By Katie Lefkowitz, Founder of Harken Sweets
I’ve always had a sweet tooth. As a kid, I loved candy in a way that felt almost religious—candy bars were my gospel. I knew every corner store that carried my favorites, hoarded stashes in secret places, and believed with full sincerity that dessert didn’t need to be earned. It was a birthright.
As I got older, that love didn’t go away. But like so many of us, I began to internalize a kind of quiet guilt around sugar. I cut back. I “saved it” for special occasions. I tried alternatives that made me feel like I was chewing on a chemistry set. Candy, once so joyful, had become complicated.
Then came the health scare.
It started as a routine check-up, the kind you almost cancel because you’re too busy. But something was off. A few weeks later, I found myself face-to-face with a diagnosis that revealed an extremely elevated colon caner risk. It was the first time I really felt fear in my body—not just the kind you think through, but the kind that rearranges you.
That experience cracked something open in me. I suddenly saw the world through a different lens—one where food wasn’t just about fun or fuel, but about healing. I started reading. Learning. Asking questions I had never thought to ask. And I kept circling back to the same idea: what we eat can change the course of our lives.
Katie Lefkowitz, Founder of Harken Sweets
But here’s the thing—I didn’t want to give up joy. I didn’t want a life without sweetness, or whimsy, or the kind of snack that brings back your whole childhood in one bite. I just wanted it to love me back.
So I decided to make it myself.
I started Harken with one goal: to build a better candy bar. One that felt like an indulgence but worked with your body—not against it. I didn’t want to create a “healthy snack bar” pretending to be fun. I wanted to reclaim candy, unapologetically, and do it in a way that made people feel good.
Our bars are sweetened with dates (hi, superfruit), rich in prebiotic fiber, and made with real ingredients. But more than the what, it’s the why that matters to me.
To me, nourishing change means giving people permission to reconnect with food—not just as fuel or medicine, but as something deeply human. Something that carries memory, comfort, ritual, and joy. I think we’ve spent so long being told what not to eat, that we’ve forgotten how powerful food can be when we add back in what’s good.
Harken is my solution on proving that this is possible.
Of course, the journey has had its bumps. I launched Harken with no roadmap, in one of the most operationally complex food categories. There were supply chain meltdowns, failed production runs, and weeks where I wasn’t sure we were going to make it. I was a new mom, too—trying to build a company in one hand while holding a baby in the other.
But there have also been moments I’ll never forget: A note from a customer who hadn’t eaten candy in years due to gut health—and cried after trying ours. Sharing our candy with thousands of people and watching their faces light up. Standing on the stage at NCC 2025 hearing that Kroger associates chose Harken as their favorite emerging brand. Watching my son hold a Harken bar in his tiny hand, and knowing he’s growing up in a world where this can be the new norm.
Building this brand has been the hardest and most fulfilling thing I’ve ever done. It’s pushed me to rethink not just food, but leadership, risk, health, and what it really means to create something that matters.
Ten years ago, the idea of me running a candy company would’ve seemed like a joke.
Today, using candy to nourish change? That feels exactly right.
Because joy should never be off-limits. And the best kind of change is the kind that nourishes.