Snack Better with Gluten-Free, Nut-Free Treats from Undercover

When Arielle Levy was a kid, she often came home from school to find her mom, Diana Levy, in the kitchen playing with chocolate. 

“She made chocolate-covered Oreos, chocolate-covered apples, then moved into chocolate-covered truffles,” Arielle told The FruitGuys. “For a while, she built objects in chocolate, like chocolate high heels!” 

Arielle had no way of knowing that those kitchen experiments would lead Diana to start Undercover Snacks—the family business where Arielle now works as a regional sales manager. Undercover makes unique gluten-free and nut-free snacks, like crispy quinoa discs covered in dark chocolate and sprinkled with peppermint pieces. 

Undercover’s founding was a rollercoaster ride that took Diana from New Jersey to 30,000 feet in the sky. But it all started with something much closer to home: a medical diagnosis. 

Going Gluten-Free & Founding Undercover

In 2016, Diana Levy was running a tiny chocolate business out of her house in Short Hills, New Jersey, making treats for friends and a few retailers. Between batches, she experimented, hoping to create a unique, better-for-you chocolate snack that she could sell to grocery stores.

Then, Arielle and another of Diana’s three daughters were diagnosed with celiac disease and had to cut gluten from their diets. That inspired her to combine chocolate with other gluten-free and allergy-friendly ingredients to make snacks her daughters could eat.

After almost a year of trial and error, she landed on a combination all three girls loved: discs of crispy puffed quinoa coated in chocolate and topped with simple ingredients like sea salt or dried fruit. 

“One of my sisters doesn’t have any allergies, so my mom thought, ‘If she wants this snack as much as other snacks she can already have, then it must be really, really good,” Arielle said. “And that’s what happened.”

That recipe became the launchpad for Undercover Snacks. The name and logo (a spy’s hat, glasses, and mustache) come straight from those original ingredients: The healthy quinoa “disguised” by decadent chocolate. 

Quinoa Crisps: From Idea to Reality

After the crisps were family-approved, it was time for the next step: Moving Undercover’s operation out of Diana’s kitchen. 

“Mom thought it would be no problem at all to find a manufacturer—but then she realized no equipment on the market would be able to produce the product she wanted without adding extra sugar or glucose to bind the chocolate to the quinoa,” Arielle said. 

That was a dealbreaker for Diana, who was committed to making a simple snack with just three ingredients. So, she decided to do things the long way. She started traveling to machinery tradeshows and meeting with manufacturing line engineers. If she couldn’t find what she needed, she’d build it! 

The Move to Mass Production

Luckily, Diana’s husband, Michael Levy, had experience working in finance for food industry companies. In 2018, he joined Diana as the chairman of Undercover to help her scale up the production of her gluten-free and nut-free snacks. 

Diana and Michael purchased a manufacturing line and started building an eco-friendly factory in East Hanover, New Jersey, just 15 minutes from their home. The building runs on solar power and can churn out thousands of quinoa crisps every hour. 

Getting the factory up and running was a huge undertaking. But that famous quote from Field of Dreams (“If you build it, they will come”) turned out to be true for Undercover. The increased production capacity helped Diana’s company land partnerships with large retailers—and even catch the attention of an airline. 

Taking Off: Snacking in the Air and the Office

If you’ve flown on United Airlines since 2023, you might have noticed something new on the snack cart: Undercover’s quinoa crisps. When Arielle flies United, seeing them feels like a friendly wave from her family. 

“It’s a little thing, but I always find it very cool when I walk up the plane and see everybody’s Undercover wrappers on their chairs,” she said. “… Production for United has completely reshaped everything.”

Diana told The FruitGuys that when United connected with Undercover, they wanted “an extraordinary amount” of snacks. Undercover had just put in a new production line, but it wasn’t quite enough to keep up. So, Diana and Michael expanded the factory and, as Arielle put it, “immediately made it work.” 

“United has been a terrific partner for Undercover!” Diana said. 

Now, Undercover is making waves in offices as well as in the sky. In 2024, the Levy family partnered with The FruitGuys’ snack program to bring their treats directly to workers.

Undercover Snacks’ gluten-free and nut-free snacks regularly appear in The FruitGuys’ Thoughtful Snack Boxes. This December, we’re excited to feature its Dark Chocolate + Peppermint quinoa crisps as our holiday Snack of the Month. You can find that festive flavor in each of our snack boxes until the new year, or order in bulk for your office holiday celebrations. 

Fun Flavors & Thoughtful Ingredients

Dark Chocolate + Peppermint isn’t Undercover’s only fun flavor. The company makes quinoa crisps dipped in both milk and dark chocolate, and they come sprinkled with all kinds of toppings, including mixed berries, blueberries, and cherries. 

The throughline of every flavor is simplicity. Each snack has easy-to-understand, eco-friendly ingredients, including Rainforest Alliance Certified chocolate. The Levys work directly with quinoa and cocoa farmers to source their ingredients whenever possible. They also clean their production lines between making milk chocolate and dark chocolate products to keep their dark chocolate crisps free from milk proteins. 

“We’re free of most allergens and our dark chocolate flavors are plant-based,” Arielle explained, adding that Undercover hopes to earn vegan certification for its dark chocolate crisps in the future.  

A Women-Owned Family Business 

The partnership with United Airlines helped Undercover Snacks grow quickly, but it’s still a family business at heart. 

“People think we’re this giant brand because of the massive distribution that we have, but it’s really not that big internally,” Arielle said, referring to the company’s sales and marketing team.

Arielle works from Manhattan as a regional sales manager, but she commutes to the factory two or three days per week. She told The FruitGuys that during the Christmas holidays, the factory runs on a smaller crew to make sure as many employees can take time off as possible. At times, the whole Levy family jumps in to run the production line, scrambling to do the work of several people at once.

“We’re there and we make it fun,” Arielle said. “It’s like this wild, crazy, chaotic roller coaster.”