During the recent ECRM’s Vitamin, Weight Management & Sports Nutrition Session in West Palm Beach, more than 200 buyers and brands gathered together – colleagues and competitors alike – along with ECRM team members united around one cause: feeding those in need. 

Donning MTN OPS Conquer Hunger t-shirts, they filled a ballroom and spent an hour assembling meal kits to be donated to a local food bank, where they will be distributed to those local residents facing food insecurity. 

By the end of the event, they packed enough kits for 25,000 meals. 

The event was part of the Conquer Hunger initiative of MTN OPS, one of the nutritional supplement brands participating in the Session. Over the past 10 years the company has donated more than 12 million meals to those in need, as well as creating products to help wellness-minded consumers optimize their performance. 

I sat with MTN OPS Founder Trevor Farnes to learn more about the inspiration behind the brand and its mission, and detailed of the event they coordinated at the ECRM Session. You can watch the full video interview below. 

MTN OPS: Fueling the Mountains of Life

Founded in 2014, MTN OPS was initially created to serve a very specific demographic: the outdoor athlete. The 'OPS' stands for Outdoor Performance Supplements, as the brand caters to the outdoor athlete, whether they're hunting, fishing, hiking, biking, or any type of recreation that outdoor enthusiasts love. Its goal is to provide the fuel for them to get the most out of these activities.

But the word "Mountain" (MTN) in the brand's name carries a dual meaning, one that bridges the gap between physical endurance and the psychological resilience required to navigate daily hardships.

"The mountain part of our name represents the mountains we play in,” says Farnes. “I live in Utah. We've got some incredible Rocky Mountains in our backyard that we recreate in, but it’s also a metaphor for life: the mountains that we face, the challenges we might struggle with or achievements or summits we're trying to accomplish. MTN OPS is along for that journey to help people, fueling them with products to help them perform better, whether it's in the mountains of life, or out in the field that they work in with their family."

Today, the product line is vast and highly specialized. It ranges from pre-workouts, proteins, meal replacements, and creatine gummies, to innovative new offerings designed specifically for the trail. Farnes highlighted their new "Big Stick" beef sticks, which pack 20 grams of protein (the Jalapeno Pepper Jack is my personal fav), and a newly launched line of macro-friendly freeze-dried meals. These meals are designed for convenience – requiring only a jet boiler and 10 minutes to rehydrate – and ingeniously include a hydration packet sealed into the upper seam of the packaging, ensuring consumers get both a meal and a high-quality drink in one convenient pouch.

Walking the Talk: Inside the MTN OPS Culture

For MTN OPS, wellness is not just a marketing angle; it is a meticulously cultivated corporate culture. "You really can't give what you don't have," Farnes says. "And so if we're a brand that's supposed to support people in their wellness journey and this transformation that they're going through, we better have done it ourselves. We better be walking the talk."

The company's headquarters is a testament to this philosophy. Located in Fruit Heights, Utah, the office operates out of a refurbished 1944 cherry processing factory. Nestled right on Mountain Road, the rock-and-timber building features a massive 3,500-square-foot functional fitness gym at its main entrance. Outfitted with free weights, pushing and pulling sleds, and a Sauna, the space is built for elite training.

But it’s how the team uses this space that truly defines the culture. Every Wednesday at 4:00 PM, the office shuts down early for "Warrior Wednesday." Employees gather for a group workout – a shared "sweat session" – followed by recovery in the sauna, hydrating with their own products.

Furthermore, MTN OPS incentivizes holistic personal growth through their "Conquer More Challenge." Every month, employees are paired with an accountability partner to set and achieve goals across five distinct pillars: spiritual, physical, mental, social, and a core company value.

"I think at MTN OPS, I look at it almost like a university of life," says Farnes. "As a founder, you have an opportunity to decide how we are going to run this business? And business for me is not life. It's a resource to life. It's an opportunity to grow and to build and to be with people that you're like-minded individuals you align with, and then you go out and do good."

