mail-order nutritional supplement company in California. The concept was simple — make natural and healthy endurance products that help keep athletes energized.

“We started in the kitchen of our apartment in San Francisco,” Frank said recently during an interview with the Pilot at Hammer Nutrition’s headquarters in Whitefish. “The 1-800 number used to ring on my home phone and I’d be getting up in the middle of the night answering calls.”

He and his wife would fill orders at the kitchen table.

“It was a good day if I took three or four orders to the post office.”

He originally set out to build a nice cottage business that provided for his family. Turns out his timing was impeccable. Triathlons and other endurance sports exploded in the 1980s with the Baby Boom generation.

“Yuppies — the super Type-A overachievers — had this massive influx to triathlons,” he recalled. “Then Greg LeMond won the Tour de France in 1989 and master cycling started taking off.”

Then there was the early 1990s mountain bike craze.

“We benefited from those Baby Boomer driven sports,” he said.

“I saw these athletes training themselves into the ground and having immune system problems. We knew how to fix that. We pioneered the product category of endurance supplements and endurance fuels.”

The “science” behind their first products was based on the whole foods and vitamins he grew up with.

“There was never any lab coats, beakers or Bunsen burners,” he joked. “I grew up in a California hippy family. We were granola before it was hip. We shopped at the first Trader Joes when it was just a funky health food store in Pasadena. I grew up eating whole foods and taking handfuls of vitamins.”

The original product offered by the company was a “race cap” — a group of micro-nutrients and antioxidants that Frank and his father had cobbled together when Frank was racing motocross and playing water polo in high school.

Led by the success of those race caps, the company was healthy but still small in 1995 when Frank and his family fled the California rat race for the more laid back Whitefish lifestyle. He originally opened a shop on Baker Avenue. By 1998 there were five employees and the next year they started constructing their current facility on Whitefish Stage Road.

“In 2000, that was when I decided to kick it up,” Frank said.

They began selling at retail stores, which now accounts for 60 percent of their revenue. They also branched out into other segments of the market. The most significant was a sports drink they introduced in 2006.

“We didn’t set out to create a Gatorade alternative,” Frank said. “We started looking out there and saw that nobody was doing it right.”

The Heed sports drink is now one of their most popular products.

Despite a plethora of “energy” products available today, Frank says Hammer is positioned nicely in the market as one of the few that has kept the focus on making natural and healthy products.

“If it’s not something I would take or feed to my kids, I’m not going to sell it to anybody else,” he said. “We’ve got to get the toxic stuff off the dinner table and out of the sports bag, too.”

Power Bar is now a brand of Nestle and can be found in almost any gas station for less than $1. Frank calls those products “white noise.”

“In their effort to go for bigger markets, they’ve abandoned their roots.”

“Our bars retail for $2.50 and people come into bike shops and buy them by the box. It’s the only place to get a delicious, organic, vegan, kosher energy bar that’s real food.”

Along with their supplements, Hammer produces an official guide to proper nutrition and a magazine that features the accomplishments of their sponsored athletes.

One of their local sponsored athletes is endurance cyclist Clint Muhlfeld who recently won a USA Cycling 24-Hour Mountain Bike National Championship. Muhlfeld swears by Hammer products and says they’ve played a big role in his success on the bike.

“Prior to using Hammer products, I hydrated using drinks with simple sugars,” Muhlfeld said. “I quickly learned that this led to energy peaks and valleys — and bonking.”

He says proper fueling changed the way he trained and raced.

“Mountain bike endurance races typically take 8-24 hours, with up to 20,000 feet of vertical climbing, so proper fueling during racing and recovery is really important.”

Hammer currently employs as many as 40 workers in Whitefish, from shipping and packaging to technical support and marketing. Production is in Wisconsin and products are shipped by freight to Whitefish where orders are then sent out all over the world.

The endurance nutrition market continues to expand with ultra-athletes now taking on unfathomable challenges with Hammer products in hand.

“Ultra has gone so ultra,” he said. “You have double and triple distance Ironman races. Bike races across America. On Mount Everest, now it’s how fast you can get to the top.”

Frank says there is room for the company to grow and innovate, but he’ll be sure to stick to his founding principles going forward.

“We want growth with a purpose,” he said. “Not growth for the sake of growth.”

“It’s been 25 years of constant and diligent hard work. This is not a get-rich-quick scheme. But another 25 years? Sure, sign me up.”