Chic Naturals is not an airy-fairy clothing line made from organic hemp for hippie chicks. The first word isn’t even pronounced "sheek."

Rather, "Chic" is pronounced "chick" and is taken from the first four letters of the product’s main ingredient, chickpeas.

The line of dry-roasted chickpeas is flavored and marketed much like the familiar macadamia nuts you see in stores — spicy barbecue, chocolate crunch, and with other flavor names like Hawaiian sea salt, Sweet Citrus and Maui Mocha. The 3.5-ounce bags sell for $3.99, while 1-pound bags of plain dry-roasted chickpeas or herb-and-garlic-flavored chickpea crumbs sell for $4.99. The latter is an alternative to panko or other, bread-based coating for chicken, fish or other food, for cooking.

The website tells you the dry-roasted chickpeas are "nature’s ultimate healthy snack," as the bagged snacks are nut-free, gluten-free, cholesterol-free, wheat-free, soy-free, dairy- and casein-free, egg-free, GMO-free and vegan, with no trans fat, MSG or preservatives.

The only exception is the chocolate in Chic Naturals — while gluten-free, peanut-free and kosher — contains soy lecithin and butter.

What’s in them, then?

"Basically, dry-roasted garbanzo beans," said Shaun Bayles, who with his mother, Joan, and brother Anthony, founded the business as an outgrowth of a health necessity.

Only one other U.S. company was making such snacks when they began their research and development, "and now there are eight companies," though Chic Naturals is the only one in Hawaii.

HEALTHY CHOICE

The family eliminated meats and many other foods from their diet because of a family member with an auto-immune disorder. Instead they turned to garbanzo beans, aka chickpeas, which are high in protein, fiber and amino acids.

Typical methods of getting alternatives into one’s diet can get boring, so a Mediterranean technique of dry-roasting the garbanzos at a low temperature was attempted, to preserve the nutrients and "give it a nice, crunchy texture."

"It’s essentially like a healthy Corn Nut," he said.

Corn Nuts are fried, and hardly anyone touts the health benefits of fried foods.

Brother Anthony Bayles handles social media and other aspects of the family business, while Joan Bayles’ bailiwick is production, Shaun said. "My mom custom-blends (the flavorings) with raw ingredients, we coat the peas with them and it’s really that simple," he said.

When they started, they could not find a certified, allergen-free commercial kitchen on Maui, so the family scraped together the money they could to build their own, and in 2011 leased a small space in Lahaina that was less than 800 square feet.

Chic Naturals’ first wholesale account was with Pablo Gonzalez, owner of Lanikai Juice Co.

"He had enjoyed them growing up," so the snack was not an oddity to him. From there the wholesale client list grew to include just about all the Hawaii-based natural food stores and traditional grocers and convenience stores.

The Bayles now create their unique snackage in a 2,700-square-foot space in Haiku, given the growth of their business.

Chickpeas are not a commercially grown crop in Hawaii, but the Bayles family is working to change that and have connected with the state Department of Agriculture toward that end.

Chic Naturals are "100 percent manufactured in Hawaii," and the family sources as many locally grown ingredients as they can find, such as Maui-grown coffee and Meyer lemons from farmers markets.

Being able to get locally grown garbanzo beans and work their way up to 90 to 95 percent locally grown ingredients "would not only be good for the aina, but also would be fantastic for us as a business," Shaun Bayles said.

WHERE TO BUY IT:

>> Lanikai Juice, Oahu
>> Down to Earth, Oahu, Maui
>> Hilo Hattie, all islands
>> Whalers General Store, Maui
>> Whole Foods Market, Maui, Oahu
>> Military commissaries and exchanges
>> Online: www.chicnaturals.com

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“Buy Local” runs on Aloha Fridays. Reach Erika Engle at 529-4303, erika@staradvertiser.com or on Twitter as @erikaengle.