DEFI Snacks offers an indulgent snacking experience by pairing chocolate with superfoods. Their products, such as the DEFI Milk Chocolate Superfood Bite, Dark Chocolate Superfood Bite and Dark Chocolate Himalayan Sea Salt Superfood Bites, contain functional ingredients like buckwheat and protein, which are both gluten-free and grain-free. DEFI stands for Delicious Energizing Fitness Indulgence and aims to support female-founded businesses by donating 1% of their profits to other women-owned startups.
Founding Story
Tatyana, being from Ukraine, always loved buckwheat growing up. In many Slovak countries, buckwheat is a staple, like rice or potatoes in the US. When Tatyana moved to the US, she was shocked that buckwheat was not as well known as it is across the ocean. Not only was buckwheat practically unknown, when people did hear about it, they greatly misunderstood it because of its name. When you ask, most people think buckwheat is a grain or a wheat because of its name. What most don’t know is that it is neither, it is a flower seed and is closer to a fruit than it is to a grain. When you compare buckwheat to other more trendy ingredients like quinoa, the greater benefits of buckwheat are undeniable. Motivated by a few brands that aim to make buckwheat a mainstream ingredient, Tatyana enlisted a brilliant scientist she used to work with to help come up with a kitchen recipe for a buckwheat product. After a few weeks of white space exploration with her trusted advisor, Tatyana honed in on a specific category focus and began developing the prototype. Although there are a myriad of better for you and/or indulgent snacks out there, there really wasn’t one that was both really good for you and an indulgence. With this, the first flavor was born. Tatyana then found a Chef, to scale the formula and develop 2 new flavors.
Tatyana, started her career at Johnson & Johnson where she spent almost 8 years across account management, analytics and various marketing functions. During the last 2 years at J&J, she got an MBA from NYU Stern School of business, where she concentrated in Marketing and Product Management. Post her MBA, Tatyana joined Mars Wrigley where she did a general management rotational program gaining experience across white space innovation, shopper marketing on the Walmart account, and traditional brand management. Tatyana launched over 20 new to market innovation platforms nationally, rebranding the Dove Chocolate brand from communication, visual brand language and innovation perspective. At the end of her 5 year tenure there, Tatyana became the brand lead for COMBOS, a regional snacking brand.
During 2020, Tatyana was recruited to work on the global Theraflu team to rebrand the business, driving global comms and creating a new innovation pipeline from scratch. After successfully designing a brand new flavors strategy, new condition innovation and a more modern visual brand language, Tatyana was pulled in to lead a team of marketers to execute all of these initiatives in the US market, which was the driving market for the brand. After a phenomenal rebranding and performance year, and having done a variety of experiences, Tatyana was recruited and joined Bausch + Lomb to launch a new eye drop to market and design the consumer marketing function. There she launched the best scoring campaign of B+L history, helping the business finish at almost 2X Net Sales in 2024. She is currently still at B+L, while leading DEFI Snacks as founder/CEO, which she formed in March of 2024. Although, Tatyana has a strong eye for talent, she currently is utilizing a fractional contracted team for all her main functions at DEFI Snacks LLC.
This snack is seriously good! It hits just right when I need a chocolate fix. I love supporting women-owned businesses, and it's easy when it tastes so good and is so crispy and full of protein. The buckwheat is just an added bonus - I really don't feel bad about snacking! Perfect for a quick pick-me-up or after a workout—so yum!
Jessie Z.
Founder, High Ground
Love this product. Did a taste test between my kids Halloween candy and DEFI. DEFI blew regular candy out of the water and made it taste like chemicals. The protein is also an added bonus, you get full after just a few and don’t feel the need to eat the whole bag.
