The Story of Flight Foods
Thomas Lahart – First Blog Post
Hi! I am Thomas Lahart, the Founder & CEO of Flight Foods LLC. I was born in Chicago in 2002. I moved to Tampa at a young age and spent most of my childhood and teenage years there. From an early age, I always had a fascination with entrepreneurship. I started my first company at the age of 12. It was a paper trading card company called “The Day.” My good friend Aidan and I cut out small pieces of paper and made them into trading cards. Each card had a unique character on it, and we went door to door selling packets of paper cards for about $5 a pop.
Around the age of 13, I started my second business, a golf ball business. A couple of buddies and I went into the woods next to the local golf course. We would find balls, clean them, and sell them back to the golfers. I always was looking for a way to scrap and make a couple of bucks. From there, I went to Jesuit High School in Tampa. I was studious and played on the varsity tennis team where we placed 2nd in the state.
As a senior in high school, I decided to attend Auburn University and study to become a pilot. The summer going into college, I had a landscaping job and started training to become a private pilot. However, deep inside I always had a desire to follow my dreams as an entrepreneur. One night on the phone with my buddy, I came up with the idea of a portable smoothie for people on the go. Flight Foods was born with a mission to “Fuel Your Flight!” Whether your “flight” is to become an athlete, pilot, doctor, teacher, carpenter, law enforcement officer, or welder. We all have a “flight” or an aspiration to be something, whether you have found it or not. Flight Foods’ mission is to help you be the best version of yourself and achieve your dreams through the lens of supplements.
The very next day, we went to the local grocery store and gathered protein powder, banana bread mix, powdered peanut butter, and cocoa powder. We put the ingredients into a plastic bag and our first-ever powder was born. It was bad. Determined to make a cleaner smoothie powder we quickly found a supplier and ordered bulk, raw ingredients. Some of the ingredients were whey protein isolate, fruit powders, chocolate powder, taurine, guarana, and different caffeine sources. However, we had to go our separate ways when I went off to college. In my dorm room, I used my life savings which I earned mostly from landscaping and DoorDash to taste test different formulas. I bought a small scale from Walmart and used a glass beaker my parents gave me to measure out the powders. Eventually, I saved up enough to buy a heat sealer and small, metallic packaging. I would spend each afternoon and night studying ingredients, existing companies, and local supplement shops. I often spend hours on YouTube researching the topic. Every morning I would wake up and make a powder from my friend Juan and myself. I would record myself and my reaction to the taste and effectiveness of the concoction.
It is safe to say that my taste buds went through just about everything. Hundreds and hundreds of formulas were made in my dorm room without much success, but I remained faithful. By the time sophomore year rolled around, I started to fall in love with the gym and lifting weights. I went from 170 lbs to 228 lbs in a matter of 3 years. It was during this time that I transitioned to more traditional protein and pre-workout formulas. I moved to a different apartment but continued to taste test and research every day. The gym made me more confident, and it started to impact my life positively. I felt like in the gym no one could stop me, frustrated with my current relationships and lack of desire in my studies, the gym had a certain purity to it. In the gym, it did not matter how you looked, your social economic status, race, color, etc. The gym was a place where I found lots of peace. It was a place where I found a direct correlation between effort level and results.
I began to see results and while it helped my confidence a lot. It was during this time that I started to also grow mentally and spiritually. I started to attend Mass every Sunday and even some daily Masses. I was beginning to grow in my facets of life because of the discipline and confidence that the gym was giving me. However, I was still a little lost when it came to drawing my passion for supplements and the gym in correlation to the Lord’s plan for my life. Most of my close friends were from the gym and the Catholic ministry hosted many Greek life-oriented events. I would go to these events but always felt a little misunderstood by my friends on campus being at the gym most of the time. However, a lot changed for me when I attended the SEEK conference in 2023. At SEEK, a Catholic conference in St. Louis, I was able to meet Father Capo. Fr. Capo spoke on fitness for the Kingdom in body, mind, and spirit. He was yoked and had a great passion for bodybuilding and being strong for the Lord. I resonated with his message a lot and saw what looked to be a thousand people in the room where he spoke. Here, I saw that I was not alone and that many people desired to be fit for the Kingdom.
After Fr. Capo’s talk I felt a great sense of purpose and community and wanted to bring it home to Auburn. At Auburn, I was invited to start a Bible study. I hosted my first Bible study at the Catholic center, but something did not feel right. I felt like I was not making full use of the gifts and desires the Lord placed on my heart. In prayer, the Lord brought to me the idea of starting a Bible study at the Auburn University Rec Center. I took matters into my own hands and Push Pull Praise was born. The mission of Push Pull Praise is to spread the Gospel in the gym and to my gym buddies.
I gathered a group of guys and we prayed Lectio Divina while we sipped on our pre-workout and got a lift afterward. The study took place every weekday at 6:30 am before class. The boys were on fire, and I felt so much peace and a sense of community and belonging. The experience at SEEK with Fr. Capo and the start of Push Pull Praise, inspired Flight Foods to be a Christian-centered company with portions of all proceeds going towards Push Pull Praise and grillouts to bring awareness to fitness and faith.
After 3.5 years of taste testing and research, Flight Foods LLC made its debut on the market on August 1st, 2023. Since then, we have not looked back and continued to lead the industry with a crazy passion for making the best-tasting and performing supplements while keeping the Lord at the center. We are super grateful for all the support we have gotten and are looking forward to future releases and events. As our community grows, we will continue to share stories and testimonies of growing in faith and fitness as we help you Fuel Your Flight!