BY CHRISTINA KOZLOW



When Christopher “Amos” Bartlett has a new idea, he adds it to a long list in his iPhone. His goal for the last several years has been to come up with one original idea a day. Now he has 600 ideas that he says could be the start of something incredible.

      This New Orleans native and recent College of Charleston graduate is the man behind KnoAllergies, a local company whose colorfully wrapped granola bars are labeled “no peanuts” or “no gluten” in large bright type. Bartlett’s creation eliminates the need to hunt for the ingredients list, as in most products, on the side or back of the package. For Bartlett, this bright idea came not from staring out the window, but from an Epi Pen emergency that could have cost him his life.

      Experiencing the best four days of snowboarding in his life, Bartlett could only pull himself off the slopes during winter break long enough to eat a Cliff bar. Eager to get back to the Colorado slopes, Bartlett wasn’t thinking about his peanut allergy. He was on the ski lift, still chewing, when he realized it was made in a factory with peanuts. Trying to get to medication to stop his allergic reaction, he raced down the hill. Although a scary situation, it inspired Bartlett. By the time he was back on the ski lift and halfway up the mountain, he knew he needed to create a product that would prevent people with severe allergies from making the same mistake.

      Arguing that complacency is idiocy, Bartlett took it upon himself to follow through with the granola company idea right away. “I think entrepreneurship was one of our vocabulary words in elementary school,” says Bartlett. “ I just wanted to start a business that people didn’t even know they needed.”

      Graduating with a degree in marine biology and never having taken a business class, Bartlett still claims to be a businessman at heart. He has spent the last three years teaching himself everything he needed to know, from business plans to nutrition facts and legal forms.

      Since the inception of his project, Bartlett has divided his day into four parts: sleep, make money, work and network. When he’s not sleeping or caddying on Kiawah Island, Bartlett is developing his product or networking to further his company. Bartlett spent nine months in his kitchen perfecting his granola recipes. Then he began making them by hand in the kitchen of a local restaurant. Since he could only make about 25 bars an hour, he knew he had to find another solution. After two years, he found a no-peanut, no-gluten facility in Vermont to do the work.

      Now there are four flavors of KnoAllergies available for purchase online and at Charlie’s Grocery, Caviar and Bananas, Bull Street Gourmet and Queen Street Grocery.

      With hopes for national expansion in the near future, Bartlett’s passion and drive for his product is undeniable. But even with his unwavering efforts in branding, recipe development, and overall promotion of KnoAllergies, Bartlett never lets his iPhone list of new ideas stop growing.