Mosh PBC, a wellness brand founded by mother-son duo Maria Shriver and Patrick Schwarzenegger, has found new investment as it scales up operations. The Brentwood-based company recently closed a $3 million series A funding round led by Santa Monica-based Main Street Advisors and is expanding its retail distribution strategy.
Mosh manufactures and sells protein bars with ingredients that have been shown to support brain health including lion’s mane mushrooms, ashwagandha, collagen, vitamin B12 and D3. The brand was founded in 2021 and its products debuted in physical stores in January at the downtown-based Erewhon grocery chain. Schwarzenegger, who serves as Mosh’s chief executive, said its products are now available at Equinox Holding Inc. fitness centers and Earthbar stores.
Schwarzenegger said that while Mosh is selling substantial volume at Erewhon stores, the company’s main revenue stream is its direct-to-consumer sales. Mosh has sold more than $10 million of product in the last two years.
“Our online store has been doing tremendous for us, we really wanted to start all online so that we can really learn from our customers and understand what they’re interested in,” Schwarzenegger said. “We’ve done over $10 million revenue in such a short period of time, but … we are just scratching the surface. We feel like there’s a lot of potential customers and business at the retail landscape, and people are really caring about their cognitive functionality and brain health, so we think that there’s a lot of room to grow.”
Shriver has been an advocate for Alzheimer’s awareness and brain health research since her father was diagnosed with the disease in 2003. She previously wrote a children’s book dealing with the disease, founded The Women’s Alzheimer’s Movement nonprofit organization and served as executive producer on an Emmy Award-winning documentary series called “The Alzheimer’s Project.” Schwarzenegger said that Mosh, which stands for Maria Owings Shriver Health, started as a way for Shriver to continue her advocacy work during the pandemic.
“I said to her, ‘why don’t you create something that raises money for Alzheimer’s (and) raises awareness about how what people eat impacts the brain health,’” Schwarzenegger said. “You can make it so it’s a mission-driven company that really just centers around what your brain-health doctors and nutritionists have told you to eat for a brain healthy diet, and that’s kind of how Mosh was formed.”
Schwarzenegger, the son of Arnold Schwarzenegger, the Hollywood star and former governor, was an early investor of Pasadena-based Blaze Pizza and said he noticed that consumers were looking more often for healthy food alternatives. He sold his stake in Blaze and began investing in wellness-focused products, notably prebiotic soda company Poppi, El Segundo-based Liquid I.V. and “healthy” fast food chain EveryTable.
“I’ve worked with lots of different companies over the past decade and I got to learn a lot about how to build a startup,” Schwarzenegger said. “I got a lot of different knowledge about the manufacturing landscape, the branding, website building, drop shipping, pricing strategy, marketing scenarios … I just learned a lot over that course of time and I kind of told my mom, ‘look, I’m living with you right now, it’s Covid, my workflow is down and I’m happy to get this company off the ground for you and run it for you.”
Products are sold online in a monthly subscription basis of 12 bars for $35.19, or $43.99 for a one-time purchase. There are 10 flavors available, including three plant-based options. With the new funding, Schwarzenegger said Mosh wants to continue marketing, expand its team and explore new products.
“Our goal is to build out the brain brand and have multiple different product lines that speak to brain health,” Schwarzenegger said. “It’s a $3 million round, so it’s not meant for forever, but it’s for this next stage of our career of really putting the groundwork down, starting to test out retail and making sure we have a viable product on that side of the business.”
