After decades of raising children, running, music, and navigating grief, Jenny Maxwell, co-founder of the original PowerBar, returned to her kitchen to create a new energy bar.

(Feature courtesy of JAMBAR)

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Running is the thread that’s woven through many chapters in Jenny Maxwell’s life.
It’s what brought Jenny and her late husband together, and the driver behind the business they started. It even influenced her decision to learn the drums.

Today, 45 years into her running journey, running is her solitude. And it’s the inspiration behind how she chooses to give back, donating to sports (and music) organizations with a portion of the profits from JAMBAR, a company she launched in 2021.

The energy bar brand is not Jenny’s first, however. In fact, it’s familiar territory. And it started in her kitchen, just like last time.

PowerBar Beginnings

Jenny was pursuing a degree in nutrition and food science when she started dating top-ranked Canadian distance runner Brian Maxwell. Struggling to find foods to eat before a race that were easy on his stomach, Brian and Jenny decided to experiment with ingredients in their apartment kitchen.

What resulted was an energy bar they branded PowerBar.

“We had branched-chain amino acids in it. It was low in fat, soluble fiber. We used fructose before we realized it’s probably not the best sugar to use. Science has progressed since then,” Jenny explains. “But it was really innovative at the time. We were delivering an easily digestible combination of simple and complex carbs.”

Realizing they were onto something that would help athletes, they began spreading the word about the energy bars.

“We started from nothing,” says Jenny. “We actually used our apartment as our little warehouse and fulfillment area. I would come between classes and fulfill the orders, put them on the porch, and the UPS driver would come and pick them up.”

Jenny and Brian expanded their business from mail order-only to stocking PowerBar on store shelves. As the couple grew their family, welcoming six children, the energy bar market grew, too. And after nearly 15 years leading the PowerBar brand, Jenny and Brian sold the company to Nestlé in 2000.

Then, in 2004, Brian suddenly passed from a cardiac arrest.

Finding Inspiration to Create Again

After Brian’s passing, Jenny says she stopped racing. She continued to run, but her motivation and what she wanted to physically endure changed. Instead, she turned to music and found a similar tempo and connection to running when playing the drums.

A couple of years later, Jenny found herself frustrated with the ingredients in most energy bars on the market. She began experimenting again. Adding organic and real food ingredients — maple syrup, honey, ancient grains, proteins, and dried fruits — to the same KitchenAid mixer she used to create PowerBar years earlier, she tested variations for a new energy bar.

“I really wanted to make a difference in people’s lives, rather than just have another energy bar,” Jenny notes. “There are so many of them, why do we need just another energy bar?”

So, when Jenny launched JAMBAR in 2021, she decided the company would make a philanthropic commitment by donating 50% of its profits to organizations and events related to music and sports.

Follow @JAMBAR on Instagram.

Below, Jenny shares more on her running journey, how the passing of her husband inspired her to become a musician, the founding of JAMBAR, and how its ingredients differentiate from other energy bars.

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How did you first get into running?

Jenny Maxwell: I’ve been running since I was somewhere between 12 and 13 years old. My mother was a runner, so I think part of it was to do something fun with my mom. Also, I lived out in nature. I lived in a little town called Bolinas, which is on the ocean in Northern California. I was surrounded by dirt roads and trails and just wanted to get out and experience nature.

Very quickly, I realized I was pretty good at it, and it came naturally to me. That just sort of propelled me into running longer distances. I actually ran my first marathon when I was 13. I’d only been running nine or 10 months, and I took the bib number of someone, a friend of my mother’s who had gotten injured. I just decided, ‘Well, I’ll give it a go.’ I actually did pretty well. I ran 3:25, and I was just a little teeny 13-year-old girl.

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In what ways has your running journey evolved throughout your life?

Jenny Maxwell: I competed throughout college, and then I became a mom pretty young. I was 24. I was still competing, though, and combined motherhood with competing and training.

I have six children. So, with every pregnancy, with every birth, and the growing family, I had to keep adapting to new expectations — of myself and of what it meant to incorporate running into my life, and how important it can be, and how to moderate the importance.

I think the biggest shock came when Brian passed away. My husband passed away in 2004, and it was really traumatic for me. I kind of lost my ability to push myself very much. He died of a cardiac arrest, and I think just the emotional trauma and the psychological trauma of that, I couldn’t race anymore.

