Open Fuel's Contrarian, Values-Based Bet on Endurance Nutrition
No Amazon. No exit plans. No ingredients without science behind them. The story of an upstart trying to drag a crowded category somewhere better.
They say anything can happen in a 100K race. I didn’t realize this also applies to 100K volunteering.
I signed up as an aid station volunteer for the Big Alta 100K because I wanted to experience the race. It was too close to Black Canyon for me to run this year, but I felt a calling to be involved. I didn’t know that decision would lead to a chance encounter, a new connection, and my introduction to one of the most intriguing new brands in trail running, Open Fuel.
My job at Big Alta was manning the ice sponges at the final aid station (Big Rock, mile 53.8) on a hot day when cold water was in high demand. As the leaders rolled through, one runner’s kit stood out: unique branding, a playful cheetah logo. But I had a job to do. Ice water over the head, words of encouragement, on his way.
A few days later, I was reading Zach Hauer’s Big Alta 100K recap on his Late Entry Substack1 and realized the guy with the cheetah logo was Zach, co-founder of Open Fuel. He’d finished 4th in 8:50, missing the podium by just over a minute. Plenty of the recap resonated, but one passage stood out the most:
“Missing out on the podium stings, especially knowing the marketing boost I would have earned Open Fuel through the Freetrail coverage. It came with valuable lessons however: fuel through the highs and lows, always be cooling, quell negative thoughts through reveries of past efforts, and believe in the comeback.”
The idea that a podium finish would function as brand marketing in lieu of paid advertising stuck with me. I dove into Open Fuel’s website, and the more I learned, the more I connected with the mission, the values, and the vibes. I reached out to Zach to tell him I was interested in writing a deep dive on Open Fuel for this newsletter.
Over the course of multiple conversations, it became clear Open Fuel isn’t just another nutrition brand riding the trail running growth wave. What started as a cool local brand in South Africa has grown into a business doing almost the opposite of what you’d expect in endurance nutrition right now. A deliberately constrained, values-driven business that aims to not just fuel trail runners, but drag an entire market toward more sustainable practices. To understand how that ambition took shape, you have to start in Cape Town.
Origin Story
Open Fuel was founded in 2024 by Andrew Bloom in Cape Town, South Africa. Andrew, a Cape Town native and decades-long runner and cyclist, started the brand after learning via trial and error how crucial proper nutrition is to endurance performance. Zach’s encounter with the brand came a few months later, after a shakeout run while he was in town for Ultra Trail Cape Town. Part of the UTCT course passes through Hout Bay, a small town where Zach stopped at South Yeaster Bakery for some post-run sourdough.
A colorful sachet of drink mix on the counter caught his eye. From his own account:
“Immediately, I was struck by the branding. It felt fresh, fun, loud, and serious. A welcome change from the minimalist, over-marketed, greyscale canvas so many running and cycling brands have leaned into during the ‘fueling revolution.’”
The flavor delivered too, not just for Zach, but also for his partner:
“Once I was able to try a flask of the mix, I was more than sold. More importantly, my partner, who has a pickier palette and aversion to the artificially sweet lab-made flavor of the common mix/gel, also loved it.”
To his disappointment, Open Fuel was only shipping within South Africa. Zach reached out to Andrew directly, and after several conversations, agreed to come on as a business partner to help expand the brand into North America.
It’s worth briefly stepping back to acknowledge why the opportunity for a brand like Open Fuel existed in South Africa to begin with. Per Zach, post-Apartheid South Africa has seen significantly more economic mobility, which has fueled a surge in outdoor sports participation, particularly running and cycling. The result: a large community of endurance athletes around Cape Town with limited local nutrition options, and imported brands from North America and Europe priced out of reach for most. That dynamic opened the door for a local brand.
Open Fuel isn’t a brand simply capitalizing on a market opportunity. It’s a local business addressing the needs of its community first and foremost. As Zach puts it: “Open Fuel is a properly South African brand that cares a lot about the people.”
The Products and the Business
Since Zach joined Open Fuel, the brand now sells into North America in addition to South Africa (with Europe coming in the near future). It sells two primary products: a drink mix and a gel mix.
Drink Mix
The core product comes in three flavors — Passion Mango Tango, Radical Raspberry Ripple, and Zesty Limeade Parade — and clocks in at 60g of carbs and 500mg of sodium per serving. Both numbers sit at or near the scientifically validated ceilings for what the human body can absorb and replenish per hour. One flask of Open Fuel per hour is, by design, one of the simplest bonk-proof fueling protocols a runner can use. This formulation philosophy does the math for the athlete instead of asking them to do it.
