By Karen Scott, Publisher

Meat snacks, which offer convenience, high protein and low calories, are expected to grow 9 percent every year through 2023, according to Mordor Intelligence. While the category, is highly competitive, a relative newcomer,
DiMario Foods , believes its all-natural family recipe gives it a chance to become a dominant player in a segment that is highly favored by millennials.

Company co-founder Nick DeBartolo remembers making sobrasadas, a pork-based salami, with his grandfather while he was growing up. That was years before DeBartolo, along with his twin brother, Frank, sister, Alyssa, and their parents, Mario and Laura, decided to start a meat stick manufacturing business in 2012 in Oak Brook, Ill. The company name, DiMario, means “house of Mario” in Italian.

“We had this lifelong apprenticeship of making deli meat and curing deli meat," Nick DeBartolo said. "Our sticks were pretty much the offspring of that. We used the exact same recipe that we used for our mild and hot sobrasadas.”