A government ban on trans fats in New York City restaurants goes into effect July 1. But with less publicity, entrepreneurs have been waging a parallel battle to persuade individual consumers to switch to oils and spreads that they say are more heart-healthy.

Robert Harris, 81, has been trying to convince New Yorkers to replace their tubs of butter, margarine, and shortening with his trans fat- free product called Smart Balance for more than a decade.

“If you like the taste of fresh butter, but not the bad things, go for my delicious Smart Balance,” he says at the end of a 60-second advertisement on 1010WINS.

By the fall, those homemade segments will disappear. Mr. Harris sold his business late last month to a special acquisition company looking to capitalize on the growing market for trans fat free products that has emerged since the New York City Council, at Mayor Bloomberg’s behest, passed the ban on trans fats in restaurants. Since New York passed its ban last year, similar bans have been approved in Boston and Philadelphia and others cities and states are considering their own legislation.

A veteran of health food marketing, Stephen Hughes, and a team of eight former food and beverage executives lead the company that acquired Smart Balance. They created Boulder Specialty Brands in 2005, with the purpose, they said, of finding a “high-growth, high-margin” business to “take to the next level.”

It turned out that Mr. Hughes didn’t have to look further than his family’s kitchen. A call from an old business associate led him to Smart Balance, a New Jersey-based producer of non-trans fat oil, margarine, and other products.

“Ironically, I hadn’t heard about it,” Mr. Hughes, 52, a graduate of the University of Chicago Business School, said. “I went to the refrigerator and there it was.”

In May, the company completed a $490 million acquisition of the company using money raised in an initial public offering, $160 million in debt financed by Bank of America, and $230 million from private investors in public equity. The merged business is called Smart Balance, Inc. Och Ziff Capital Management, Oscar Schafer’s O.S.S. Capital Management, and Glennhill Capital own significant percentages of the company.

Mr. Hughes led the team that brought Healthy Choice, which offers healthy frozen dinners in their characteristic green boxes, to $1 billion in sales in the early 1990s while he was a vice president at ConAgra. He later joined the team marketing Silk Soy milk and helped bring sales to $400 million in 2004 from $175 million in 2002.

Now his life is inundated with Smart Balance products.

He starts the day off by spreading it on his English muffin. His wife cooks with the oil, and the company’s popcorn, peanut butter, and mayonnaise are popular with his three children, he said.

Three reporters who tasted the product found it to be an enjoyable alternative to butter.

Mr. Hughes said he is focusing on marketing the company’s trans fat-free cooking oil not only to consumers but also to restaurants and other large-scale operations. In the margarine market, Smart Balance has a 13% market share nationwide and a 19.7% share in New York City, according to Nielsen Market Track. A spokesman for Gristedes, Gerald McKelvey, said the product has had strong sales in recent years.

“The nicotine of the American food diet is trans fat,” Mr. Hughes said. “This is a business in the cross hairs of a major consumer trend.”

Though he has long been involved with health-focused products, Mr. Hughes said he has never seen “this convergence of forces around the business.”

“It is a perfect storm of public awareness and urgency to find an alternative,” he said.

Mr. Hughes is bringing the company onto Nasdaq from the overthe-counter bulletin board market where it currently trades and moving the 17 staff members from Cresskill, N.J., to a new larger office in Paramus. The number of staff will increase to about 30 people by the end of the year. He has also hired TBC Advertising in Baltimore to put together advertisements that will begin airing in the fall. Applications have been filed in every major Western country to sell the product, Mr. Hughes said. Canada recently approved it for sale.

The company will have a small office with the marketing department and the organic division, Earth Balance, in Boulder, Colo. Mr. Hughes will work from there, while one of Smart Balance’s new co-chairmen, Robert Gluck, who is a chief financial officer of Unilever North America, will run the New Jersey corporate office.

The key to Mr. Hughes’s approach in growing the company will be marketing, he said. Already Smart Balance spends about $28 million a year on advertisements, making it one of the top five spenders in food marketing. Campbell spends the most, at $60 million, according to Mr. Hughes.

By the end of 2008, he aims to spend more than $40 million on marketing and have Smart Balance take over as the leading margarine seller in the country, he said.

Among the team at Boulder Specialty Brands are other wellknown veterans of the business, including the chairman of the Jeltex Companies, James Lewis, and a former chief operation officer of Best Foods, Robert Gillespie. Jeltex is a group of companies involved with vegetable farming, canning, and processing. Best Foods produces mayonnaise, mustard, and other spreads.

When Mr. Harris first founded Smart Balance in 1973 he was trying to fill a niche by selling products that improve blood cholesterol, he said. It wasn’t until the warning signs began to show up in health studies that Smart Balance put the first trans fat-free product on the market in 1996.

Trans fat, an artificial fatty acid present in hydrogenated oils, increases the likelihood of heart disease by raising the level of bad cholesterol and lowering good cholesterol, studies have found. The Food and Drug Administration requires products to include the amount of trans fat on labels and recommends people consume as little of it as possible.

The Smart Balance products use a palm fruit oil blend developed by researchers at Brandeis University that avoids hydrogenation and trans-fatty acids. The product increases good cholesterol and lowers bad cholesterol, according to company materials.

Growth was slow to start, but in the last four years the product has quickly gained market share. Revenue for the last 12 months was $164 million, Mr. Hughes said.

“Within 18 months, the question will be ‘where isn’t there a ban?'” Mr. Hughes said. “Luck meets skill every time.”