Health food has become more than a temporary craze, from the rise of Erewhon and $20 Smoothies to protein-everything, the market has not only exploded but continues to exponentially grow. In a world where health food often equates to bland and uninspired, one chef turned Registered Dietitian is proving that nutritious can be synonymous with delicious.
Meet Tyler Nigro, a culinary wizard known for his amazing talent in creating innovative, tantalizing, and out-of-the-box dishes—without sacrificing nutrition. Tyler’s new venture, Whoa Momma Protein, is setting the bar high with gourmet taste that doesn’t compromise on nutrition.
On a rainy summer Friday night in downtown Denver, a young chef can’t help but be enamored by the atmosphere created by the reflection of the patio light in the puddles and the aromas of fresh rain, pasta, and the brown-butter cake fresh out of the oven. He revels in the ability to look out from his station and see every first-bite, smile, and an enthusiastic response of diners enjoying dishes he had crafted-something many chefs never get the pleasure of doing. This is how he recounts his final night working in a restaurant. While he loved the grind of kitchen life, he expressed that ” It wasn’t entirely satisfying, something felt missing.”
Success was not lacking; just the week before, he had created a dessert that won yet another award at a competition, adding to accolades of “Best Dessert in Colorado” and “Best Macaroons.”- both among his daily creations. “I loved literally everything in that restaurant from the pasta we handmade daily to the Hazelnut Dacquoise with Edible-Gold. You couldn’t stop eating whatever you tried & I was always learning something new”.
So what led him to leave the restaurant industry for good, without a concrete plan for what to pursue next? Was it waking up at 4 am for 16 hour shifts? Was it the sight of the waitress, who began her shift at 5 PM, earning more in tips than he did in three days? Or was it the constant screaming & occasional humiliation from a stressed out, old-school Executive Chef?
“None of the above”.
At that time, he devoted all his hours to either working in, dining at, or contemplating high-end cuisine. Like most chefs- he was driven by a desire to learn how to create the best food in the world, and maybe one day be a reason a restaurant earned a Michelin star.
Despite his success, he struggled to envision a future spent in the best restaurants in the world, catering to a predominantly elite and often snobbish clientele, indulging in thousand-dollar dinners paired with four hundred-dollar post-dinner wine bottles.
“Well, really for me it was, what is this all for? Is it worth it? If I attain this goal of being the best- having the best dish, being at the best restaurant, making tiny plates of food for people who can afford $3,000 dinner bills for a table of two regularly- what do I really get out of that?”
Now, all he was certain of was that while he wanted to keep creating high-quality food, he desired to serve “more regular people” in a role that offered greater impact and purpose.
From High-End Restaurants to Nutrition-Focused Cooking
Tyler returned to school to get a degree in nutrition, focusing on cooking for professional athletes as a private chef in his spare time to lean into his desire to make a more tangible impact with his food. His efforts paid off after graduation from the esteemed Culinary Institute Johnson & Wales University- which has produced famous chefs like Emeril Lagasse and Tyler Florence.
Almost immediately after graduation he was regularly cooking for professional athletes, making a difference with a performance focused cuisine without sacrificing quality.
He continued his education to attain his Registered Dietitian (R.D.) license, achieving 1400 hours of clinical dietitian experience in hospitals while still cooking for clients at night.
Eventually as an R.D., he was calculating Tube Feeds for his patients in the ICU by day & making Penne Rosa for NFL & NBA athletes by night.
“It was a whirlwind, but I was loving it and definitely wasn’t looking to add more on my plate at the time…..it’s funny how timing works out I guess!”
The Birth of Whoa Momma
Like many of his friends at the time, Tom Thornton, Tyler’s childhood friend, came to him asking if he could turn an ordinary recipe into something healthy, but delicious.
Tom, now co-founder of Whoa Momma, was intrigued by the new popularity of so-called “healthy ice creams” that in his words, often disappointed in taste, texture, and ingredient-list. So, he challenged Tyler to create a “real” ice-cream- one with nutritional benefits that was creamy & delicious, all with the promise that he would find a way to get the ice cream into retail stores nationwide if he succeeded.
