The Stealth Health x COUNTER Story

How SHL & COUNTER have grown together

For those that don’t know, I am an owner/partner at a startup food brand called Counter.

This is not a company I’m promoting or getting a paycheck to talk about… it’s a company I’ve been helping build from the ground up over the past 3 years.

I’ve never believed in a company more than this one.

And there’s a reason. While I post and create high protein, macro-friendly meal preps designed to be stored frozen… COUNTER sells high-protein, macro-friendly frozen “meal preps” in grocery stores.

Much of the work I’ve published with Stealth Health has been directly inspired from the product work I’ve done with COUNTER.

When I first got in contact with the two founders, the company was name-less, and product-less.

But, the vision was extremely strong.

When you look at the landscape of “better-for-you” food products, especially over the past decade or so, it has been absolutely dominated by fleeting diet fads. Especially frozen foods. The vast, vast majority of new companies went all-in on one of the two most popular buzzwords of the era:

“Plant-based”, and “Keto”.

As time has passed - one thing has become clear…

None of those products are actually “better-for-you”, and the companies behind those products were simply looking for a profitable trend to take advantage of. This hasn’t been reported much to the public - but the wave of plant-based and keto products were absolutely disastrous for retailers.

People bought the hype, but they didn’t love the products.

Why?

1.) The products didn’t produce results

2.) The diets they promoted weren’t sustainable

3.) The food didn’t taste good

Counter started when the founders noticed this trend in retail (they worked in corporate retail buying at the time) - and simultaneously noticed a MASSIVE wave emerging on social media.

The “macro-friendly” approach to dieting was starting to break through to the mainstream. They saw countless creators blowing up on social media, sharing high-protein, low calorie versions of indulgent foods. Foods that usually wouldn’t be considered “diet” food. Foods that made a diet feel much more sustainable than ever.

I was among the crowd of creators during this period. I was about 6 months into my career with Stealth Health, when a chance encounter brought me into contact with the founders.

I had been closely studying the consumer product space for years at this point (if you didn’t know, my entire journey was actually started by trying to start a chocolate energy drink company, and I started Stealth Health as a side project while building the company).

Because of this, when we first talked - I was immediately all-in on the brand. I was definitely naive to the challenges that lay ahead, but the potential and importance of the brand was undeniable. Since then, I have become a very close partner to the founders in building the brand from the ground-up, and helping bring the vision to life - primarily heading up product development and elements around brand/social media.

It’s been a wild ride.

Here is the VERY abbreviated history of what has happened since early 2022 when we established our partnership.

And that brings us to now.

Your support has made all of this possible. I genuinely never could have imagined any of this happening a couple of years ago. It is truly surreal to even be typing this email, and I am forever grateful.

Thank you all, and we’ll talk again next week.

- Tom