Keepin’ It Real: How Realsy Spreads Healthy Vibes (And How Cin7 Helps)

As a business with a mission to make snacking good for you, Realsy is single-handedly bringing dates to the attention of snackers across the U.S. But its success, while exciting, meant more complex processes. So Realsy turned to Cin7 for help.

Realsy is the brainchild of Austin Patry and Sophia Karbowski. They met in their senior year at Texas Christian University (TCU), bonding over health, wellness, and food in their entrepreneurship classes. The friendship led them to start a food-truck business called Rollin’ n Bowlin’ in 2017, serving their fellow students healthy acai bowls, smoothies, and avocado toast. Eventually, they expanded into brick-and-mortar storefronts on TCU’s campus as well as college campuses across the country.

But when the pandemic hit, the friends had to pivot.

They mailed single-serve, frozen smoothie pouches to customers packed in dry ice, and their successful foray into the consumer packaged goods (CPG) industry eventually led them to a product that changed their lives.

“We saw dates and nut butters going viral on TikTok and social media. We loved the product, but it wasn’t portable because it was often refrigerated and frozen, so we said let’s make it ourselves. We got immediate traction.”

With only three or four clean ingredients, Realsy offers shelf-stable, additive-free snacks made of Medjool dates filled with a choice of nut butters and, as of January 2025, organic strawberry powder for their new PB&J offering. The delicious, good-for-you snacks have been snapped up by consumers looking for nutrient-dense, sustainably produced products.

Realsy is now in the produce section of stores across the country, including Whole Foods, as well as sold on their website and Amazon. It’s been an exciting, fulfilling ride, but getting their farm-to-shelf products out there came with a few pitfalls, including inventory and accounting growing pains.

Realsy’s Real Challenges Before Cin7

As nutty as it sounds, the Realsy team managed its quickly growing business using mostly manual processes and spreadsheets from 2022 to 2024.

“We would manually input numbers into Shopify,” laments Austin. “We did contract with a 3PL quickly after launching, so they were using some inventory practices on their end, but on our side, we had nothing to track against their numbers. We had no source of truth.”

He adds, “Things were going in and out, and we were kind of relying on our 3PL to give us the right answers, but if anything wasn’t adding up properly, we had nothing to support it.”

Not an ideal situation, especially with having their product in multiple stores and sales channels, but it wasn’t the only challenge they were chewing on. Purchase orders were issued via emails, and they had no way to refer back to or change them.

To alleviate the stress caused by inefficient practices, Realsy decided to invest in an inventory management application. They first gave Finale Inventory a try, which, according to Austin, was too complicated, so they turned to Inventory Planner.

“Inventory Planner promised a lot, but after about six months of trying to force it to work, they said they weren’t made for CPG companies. It was a tough pill to swallow,” Austin says.

Finding a modern platform that could manage their inventory as well as provide an accurate cost of goods sold (COGS) report became imperative, so they briefly considered Fishbowl Inventory along with a few other inventory solutions, but after discussing options with their accountant at IronClad, they went with his recommendation, Cin7.

“Nothing clicked like Cin7 did for us. From the outside, it looked simple, but it has just as many in-depth features as the other options we looked at.”

Feelin’ Fresh with Cin7

As a Cin7 partner, IronClad knew Cin7’s award-winning inventory management software (IMS) would be a good fit for the fast-growing business, and the onboarding process? Smooth as nut butter.

“Our accountant and another person at IronClad were very experienced in Cin7. They pretty much did all of the onboarding, but they also reached out to Cin7, and Cin7 was quick to respond and super helpful.”

From start to finish, Austin says getting Realsy, with its three SKUs at the time, onto Cin7 took approximately two months. “I remember it being all hands on deck.”

He also remembers the first benefit Cin7 brought to the table. “It’s something so simple but just being able to send POs through Cin7 and build templates on top of that. It made such a difference for us not having to send manual emails to all the vendors.”

In addition to simplifying their PO process, Cin7, as their now source of truth, radically transformed how Realsy managed their inventory.

“With Cin7, we know everything is accurate. Our accountant can look at it at the end of the month and square up our inventory numbers. And we brought on a demand planner who uses Cin7 a ton.”

No more second guessing what they need to order has resulted in accurately stocked warehouses. Their “true numbers” have helped them scale as they add more SKUs and sell in more stores. Additionally, Realsy uses Cin7’s Assembly Manufacturing module while also:

• Easily tracking their products from farm to manufacturer
• Handling warehouse transfers
• Seamlessly integrating with critical applications, like Shopify for its direct-to-consumer and wholesale stores, QuickBooks for its accounting, and BILL.com for their invoicing needs

And Cin7’s IronClad accountant is no longer required to manually reconcile Realsy’s inventory numbers, reducing his hours of work and Realsy’s bill.

“Our accountant is saving about four or five hours a month with Cin7, which is saving us hundreds or thousands of dollars a month,” Austin says. “Cin7 is the core part of our tech stack.”

Success, For Reals

For Austin and Sophia, recently honored as Forbes 2025 30 Under 30 recipients, growing their brand is the next step in Realsy’s evolution. This includes adding different product lines, which Austin says will have nothing to do with dates.

“Growing with completely different manufacturers and expanding our supply chain is really where we’re going to see a lot of value in Cin7. We have a stable, kind of light ERP in Cin7, and we don’t think twice about adding more inventory. And we know and can track our costs directly in it.”

In a nutshell, there’s nothing holding Realsy back, and they’re on the fast track to bigger and better things with Cin7 supporting them every step of the way.

“I recommend Cin7 to a lot of people because it’s amazing for CPG companies. No matter how quickly we grow, it will be able to handle everything. We can rely on it without it breaking. Cin7 just works.”