This story has been updated to correct an error in the original version. SnackCrate generated about $15 million in revenue in 2018.

Pensacola's Kyle Roarke was just months away from graduating from the University of West Florida with an engineering degree when he decided to scrap the whole school thing and launch his own company.

Roarke's 2015 leap of faith was definitely just that — a leap. Especially since he simultaneously quit his job and sold his car for $7,000 worth of business collateral.

But his decision, to start a subscription-based snack delivery business, was also pretty well calculated. He had spent months developing a website and business model for a concept and successfully got it off the ground from inside his garage in Pensacola.

Today, that company, known as SnackCrate, is worth millions. It generated around $15 million in revenue in 2018 and is on track to hit $20 million in revenue this year, according to Roarke.

"Honestly, if you told me then that SnackCrate would be shooting for $20 million in four or five years I'd be like, 'You're crazy, that's not possible,'" said Roarke, from the company's downtown Pensacola distribution warehouse. "It's kind of one of those things where you just get thrown into it and you're like, 'Wow, this is really a thing now.'"

The SnackCrate concept is simple and hasn't strayed much from Roarke's original idea. Each month, subscribers receive a box of assorted foreign snacks, all originating from one country. And each month, the country of origin changes and comes as a surprise to hungry subscribers.

One month you might get chocolates and wafer treats from Finland, and the next month you might un-box cookies, pretzels and soda from Poland.

Food delivery subscription services like Blue Apron and Hello Fresh were picking up steam around the time Roarke launched SnackCrate, but that's not where the son of a Marine found his inspiration.

"When I was a kid, maybe 10 or so, my dad was stationed in Japan for an extended period of time," Roarke said. "And he sent us kind of like this package of stuff from Japan. He just kind of went to a store and threw a bunch of stuff in there. And I thought it super cool, I was pumped to get candy, regardless of where it was from."

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Fast forward to 2014 and 2015, and Roarke remembered the package his dad sent him as a kid and wondered if he could have something similar shipped to him as an adult.

"It turned out you couldn't, you could have stuff shipped to you from one Japanese company," he said. "If you wanted something from Germany or France or Japan, you might be able to do that, but it would be expensive, first, and you couldn't do like a mixed bag. So you'd never be able to try something new consistently."

The only overhead for Roarke in the company's infancy was the cost of shipping and the snacks themselves. Back then, the CEO and founder couldn't be as picky about his international selection as he can be today.

Reddit actually played a key role in getting SnackCrate out of the red, according to Roarke. He said he spitballed his idea in a 2015 post that received tons of positive feedback.

He said about 200 of his initial snack shipments were sent out to members of the Reddit community. That was enough to crash his average-at-best website at that time, or else he could have shipped out even more orders to supportive Reddit users.

A year later, he thanked members of the website for their help through a follow-up post.

"I couldn't have done it without you," Roarke wrote in the post. "Reddit took my business from a simple idea to an overnight success and it's been a blast ever since. Thousands of you wrote me advice, messages of encouragement and even sent me your resume! Without Reddit, I'm not sure where SnackCrate would be."

Now the privately-owned SnackCrate is the No. 1 source of business for Pensacola post offices, Roarke said, shipping out about 80,000 crates a month to snack food lovers around the world.

"Our old warehouse was about 500 square feet of working space and this is where we're at now," said Chris Simmons, SnackCrate's chief operating officer, from inside the company's spacious warehouse on East Wright Street. "We've been friends since we've been 10 years old. I've always known (Roarke) would be successful at whatever he did."

If you ordered a SnackCrate in 2015, the items may have been popular international snacks that weren't too taxing to find in the U.S. at that time, but now that Roarke's company is generating lots of revenue, he and his colleagues can personally explore and scout the countries they're importing from.

"You're unlikely to see, for instance the British candy bars we have in the U.S. at Target. You're just not going to find them," Roarke said. "One of the things we look at whenever we're wondering whether to include an item and whether or not we can include it, is if we can find it at Target, or God forbid at a Walmart, then no, absolutely not. Unless it is so central to that country. Like Japan, with Pocky, those little sticks. That's something that has to be in the box, otherwise our customers will say, 'You didn't do Japan right.'"

With an estimated 60,000 subscribers, the vast majority of which are on six-month subscription plans, the SnackCrate assembling crew downtown is busier than ever.

Simmons is in charge of overseeing SnackCrate's packaging operations, but he gets to do the fun stuff, too, like choosing which snacks the company's tens of thousands of customers will sink their teeth into next.

"We just recently started (to visit countries) to get our first-hand experience on that side, but a lot of times, we just do a lot of upfront research and development," Simmons said. "To see what everybody likes and to try and stay as authentic as we can, finding out what's popular in which country. Whether that be something we may not personally like, like a particular flavor, we want to include that so we can give customers an authentic taste of that country."

Pensacola has been a hot spot for entrepreneurs in the past five to 10 years, as housing and retail growth have helped make downtown Pensacola an area where people enjoy spending money. Roarke acknowledged Pensacola as a cost-effective city to start a business in, but said the city offers something else that's beneficial specifically to SnackCrate's business model.

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"Pensacola has everything you need to run a business, but especially for an import business like ours, which is a specific, niche kind of thing, Pensacola has a port," Roarke said. "Most cities this size do not have a port. I think (SnackCrate) is probably the largest user of that port on an import basis."

Roarke lives in Pensacola, but said he's moving to Denver soon to open an administrative location for SnackCrate, where software engineers will soon work to help grow the already global company.

Subscribers can choose from three SnackCrate sizes. The starter box is $14 a month, the medium-sized box is $26 and the biggest box SnackCrate sells costs $50 a month.

If you'd like to "unbox happiness" with SnackCrate today, there's a special on the company's website that allows customers to sign up for the starter box for just $1.

Jake Newby can be reached at jnewby@pnj.com or 850-435-8538.