My running then took a different turn, in that it was really more about moderation. I was still doing track workouts, and I would still go run fast, but I didn’t really want to race. I didn’t want to put myself in a pressure situation. I was not going to do that anymore.

Then, I was raising my kids. I encouraged my kids to run, and I took on a new role as a role model and coach with my daughter, who excelled in high school and college. She was extremely talented. And then one of my sons started running in college, and he’s running for Nike Development Team.

My emphasis for the last 10 or 15 years has been maintenance and injury prevention. Because, as you get older, your body starts to push back a little bit. You might emotionally and mentally want to go and do something that you used to do when you were younger, and you can’t really do it without potential injury or actually getting injured. Then those injuries can take a really long time to heal.

You have to learn what works for your own body and your own lifestyle. Just because you’re not running as much doesn’t mean it’s less important or less enjoyable. In fact, it probably becomes more enjoyable because you don’t have pressure on you.

It’s become more meditative. It’s more about just running on my own. It’s not as social, and that’s kind of enjoyable, actually.

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After your husband Brian passed away, you leaned into your love for music. What role does music play in your life now?

Jenny Maxwell: I’ve always been interested in music. I’d played a little bit here and there as a child. But when Brian passed away, I started going to a lot of concerts, and the music just called to me. The drums, specifically, called to me.

I decided, well, I’m going to be a drummer. So, I got a teacher and picked up a drum set, and it took about 10 years to get competent, where I could actually play live. I’m now in two bands …. One is all jazz, and the other one’s Latin jazz and some light rock.

Music seemed like a natural connection with running, because of the tempo and the cadence. Your heartbeat and the movement of your body is a natural rhythmic sensation, which translates. Drumming, particularly jazz drumming, is really four-limb independence, and you have to maintain that really solid tempo for the rest of the band.

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What inspired you to develop a new energy bar and incorporate both music and running into the brand?

Jenny Maxwell: It was a conversation with my daughter around the kitchen table about, there were really not very many organic bars — and there still aren’t. And I thought, well, with my background as a food scientist and athlete, I want to try to create something new.

I thought there was just more added value that I still could bring to the industry.

I worked with different formulations and different textures for about three years. That was in 2016, all the way to 2019. And then I decided, once I had the formulation, I would create a company.

I wanted to combine my passions, which were music and sports. I decided on the name JAMBAR because ‘to get your jam on’ is a musical term. I didn’t want to call it something like PowerBar 2.0.

Because I have this opportunity to really make a difference in people’s lives, why not contribute in a way that encourages musical connections and sports? So, we donate 50% of our profits to organizations that promote music and sports.

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In addition to the philanthropic mission, how does JAMBAR differentiate itself from other energy bars in its ingredients?

Jenny Maxwell: Because JAMBAR is certified organic, it’s going to be higher quality. Some people eat 100% organic; some people don’t care. But the quality of the ingredients without the pesticides, particularly with the grains, is very important for a lot of people.

We don’t have any of the chemicals other bars use, and a lot of that’s centered around the sweeteners that we use. We’re using pure maple syrup, which, of course, is a more natural product. It’s not highly processed. We’re using honey, which is not highly processed at all. We’re using dates, and we use sugar from grapes.

There’s integrity and the authenticity of those high-quality ingredients — the sweeteners, primarily. A lot of other bars use things like brown rice syrup, tapioca syrup, and tapioca fiber, which are not real sweeteners. Tapioca is not a source of sweetening. Brown rice is not a source of sweetening. Those are not grapes. Those are starches that you have to chemically convert and highly process to make sugary syrup.

I didn’t want to use flavorings. I want to use extracts. That’s another big difference. I didn’t want to use any added oils. I wanted to use super high-quality protein. I also wanted to use ancient grains like quinoa and sorghum in combination with the oat bran and brown rice.

Using the ingredients that are closer to nature inherently tastes better, I think. It’s better for your body because your body recognizes what those food ingredients are and can assimilate those ingredients better, which often leads to better gut health. And so your gut health, of course, is a good indicator of your overall health, in terms of your immune system and performance.

Follow @JAMBAR, and learn more about the company here.

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