The Deeply Personal Origin of Conquer Hunger

The "do good" aspect of MTN OPS is arguably its most defining characteristic. The company operates the Conquer Hunger initiative, a program where every single order placed – whether on their website or through a retail partner – results in a meal donated to a child or family in need.

To understand the profound commitment behind Conquer Hunger, one must understand Farnes’s own history. The initiative wasn't born in a corporate boardroom as a clever cause-marketing strategy; it was forged in the crucible of his own financial devastation and familial struggle.

"In my life, I believe, and for everyone, I believe you're most powerfully positioned to serve the person you once were," Farnes shares. "And so we truly are serving the person I once was."

In 2007, Farnes and his wife invested their life savings – accrued from his successful career in pharmaceutical sales – into two ventures: real estate and retail franchises. "Instead of buying one franchise, we bought several, which we shouldn't have done, but we learned some lessons and our eyes were open to the need that's around us," he recalls. 

They hired friends, furnished and inventoried seven stores, and signed five-year personal financial guarantees on the locations.

Disaster struck just four months later. The franchisor was shut down by a regulatory agency due to an investigation entirely unrelated to Farnes. Forced to close their doors without working capital, the personal guarantees began to snowball. Liens were placed on their property. The financial ruin was absolute, trickling down to the most basic human necessity: food.

Farnes describes the agonizing reality of food insecurity as a father: "With our little children, we struggled to feed them on a regular basis with the proper nutrition or to even stock our pantries,” he says. “The school lunch balances that I would get the emails for my kids at elementary school. And it started at $7 and then it went up to 15 and then 30 and that just kept climbing. And a figure that wouldn't be such a big deal to some was a mountain for me to climb because we found ourselves in such a difficult situation."

It was during this desperate time that Farnes experienced the profound relief of community support when someone anonymously left groceries on his doorstep. That "incredible miracle" planted a seed. Sitting in bed one night, relying on their faith, Farnes and his wife discussed the biblical story of the loaves and fishes. They decided that no matter how little they had, they would use it to help someone else, starting by sponsoring a child in Malawi, Africa for $22 a month.

When MTN OPS was eventually founded, this personal mission became the corporate mandate. Farnes recognized the stark contrast between his customers and his past self: "We're also at the same time trying to help those that couldn't fathom supplementing for nutrition, people that are struggling to find a meal or two in their daily lives,” he says.

The Conquer Hunger Initiative in Action

Today, Conquer Hunger operates on a massive scale. To date, MTN OPS has donated over 12 million meals. While they continue to send financial aid globally and work with massive organizations like Feeding America during natural disasters, the bulk of their work is intensely local, deeply personal, and highly interactive.

MTN OPS routinely hosts many meal-packing events, setting up assembly lines at expos, consumer events, and corporate gatherings. They purchase bulk food items from major retailers – macaroni and cheese, oatmeal, applesauce, ravioli, drink mixes, and granola bars – focusing on foods that are safe, easy, and accessible for kids.

These "pantry packs" contain about five meals each and are distributed to local school districts where teachers and principals can discreetly slip them into the backpacks of vulnerable children on Friday afternoons. This ensures the children have food over the weekend when they lose access to school-provided lunches.

But the packs contain more than just calories; they contain encouragement. At the end of every packing assembly line, volunteers drop a small card into the meal kit. "It sends a message to this child and it's basically that they were born to conquer, that they were meant to conquer life, that they're smarter than they think, love more than they know," Farnes explains. "If you think of a child going to school on a regular basis with hunger, they're very distracted from what they need to connect with their teachers, the schoolmates, the lessons. So if we can remove hunger, then we'll inspire some hope and confidence in the future of a child."

