Raw Eddy’s: DIY Festival Craft Food

The 16th Annual Craft Lake City DIY Festival Presented By Harmons will feature over 500 local creatives this year, from artisans, vintage vendors and craft foodies to youth entrepreneurs, STEM exhibitors and performers. Get a taste of what’s coming to the Utah State Fairpark this August in the following pages and get tickets to experience it yourself at craftlakecity.com. With a dog park, VIP lounge, a national headlining musician and brand-new DIY Fest After Dark programming, this year’s festival is not to be missed!

Amid the drudgery of health-food jargon, an oasis emerges, wrapped in a vibrant package. Raw Eddy’s is seeking to inspire the minds and taste buds of everyone through thoughtful ingredient selection. While sitting down to talk with Kaitlyn Maestas, CEO and founder of Raw Eddy’s, I learned exactly what inspired such fun and healthy snacks.

Growing up on the “stereotypical American diet,” as she calls it, Maestas struggled with many dietary issues. After recipe testing and crowdsourcing, Maestas settled on a protein bite that matched her high standards, which tastes like “a Reeses and KitKat put together,” she says. The power, Maestas says, is how “we use ashwagandha as one of our main ingredients—and also mucuna pruriens—because those two together help with brain support. They help with stress [and] anxiety.” She also says that “the gut is your second brain” and “if you do entertain [your] inner child with the tasty foods in a plant-based way, your brain is truly going to enjoy them and be open to absorbing those nutrients.”

Raw Eddy’s is named after Maestas’s uncle Eddy, who struggled with mental illnesses in the 1970s. She commemorates her uncle through community: “Anyone can come together and eat a snack. That really breaks down those barriers of having those conversations around mental health,” she says. The next time you’re checking on a friend, consider bringing them a bag of Raw Eddy’s protein bites, which you can find at their booth at the DIY Fest or at raweddys.com.

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