The idea of creating a product for retail was much bigger than Tyler had ever considered, yet intriguing. He accepted, but only on the condition that the product had to taste incredible– just “good” wouldn’t suffice.
After the duo invested in a pair of $500 ice cream machines, thousands of dollars in ingredients, and countless hours experimenting with what he calls “hundreds” of healthier ice cream variations, Tyler believed he had nailed it- with a slight twist, as Tom had come to expect.
“At a certain point after maybe 100 different versions I knew I was close but something still seemed missing, that cherry-on-top to make it really stand out. I came across a research paper from the University of Massachusetts Amherst where they were attempting to add Omega 3s to food but struggling with the fishy smell and taste as the oil degenerated or oxidized. One of their ideas was to add them to a frozen dessert, where they stay protected from the heat & light. That sparked the idea, like what if I could ditch this $30 Algae Omega 3 supplement that I was taking and just eat it?” -(Tyler)
The result was a Protein & Omega 3 packed Gelato, an elevated step up from ice cream known for its creamy and indulgent texture. “He joked gelato suited us better as Italians, to me it just sounded fancy but I knew it was going to taste amazing.”- (Tom).
The final product not only reduced added sugars and used high-quality natural ingredients but also incorporated more protein in ice-cream than they both previously thought possible without compromising texture and taste. Additionally, the gelato included Ocean-Friendly Omega-3s from algae, offering a nutritional boost that set it apart from other products on the market.
” It turns out it’s better for bio-availability, taste, & even the ocean. As soon as I got my hands on some plant-based Omega 3 oils I could use in the Gelato, I was dead-set on figuring out how to make it work, so then came another 50 versions playing around with it. Eventually, it all just came together.” -(Tyler)
It didn’t take long for them to begin testing out flavors with friends & family- who couldn’t get enough. Each draw-dropping reaction & piece of positive feedback only fueled their eagerness to find a way to get it into stores.
“When I let my little cousins try it as kind of our first taste-testers, and they instantly loved it having no clue it was “healthy”, I knew we nailed it. Kids don’t lie about what they like to eat. Once more people tried it and I agreed to give out personal pints, I couldn’t keep up with the demand. ” -(Tyler)
Overcoming Challenges in Large-Scale Production
Despite having a perfected recipe, scaling the product for retail presented a new set of challenges. Many food scientists and experts doubted the feasibility of producing gelato with omega 3 oils & such a high-protein on a large scale.
“I had multiple food-scientists and other self-proclaimed experts flat-out tell me what I was proposing wasn’t possible, it was too much protein, wouldn’t taste good, it would break the machines, yada yada. For the longest time nobody would even entertain the thought of having me come to try this on a larger scale at a factory. Little did I know we would find Matt & end up breaking a few machines along the way (laughs), but they were mostly wrong” – (Tyler)
Enter Matthew Bunce, a food scientist with expertise in launching frozen desserts and other award-winning products for Fortune 500 companies. Matt, while skeptical about the practicality of producing the proposed gelato, was intrigued, if not actually excited at the prospect of a new challenge. As far as Tyler was concerned- he was the only one at least willing to try.
“I maybe saw some naivety in him but resonated with the desire to innovate something not just for the sake of making money, but to be able to say you created something that was the absolute best on the market. All three of us are competitive by nature & we discovered early on we share this passion & desire to be the best at what we do and create something that nobody but us thinks is really attainable. “-(Matt)
Their first meeting in Ohio was also their first attempt to make the Gelato recipe large-scale at a local R&D facility. Despite their optimism, the trial didn’t start out great. Matt had taken Tyler’s recipe and created 4 similar, but largely scaled back recipes to account for pasteurization and other assumed challenges expected using different, and much larger equipment to produce the gelato.
“It was definitely a little bit of a shock to realize, ok to make 10,000 pints of this stuff, it’s not like I envisioned at all as far as the equipment necessary. It’s a long way from the stove, pot, and ice cream machine I was used to. So many steps in the recipe were now completely out of my direct control.” -(Tyler)
Each of the 4 proposed recipes they tried had its major flaw, taste, texture, or all of the above.
