What Really Happens When You Become an Overnight Millionaire?
Peter Rahal started RxBar out of his mom’s kitchen — then sold it for $600 million. Here’s life on the other side of the entrepreneurial fantasy.
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Peter Rahal, the 33-year-old energy bar impresario who sold RxBar to Kellogg for $600 million and became something of a consumer products legend in the process, stands in the gigantic, spotless kitchen of his new Miami Beach mansion. Behind him, floor-to-ceiling windows revealed his pool, his outdoor bar, and Sunset Harbour. Throughout the house are expensive-looking modernist metal chandeliers. The kitchen drawers are filled with gold utensils.
And for dinner, Rahal is eating a can of beans.
Correction: He isn’t even eating the beans. He’s just showing the dinner for one — chickpeas, eggs, avocado — that he makes most nights.
Rahal bought the fully furnished house for about $19 million in May. He splits his time between his longtime Chicago apartment and this place; he chose Miami Beach in part because Florida has no personal income tax. A Ferrari 488 and a cream Vespa are parked in the driveway. A housekeeper, who comes daily, keeps the seven bedrooms spotless, though most are usually empty. Upstairs, there are his-and-hers dressing rooms; the “hers” — which has a Lucite-leg stool topped with pink tufts sitting forlornly at a vanity — is untouched. It’s as if when Rahal was sending wire instructions to get his RxBar money from Kellogg, he ticked a box requesting the “newly rich bachelor” package and this setup fell from the sky.
For a guy who’s been working ferociously for years, it’s a jarring shift. He and a buddy from elementary school started RxBar in 2012 after seeing an improbable opportunity in a very crowded energy bar market. They concocted their original recipe of dates, nuts, and egg whites in the suburban kitchen of Rahal’s mom; ginned up the brand’s package design on a PowerPoint slide; and sold the bars to CrossFit gyms in Chicago, then Indiana, then across the Midwest. By the time RxBar became a…