The drink is sold in individual sachets priced at $3.00 per serving and in a 24-serving bulk bag for $50 ($2.08 per serving). Both price points are notably accessible relative to the rest of the performance nutrition category, in terms of raw cost per serving, cost per gram of carbs, and cost per mg of sodium.
Gel Mix
The drink mix market is quite saturated. Open Fuel’s gel mix is a more distinctive product, and it serves two purposes at once.
First, it gets Open Fuel into the energy gel category. At 30g of carbs, 200mg of sodium, and 124 calories per serving, it’s competitive with the rest of the market at an affordable price point of just $1.70 per serving.
Second, and more interesting, a bulk bag of gel mix lets runners batch their own gels ahead of races or long runs, cutting out the single-use plastic and preservatives that come with individual packets. The trade-off is more upfront prep in exchange for less waste, and Open Fuel is betting that resonates with environmentally conscious athletes. To lower the barrier, the brand is currently bundling a free reusable 180ml flask, custom-built to hold three servings (90g of carbs) with all gel mix orders.
In Development
Zach has signaled a few things on the roadmap, including single-serve gels in sustainable packaging, paper-based sachets for the drink mix, and a light-carb hydration mix built for everyday runs and saltier sweaters.
The through-line across all of it is a single formulation philosophy to only include ingredients athletes actually need or that make the product enjoyable to drink. If the science doesn’t clearly support adding something, it stays out.
Open Fuel is a small brand with big aspirations, competing in one of the most crowded categories in trail running. How does a small brand in the most crowded category in trail running plan to stand out?
Want to try Open Fuel? Use code TRAILWAVES for 25% off at checkout.
Heads up: this is an affiliate link, so Trail Waves earns a small commission if you buy. It helps fund the newsletter 🙂
The Open Fuel Thesis
What resonates most with me about Open Fuel, both in my interactions with the product and through my conversations with Zach, is how values-first the brand is. Those values serve as a guiding light for building a business and as a north star for what Open Fuel hopes to push the entire endurance nutrition market toward.
It’s a Patagonia-style playbook in a category that’s never really had one, built on three primary pillars:
1. Values as a Strategy
Open Fuel lists five values on its website that show up in its product offerings, packaging choices, and the way the brand shows up in the trail community:
Plenty of brands list values on their websites. It’s rarer than it should be to see them actually live by those values in practice. Open Fuel is values-first by design, and values show up in specific ways:
“Environmentalism” shows up in sourcing and packaging. Non-GMO ingredients and the active move toward plastic-free packaging are table stakes. It’s the same bet Patagonia made decades ago: a meaningful slice of customers will pay attention, stay loyal, and eventually drag competitors into matching the standard. Bulk bags are the cleanest expression. They offer affordable unit economics to the customer, create less single-use plastic, and are higher-margin for Open Fuel than single-use gels or sachets. One decision, three wins.
“Integrity” shows up in formulation restraint. Open Fuel refuses to load its products with magnesium, potassium, or calcium just because those ingredients market well. Per Zach, the science doesn’t support meaningful relative loss of those electrolytes during exercise2, so Open Fuel keeps it simple with enough carbs and sodium to keep you moving, but nothing unnecessary.
“Fun & Positivity” shows up in the brand surface area. The bold colors, the fun flavor names, the playful cheetah logo, the sachet design. Every interaction with the product carries a lightness that stands out in an authentic way. Race day is serious, but the fueling can be simple.
“People Over Profit” and “Unconventional” show up in what the brand chooses not to do. No profit-driven mandate forcing growth at the expense of values. No exit strategy forcing short-term decisions at the expense of long-term opportunities. In a Substack article documenting Open Fuel’s US launch, Zach is explicit about where the brand stands relative to incumbents:
“Endurance nutrition is a pretty saturated space, we have no illusions of matching the research-power and marketing budgets of Precision Hydration, Maurten, Neversecond, etc. What we can do is use our small size to take what we don’t like about the space, and experiment with improving it.”
In our conversations, Zach articulated a five-year vision that includes “punching above our weight class in pressure put on larger companies, even if that means fizzling out because the larger companies do what Open Fuel does, but better.”
Most founders optimize for enterprise value or an exit. Open Fuel is optimizing for category-level change.
2. Product-First Sequencing and Differentiation
Come for the delicious flavors, stay for the gut tolerance.
Open Fuel’s product strategy is built on earning the customer relationship through experience first, then expanding only after the core has been validated. That’s contrary to the brands that launch with full lineups to capture shelf space.