Unifying an Industry: The ECRM Meal Packing Event

One of the most remarkable aspects of the Conquer Hunger initiative is how it transcends corporate competition. A prime example of this occurred at the ECRM Session. MTN OPS worked with the ECRM Health & Beauty Care team to bring together almost 300 people – including retail buyers, ECRM staff, and, most notably, direct brand competitors – to form an assembly line. Together, with music blasting and energy high, this unified group packed an astounding 25,000 meals for the West Palm Beach Food Project in under an hour.

Everyone in the room, regardless of their corporate affiliation, wore a MTN OPS Operation Conquer Hunger t-shirt. For Farnes, seeing a room full of fierce market competitors donning his brand's apparel for a unified cause was a profound realization of his vision.

"One of the individuals told me, 'I can't believe what we're doing here. We're packing 25,000 meals. It's incredible, but I also can't believe that you somehow got a room full of all of your competitors to put on your shirt,'" Farnes says. "But it wasn't with any other intent than to just bring us all together, unify us. I believe they rise highest to lift as they go. So let's lift even our competitors at times to help them understand that there is a piece of the pie for all of us to go and obtain.”

This event was also an emotional full-circle moment for Farnes. Fifteen years prior, in 2011, he had attended an ECRM Session to pitch a product, only to be flatly rejected and told by major retailers to "go out and build a brand" first.

"I initially started with, 'Hey, I was rejected 15 years ago and we're back,'" Farnes told the crowd before the meal-packing began. "And we came back because we put in the effort and we let time do the hard work. We persevered. We didn't let the rejection be a ‘no,’ it was ‘not yet.’ We stayed true to who we are. We really built everything around a set of core values that kept us in a framework of working and discerning which direction we could and should go until we do have a recognized brand now nationally."

Building a Brand on Trust, Not Just Sales

Ultimately, the Conquer Hunger initiative does more than feed children; it builds an impenetrable foundation of consumer and partner trust. Farnes shared the results of a recent consumer study conducted by MindSight, which compared MTN OPS against major competitors in the supplement space.

"They came back and said, 'Hey, you guys are kind of standing out in a way most supplement brands don't.'” says Farnes. “They said, 'The headliner for MTN OPS is that you're a brand people trust.”

In an industry often plagued by dubious label claims and brands hiding behind screens, MTN OPS has succeeded by tearing down the digital veil and letting people into their lives, their struggles, and their triumphs.

So when retail partners pack meals alongside the MTN OPS team, they aren't just engaging in a team-building exercise; they are getting a firsthand look into the heart and soul of the company. It shifts the dynamic from a purely transactional relationship to a transformational partnership.

"It's been pretty incredible," says Farnes. "We've had some big launches with some very credible retailers are coming by way of this relationship with ECRM for MTN OPS, some of our biggest. And so the ECRM relationship has been incredible to get us in front of the right people to expand into some adjacencies we've wanted to. You guys provide some of those opportunities to have the conversations that are needed."

And in another full-circle moment, more retailers means more products sold, which means ultimately: more meals donated to families that need them. Everybody wins from these partnerships.

What’s Next: The Push for 20 Million

Never one to rest on his laurels, Farnes is already looking toward the next summit. Having stepped back from the day-to-day CEO role to become the Chief Visionary Officer, he is dedicating even more of his time to community building and the Conquer Hunger mission.

A year and a half ago, when the company was approaching 8 million donated meals, Farnes publicly "called his shot," pledging to hit 10 million meals by the end of 2026. They have already blown past that goal, sitting at over 12 million meals today.

Now, fueled by expanding retail partnerships, a dedicated internal team, and highly anticipated new product launches like the elite "Apex" endurance line coming in January, the next milestone is firmly in sight. "The 20 million honestly could be in the next two years," Farnes declares.

It is a lofty goal, but for a man who once stared down the seemingly insurmountable mountain of a $7 school lunch debt, 20 million meals is just another summit waiting to be conquered. And with the entire MTN OPS community – and sometimes even their competitors – climbing alongside them, there is little doubt they will reach the top.