Zobaida Falah created Cure with a goal to “Make Healthy Taste Good” while funding projects to help end world hunger. The company’s Cure bar was the first snack bar to include the superfood black seed and Zobaida joined the Northwest Ohio Impact Program to improve her understanding of strategic partnerships and managing a staff.

What inspired you to create your business?

I was inspired by a recipe that my grandmother used to make me eat as a child. She used to prepare this mixture of black seeds, honey and almonds, then force-feed it to us every day, calling it her secret cure for everything. When I grew up and I started doing my own research on the black seed, I realize it had immense health benefits. As an American, I asked myself, ‘why is this black seed non-existent in American cuisine?’ That’s why I created the Cure bar.

What separates Cure from the competition?

We are the first snack bar in the world to use the black seed. It’s all-natural and has no preservatives. We also don’t use any sugar. Our binder (or sweetener) is honey, which is a natural preservative, so we don’t need to use any other additives or preservatives in our products.

Another differentiating factor is that we are a mission-based company, which means for every product that we sell—every single purchase—we’re going to donate 10 percent of our profits towards hunger relief programs.

What has been your biggest takeaway from the Northwest Ohio Impact Program?

I was actually able to change my entire target market. I realized who I was targeting was not the correct audience. I was able to re-evaluate the entire plan and now I’ve identified my actual target market.

What is the most important thing the program has offered you?

It gives you a playbook on what you need to do to run a successful business. Even if you are currently running a successful business, there are definitely things I’ve overlooked, and the Impact Program has helped me realize what I need to implement in my business plan, or just make simple changes to the way that I’m running things. It’s a checklist of ‘you need to do this, this and this’ to optimize your success.

What are your future plans for your business?

In the future, we’ll have an entire product line of all different kinds of foods and products that contain black seed and other superfoods to make it easier for our customers to eat healthy and better, as well as being in mainstream coffee shops, like Starbucks, and hopefully Whole Foods.

Learn more about Cure at cureyourworld.com. Then, come watch Zobaida pitch her business live on September 17 for a chance to win up to $10,000 at the Northwest Ohio Entrepreneur Showcase.