“We are both perfectionists and knew we weren’t happy with just getting close and making a product that was just Ok, you know? We finally had a moment where we were like ok, this may not work at all, and that’s fine if we at least go down swinging and maybe push the limits closer to the original recipe.” (Tyler)
Matt reluctantly agreed. “Well… nothing had gone super-wrong yet at that point, so there was a little bit of hope! We may have almost burst a few pipes at some point (chuckles) but we won’t talk about that! ” – (Matt)
“We sat down and Matt worked his magic, tweaked a few things we both thought would either work or completely break the pasteurization pipes because of the viscosity of the base- and then we kind of just took the leap of faith and went for it! When the successful version came out of the machine, you could just see the texture was perfect and when we both tasted it, we literally looked at each other like “Whoa.” It was a special moment.” – (Tyler).
The gelato’s taste, texture, and nutritional profile exceeded expectations, readying the product for its retail debut.
Q&A: Chef Life, The Current State of Healthy Food, & the Future of Nutrition in a Digital Age
As a young chef in the industry, what is it really like to learn from high-level chefs in an intense environment where customers have extremely high expectations?
“I mean… mostly fun. But it’s funny because the first thing people always ask me when they hear about my background, especially now with stuff like Gordon Ramsey clips and the show “The Bear”- is if it’s really that intense or serious in a higher-end kitchen? The reality is it may not be quite the same level of intensity & yelling but it wasn’t far from it, those shows do a great job depicting the energy. ”
Do chefs really scream at each other during service like it is portrayed on TV? Did you ever get yelled at like that?
“Almost all the head guys did! At least a few of my Chef’s who were very “old-school”, if you know what I mean. There were definitely a few Idiot-Sandwich type moments I personally witnessed, whether it was directed at other chefs or myself, but I think anyone who has worked in a high-end restaurant has very similar experiences to some extent. I don’t think I experienced anything out of the ordinary, I certainly know quite a few people with worse experiences in kitchens.”
Did that “old-school” mentality & the intense atmosphere it created make you fall out of love with cooking in restaurants?
“No. That’s just how it is. Sometimes I tell stories and people think I’m joking but it can really get that nasty, and it’s just not one restaurant here or there- it’s ingrained in the culture. To make it easier at the time, I approached it like playing a sport. For example, you all have the same goal to accomplish a challenging task, during that process you may say some crazy stuff on the field in the heat of the moment but at the end of the day you shake hands and have this kind-of unspoken respect for each other from the dishwasher to the Executive Chef. Then the next day there’s screaming all service again until the last ticket goes out and we pretend like none of that happened.”
What made you keep going in kitchen environments that got extremely intense?
“I think when you are a young chef- if you got that type of treatment directed at you specifically, it was because they believed in you to some extent. And you knew that is probably what that Chef personally had to endure coming up, almost like a cycle of abuse. They see it as earning your stripes. There’s definitely better ways to go about it but it weeds out those with no passion for it.
Many students who attend Culinary School end up never becoming “Chefs” or working in the restaurant industry, why do you think that is?
“It’s definitely not a friendly environment for those who are easily offended. I think the mentality for a lot of those places is, “We are going to either break you or make you”. I had pride in the fact I knew I loved to cook & bake and I wasn’t going to let it break me or permanently shake my confidence, or I would have left earlier like many people I know who went to Culinary School with me.”
Many new brands are emerging, all with the same promise- cleaner, better-for-you foods that taste good, obviously some do it better than others. What makes Whoa Momma different?
“Well first off we want to be the best (tasting) and believe we are going to achieve that across multiple products. We aren’t trying to create the 3rd best protein snack just to get sales. If there is something better than us out there it’s going to literally eat away at us until we come back with something better. But, of course we think we are in a position to make the best new products first right from the jump. We plan on other companies playing catch-up to us”.
With more information available than ever before on the internet, and the rising popularity of nutrition and food “experts” on social media, do you believe Americans will begin to eat healthier in the future, or will it cause more confusion and get worse?
