Vail-Born Neve Snacks Fuels Endurance Athletes and NFL Pros

Picture this: a 30-year-old endurance athlete in Chile, mid-boot pack, staring at a standard applesauce pouch and realizing it’s doing her no favors.

That was Nora Fierman’s moment of clarity. She was trapped in a meat-heavy culture for a month-long ski trip, burning calories faster than any fruit puree could replace. The pouch held just 60 calories. It wasn’t enough. It wasn’t engineered for the quad-busting grind of a backcountry ascent. It was just… food.

So, she decided to build what didn’t exist.

Here’s the thing though: Fierman didn’t just tweak a recipe. She spent six years engineering Neve, a calorically dense, science-backed snack pouch designed specifically for the all-day mountain athlete. The result? A startup that went from a spark of an idea in 2018 to fulfilling its first orders in November of 2024. And now, that Vail-born product is turning heads from the Gore Range to NFL locker rooms.

Fierman, a Scranton, Pennsylvania native who moved west to study business at the University of Colorado, found her true north in the mountains. The pandemic years, with their elongated days and locked-down trails, solidified Vail as her home. Having grown up as a ski racer, she always knew the backcountry would be her next frontier. But as her ski touring escalated, so did her nutritional needs. She hated energy bars. They were clunky, inconsistent, and often relied on flavors athletes had grown tired of.

“I wanted to protect the athlete at the end of the day,” Fierman said. “I wanted them to know exactly what they’re fueling with.”

She didn’t guess her way to a solution. She enlisted a registered dietitian to justify every single ingredient. Then, she hired a food lab to design a scalable product that avoided the industry standard of peanut butter-banana or generic chocolate. Why? Because athletes expect more. They expect performance.

The gamble paid off. The unique flavor profiles — a boysenberry beet blend for sustained energy and a tart cherry cacao mix for recovery — struck a chord. “Athletes are like, ‘oh wow, this is actually really good,'” Fierman noted. “I would use this way beyond just activity.”

The brand, named after the granular snow found on glaciers, carries that origin story in its name. But the real story is in the execution. Fierman tested the product in precarious situations, eating mid-climb with no tummy issues. She ensured the packaging was resealable and stash-able, critical for anyone navigating steep terrain with gloved hands.

And that matters because the market for high-performance nutrition is crowded, yet often ignores the specific needs of endurance athletes who need more than just sugar. Neve offers two distinct flavors tailored to specific physiological needs, not just taste. It’s all-natural. It’s intentional.

The product has already crossed over from the trails to the professional level, gaining traction in NFL locker rooms where players need quick, clean fuel between drills. It’s a far cry from the applesauce pouches of Chile.

Back in her Eagle County kitchen, Fierman still works the manual production runs, overseeing the process that turns raw ingredients into a commodity that fuels both local guides and pro athletes. The shift from a personal frustration to a regional brand is complete. The pouches are no longer just a stopgap; they’re a standard.

The sun dips lower over the Gore Range, casting long shadows across the parking lot where Fierman might be testing a new batch. A player in Kansas City grabs one from his locker. A skier in Vail cracks it open mid-ascent. The science holds. The calories count. And the snack pouch finally does the job it was meant to do.