Most brands enter the category by leading with athlete sponsorships, race-day visibility, or flashy brand marketing. Open Fuel led with the actual experience of consuming the product. Two deliberate investments make this strategy work:
Flavor. Open Fuel invests more in flavoring than most nutrition brands. The most consistent customer feedback Zach hears: it tastes good, it’s not too sweet, and the flavors feel natural rather than synthetic. I can attest the flavor is great. It’s a full, delicious taste that goes down easy and isn’t overly sugary.
Pectin. An ingredient used to help the mix sit better in the gut, and an additional input cost that pays off in fewer GI issues during long efforts. Athletes who’ve bonked or DNF’d because of stomach problems will remember a brand that helped them avoid that.
Both decisions are more expensive than the alternatives. Open Fuel makes them anyway because the question isn’t “what’s the cheapest way to make a nutrition product?” It’s “what does the runner actually need from this product?”
Add in the deliberately simple 60g/500mg formulation, and you get one product, one protocol, one flask per hour. The result is a core offering that earns the second purchase. The numbers bear this out at the shelf level.
Open Fuel is competitive on a cost-per-serving basis while also providing one of the best cost-per-carb ratios in the sport. This shows the brand can compete on economics even with the additional ingredients, while also continuing to lean on its core values.
3. Intentionality in Distribution, Marketing, and Growth
The values extend beyond product decisions. They also shape Open Fuel’s distribution and growth strategies and underscore the intentionality behind each.
Most breakout hydration and electrolyte brands of recent years have followed a recognizable script: gain early traction, raise capital, push into Walmart and Target, position for an exit. Open Fuel is deliberately opting out of every step.
On a recent Ultra Uncovered podcast appearance, Zach was explicit about never wanting to sell through Amazon or The Feed. Instead, he wants Open Fuel to remain available direct-to-consumer, in specialty retail, and in local running stores. The goal is a lifestyle brand, closer in spirit to Patagonia than to the scale-DTC playbook of recent breakout electrolyte brands, that preserves both its economic margins and the relationship built with its customers through intentional distribution.
On the podcast, Zach was also asked why the company offers free shipping on orders as small as $20. The answer is simple but counterintuitive: Open Fuel would rather spend money on shipping if it means getting more product into more hands, instead of spending that same money on Instagram or Google ads. Eating the shipping cost is cheaper, more direct, and more values-aligned than buying clicks or impressions. This shipping-as-marketing reframe is novel because it shifts the metrics the brand is optimizing for. Rather than paying for ads at the top of the funnel, Open Fuel reduces the barrier to purchase as much as possible, making free shipping possible with the purchase of a single bulk bag.
Open Fuel isn’t chasing the largest possible addressable market (at least not yet). It’s optimizing for a specific kind of customer relationship that lets the brand stay nimble elsewhere. This intentionality compounds. Every decision Open Fuel doesn’t make preserves the margin and flexibility for the decisions it does make.
Marketing & Community Strategy
This thesis isn’t just an analytical frame. It shows up clearly in how Open Fuel goes to market, which operates on three distinct layers.
The Community
Open Fuel invests in the broader trail running community in two ways. The first, The Pack, functions as a non-pro athlete race sponsorship program. Runners apply to have Open Fuel sponsor a race or a series of races. If chosen, they receive a supply of product to use in training and on race day. The program does three things at once. It supports non-elites, gets the product into more hands that can become evangelists, and generates organic brand promotion3.
The second, The Coalition, sponsors run clubs and local ambassadors. The idea is simple: prospective ambassadors fill out a short form to connect and figure out the best way to bring Open Fuel into their communities.
Zach believes this approach resonates more deeply than ads and campaigns: “It’s better to have one customer that orders 100 times than 100 customers who order once.”
Elite Athlete Sponsorships
Open Fuel also has a stable of sponsored elite athletes, including the likes of Will Murray, Jade Belzberg, and Justin Grunewald. When choosing who to bring on, the brand prioritizes a mix of distances, genders, and geographies across trail and ultra running. Race-day performance matters, but values and mission alignment matter more.
Zach has been explicit on his Substack about supporting the athletes: “as we work to bring on our first crew of sponsored athletes, it’s also very important to me to fairly compensate those athletes, not just with free product, but with dollars and race support.”
Brand Marketing and Activations
At its size, Open Fuel has opted for focus over breadth. Instead of diffusing spend across digital channels, dollars go toward covering shipping to get product into more hands. Instead of large-scale race activations, the brand shows up at start lines where Zach and the sponsored athletes are racing. Case in point: Zach is going all in by racing the Cocodona 250 next week. A top finish plus days of livestream coverage could be more valuable and visible for the brand than a huge marketing campaign.
Community investment is the core of Open Fuel’s marketing strategy. The brand reallocates dollars that would otherwise flow to large platforms into things that compound: community, accessible pricing, race-day visibility. The math works because the brand preserves margin through selective distribution. It’s not necessarily better or worse than what other brands do. It’s just different, and that’s the point.
