These three women are on a mission to create clean, tasty snacks
In 2015, Tara Tomulka was burned out from her career in corporate communications. She quit her job and decided to study holistic nutrition, which sparked her interest in raw foods. That led her to develop the first raw vegan food course and vegetarian culinary arts courses at Toronto’s George Brown College, along with hosting culinary workshops, blogging and sharing recipes under the name Rawcology. But, she wanted to have a greater impact and thought of developing a line of consumer packaged foods. “Nutrition can be life-changing,” Tara explains. “I was inspired to create healthier snacks without inflammatory canola oil and sunflower seed oils, which are in every packaged food product these days, or white sugar that is so detrimental to our health.”
Soon afterwards, Tara got her family involved in her burgeoning business. Her sister, Laura Powadiuk, was already helping Tara organize her workshops. Then, in 2016, as Tara began developing her first product line, Laura, a former mortgage agent, joined Rawcology full time. Megan Loach Tomulka, Tara’s friend and sister-in-law, started pitching in while on maternity leave in 2017. Eventually, she decided to leave her position as an assistant buyer and merchandising manager at Hudson’s Bay to join Rawcology.
Tara began experimenting with a line of coconut chips flavoured with her favourite vegan dip recipes such as smoky cheese and ranch. “They tasted like a healthier version of Doritos,” Tara explains. She took advantage of her connections at George Brown College to use its food innovation and research studio to develop a lineup of four shelf-stable coconut chip flavours. By the summer of 2017, Tara launched Rawcology’s first products at a handful of small, independent grocery stores in Toronto.
The trio’s first big win came in January 2018, when Rawcology began selling its four flavours of coconut chips in 300 Bulk Barn stores nationally. Inspired by the goal of being zero-waste and making use of coconut crumbs leftover from the chip production, Tara developed the company’s next product line: a nutfree, grain-free, low-sugar granola with sprouted sunflower and pumpkin seeds and, of course, coconut flakes.
They entered their first major grocery store in the summer of 2019 as part of Sobeys’ local program, making their way into 78 locations in Ontario. A year later, Rawcology launched in nine Whole Foods Market stores just as COVID lockdowns began. It was a challenging time for the company, which relied heavily on in-store demos, but Laura came up with a solution. “We started calling all the stores and sending them 100 free sample bags for people to try,” she explains. “That was very successful, especially for Whole Foods. It was to keep the momentum going and keep people trying the product.”
In 2021, another new Rawcology product hit the shelves—oat clusters, which would later be rebranded as granola snack bites. That same year, Rawcology began selling in about 180 Loblaws stores in Eastern Canada. The following year was one of major growth for the company. Rawcology made its U.S. debut in Sprouts Farmers Market, a chain spanning 24 states and more than 440 stores. The products also launched into 15 Costco warehouses in Eastern Canada and most recently (in November) at 93 Metro stores in Ontario.
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Looking ahead, the entrepreneurs plan to expand their reach into 38 Costco warehouses in Western Canada, where a larger format of their grainfree blueberry granola will be sold. And later this year, Rawcology plans to launch a product line of kids’ protein snack bites.
These days, the company employs about 15 staff members—mostly in its production facility in suburban Toronto—in addition to the three sisters, who are all partners in the business. Tara is responsible for operations, finance and recipe development; Laura manages the production facility; and Megan is the CMO and head of sales. All three say they have no regrets about leaving their former careers behind, especially the company’s founder and CEO, Tara. “My old role didn’t have meaning or purpose,” she explains. “I felt like I needed to have something that I was tied to and passionate about, and that is really what helped set me on the path of wanting to become an entrepreneur.”
This article was first published in Canadian Grocer’s June/July 2025 issue.