“Honestly as a society I hope we get away from the extremes of both ends of the food spectrum. Creating this fear of consuming anything not deemed “healthy” by the millions of health experts popping up everywhere online is just as bad to me as the opposite- eating ourselves to death with over-consumption of processed foods that hardly resemble real food and don’t support local agriculture. Nutrition doesn’t have to be so black & white, defining every food or ingredient as healthy or unhealthy. People resort to that because it’s easy but it’s also lazy.”
That said, do you think the majority of retail stores in the US will shift to primarily featuring natural or organic products?
“I think it would be awesome if more stores featured more natural or organic options because if we are being very general, yes it’s better for everyone from our local farmers to the environment. The more options and competition- the better the quality and lower the prices will be. That’s the beauty with the freedom we have with millions of food options in America, we can control how our future looks with our choices.”
The official Launch of Whoa Momma
Fast forward to early Spring 2024, & where the Whoa Momma team was ready to officially launch in their local Kroger Division in Colorado along with other select states along the West Coast.
The general sentiment among consumers thus far that we can gather?
That it’s so good, it raises doubts about its healthiness. In other words, as Tyler hoped to hear, it’s incredible.
What will their success trajectory look like moving forward? It’s too early to tell, but signs are strong that Whoa Momma will have a powerful and recognized brand in the healthy snack space for years to come. With a growing demand for healthier, tastier options and a team determined to continuously innovate and improve, the future looks bright for Whoa Momma. Current market research suggests that the healthy snack market is expected to continue growing, with more consumers making conscious decisions about what they put into their bodies, which obviously bodes well for the company’s future..
A Vision for the Future
Looking ahead, Tyler and his team are not just sticking to gelato. In their spare time, the chef and his team have been back in the lab, developing not only new gelato flavors but also entirely new product lines. Frozen Fruit Bars, Kettle -Corn, & even change in direction from the Sweet-Lifestyle- Savory Popcorn.
“For a long time when it came to convenient snack-options that were healthy & had added protein, it was just your standard chewy protein bars & maybe smoothies- sweet stuff. We have such a unique team and background that we have the versatility and creativity to take snacks that are normally regarded as unhealthy, and turn it into something made with real ingredients and nutritional benefits that you won’t be able to stop eating.” – (Tyler)
What is the overall vision for Whoa Momma moving forward?
“I think simply- we want to make Kick-Ass products that taste even better than what we grew up eating from the grocery store. Recreating that same taste experience but without that guilt of knowing it’s bringing no nutritional value or made with weird and unnatural ingredients. Life is hard enough and normal people don’t have the time or resources to make everything from scratch- even myself as a Chef. We want to make life easier & more enjoyable for normal people in that sense.” – (Tyler)
Will you ever go back and open a restaurant? Or is there anything you still want to accomplish as a Chef?
“I doubt that but never say never! I still will always desire to continue to cook great food and create for others. I always want to keep learning & bettering myself as a Chef. At the end of the day, good food should always bring you joy and bring people together- I think any great Chef is simply aiming to do just that.” – (Tyler)
Tyler’s food philosophy shapes the future of Whoa Momma & resonates with the essence of great food- bringing joy and people together in one experience.
Who knows what the future brings, but for now with Whoa Momma, it seems like Tyler is well on his way to revolutionizing the standards of taste in “healthy” food, one delicious product at a time.
As they continue to innovate new products and expand their retail presence, Tyler, Tom, and Matt are most excited about impacting people’s lives positively with their delicious and nutritious creations.
And as for those original doubters? They can now proudly say, “We told you so.” So if you see it on your grocery store shelf- be sure to grab a few pints (or soon bags) of Whoa Momma Treats- your taste buds (and body) will thank you!
Where to Find
Ready to taste the future of healthy eating? Don’t miss out on the incredible flavors and nutritional benefits of Whoa Momma’s gelato and other exciting products. Visit their website at WhoaMommaProtein.com to learn more and join our community of health enthusiasts celebrating the best in culinary innovation and the “Where to Buy” section to enter your zip code and discover a store carrying Whoa Momma products near you.