Challenges & Risks
All of that intentionality comes with trade-offs. Building a community-first business is still building a business, and Zach named a handful of challenges that are top of mind:
(1) Balancing pace. Open Fuel moved quickly on the gel mix and it paid off. They also rushed flasks and ran into supply chain disruptions. With long lead times, the balance between moving fast and not doing everything at once matters.
(2) E-commerce funnel and customer marketing are still work in progress. Given the brand’s non-traditional approach, there’s always room to improve how Open Fuel reaches customers and converts them into buyers.
(3) Product development always feels existential. For a growing business, especially one taking a measured approach to scale, staying competitive with the broader market is crucial to staying relevant.
(4) Landing the right event partnerships. Sponsorships can unlock significant visibility, but partnerships only work if the event or organization aligns with Open Fuel’s values.
Beyond the company-specific challenges, a few macro risks in the nutrition category are worth naming.
The performance nutrition market is saturated. Many brands use similar ingredients to offer similar products and similar price points, which makes it hard to differentiate on product alone. This is especially true for a brand purposely leaving out ingredients that competitors are using as marketing levers.
The direct-to-consumer plus specialty-only distribution strategy also puts a real ceiling on growth. That’s fine if the goal is a durable lifestyle brand, but it limits how fast the brand can move when new opportunities arise.
Open Fuel combats these risks in three ways:
Values-based strategy drives product, marketing, and growth decisions
A focus on simplicity — 60g of carbs, 500mg of sodium, nothing unnecessary
Margin preservation enables reinvestment in the product and the community
Open Fuel knows what it stands for and who it’s trying to serve. It knows where it’s trying to go and where it’s not.
Looking Forward: The Five-Year Bet
To get a sense of where Open Fuel is headed, I asked Zach the cliché question: for Open Fuel to be successful five years from now, what would have to happen?
His vision is an extension of the aspiration and intention Open Fuel was built on:
A pathway to plastic-free packaging. Elimination of single-use plastics isn’t cheap, but it’s a realistic aspiration.
A marquee event sponsorship in both running and cycling. Aligning with a flagship event drives brand awareness and establishes credibility.
Outsized influence in moving the market toward sustainability. Despite its size, Open Fuel aims to punch above its weight class in terms of pressuring larger companies to be more sustainable.
This is the Patagonia parallel. A brand optimizing for category influence rather than enterprise value. Open Fuel doesn’t need to beat Maurten or Gu to be successful. It just needs to stay solvent and credible long enough for the category’s values to start shifting toward them, or force a shift by being effective enough that incumbents have to respond.
At the end of our conversation, I asked Zach what one thing someone new to Open Fuel could do today to support the brand. He gave me two:
(1) Try it for yourself. Order a sample of sachets. Use code TRAILWAVES for 25% off at checkout.
(Affiliate code; see disclosure above.)
(2) Introduce the brand to your local running or cycling shop. (Fill out this form.)
Open Fuel is betting that fun, simplicity, and sustainability can be winning differentiators in a crowded nutrition market. For trail runners, this bet is more than just another brand to consider on race morning. It’s an experiment in whether values that draw people to this sport — sustainability, community, and integrity — can also build a durable business in a category that often rewards the opposite. I hope we prove them right.
The Aid Station
Miscellaneous quick hits. Trail style. Actionable, digestible, essential.
📽 Zach Hauer Big Alta Recap x Cocodona Vlog
This video provides a great visual recap of the Big Alta 100K and also goes behind the scenes on Zach’s build to the Cocodona 250, which he’ll be racing next week!
🎤 ICYMI: Trail Waves x Long Run Labs
I had the opportunity to sit down and chat with Jonathan Levitt on the Long Run Labs podcast. We chatted about imposter syndrome, providing value as a creator, and much more. Check it out!
Highly recommend. It’s a great look into what it’s like to build a business, while training for trail races and balancing all of the other realities of life.
As he explains it based on his research, you can essentially lose up to 20-30% of sodium during exercise because it's heavily stored in extracellulary fluid, where losses for potassium, magnesium, and calcium are more in the 0-4% range as those electrolytes are primarily store in the cells.
Open Fuel asks that athletes simply document their fueling in training and share a short post about how it worked in their race.
First heard about openfuel from women of distance podcast; and now heard more about here! Like the visions! Keep it sustainable, focus and simple, environment and health friendly.
Thank you for highlighting a new, small brand that tries to take a different approach. Best of luck to them! Hopefully we can try the products in Europe soon.
Quick question: is the price comparison chart public or something you would be willing to share?