Sep 25, 2023 · 1h 12m · how-i-built-this
Yasso: Amanda Klane and Drew Harrington
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In this episode of How I Built This, host Guy Raz interviews Yasso co-founders Amanda Klane and Drew Harrington on how they engineered the first frozen Greek yogurt novelty bars, navigated high-stakes manufacturing and operational disasters, and outmaneuvered major corporate competitors before selling to Unilever.
How this conversation actually went
Every chapter scored 0–10 on four independent dynamics. Hover any point for the reasoning behind the score. Guy holds 38.1% of the talking time here. How this is scored →
Guy as informed peer 2.3 Guest teaching 2.0 Guest disagreement 0.2 Guy pushing back 0.0
speaking balance: gold is Guy, purple is the guest (3 minute bins)
Sharpest disagreement ▶ 1:06:24 Rejecting pint price wars against Halo Top
Drew and Amanda forcefully describe the pint market as an unsustainable 'race to the bottom' driven by endless BOGO promotions, justifying their quick retreat.
Hardest push from Guy ▶ 43:54 Guy challenges national retail strategy over regional testingGuy presses the founders on why they chose expensive national retail distribution immediately rather than testing in regional natural food co-ops.
Biggest teaching moment ▶ 32:49 Amanda educates on high-protein food science and pipe burstsAmanda explains the complex physics of industrial ice cream lines, demonstrating how high-protein Greek yogurt creates foam that clogs and bursts factory equipment.
Guy holds their own ▶ 21:54 Guy details ice cream air churning and consistencyGuy draws on his own culinary ice cream making knowledge, citing fat, sugar, and air incorporation mechanics to frame the formulation problem.
the scores for every segment, with the reasoning behind each
| Chapter | Topic | Guy as informed peer | Guest teaching | Guest disagreement | Guy pushing back | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Podcast Promotion: The Great Creators | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | Host monologue introducing the episode, previewing the Ben & Jerry's billboard encounter, and detailing the founders' background. Scores are zeroed for intro/monologue format. | |
| Amanda's Experience in Food Brokerage | 3 | 2 | 0 | 0 | Guy asks about Amanda's early work at her father's food brokerage firm and references Hamdi Ulukaya and Stop & Shop. Amanda details the regional dairy focus and learning the ropes. | |
| Drew's Early Career and Poolside Pong Concept | 2 | 1 | 1 | 0 | Guy questions Drew about dropping out of college and shifting into entrepreneurial ideation. Drew gently corrects the framing of it being purely a distraction, explaining it as a therapeutic creative outlet with friends. | |
| Designing and Sourcing the Inflatable Beer Pong Table | 2 | 2 | 0 | 0 | Guy asks about sourcing and initial capital for Poolside Pong. Drew outlines designing the inflatable table with a Texas engineer and finding a Shanghai manufacturer via Alibaba. | |
| Retail Expansion and Scaling Poolside Pong | 3 | 2 | 1 | 0 | Guy notes that early Amazon and e-commerce were limited, then asks if Drew was in the 'fraternity business'. Drew lightheartedly reframes it as the 'summer fun business'. | |
| Manufacturing Failure and Shutting Down Poolside Pong | 2 | 2 | 0 | 0 | Guy asks why Poolside Pong shut down after major orders. Drew describes the pinhole defects in the inventory and the inability to tape them up before the holiday rush. | |
| Conceiving the Frozen Greek Yogurt Concept | 2 | 1 | 0 | 0 | Guy asks Amanda about conceiving the frozen Greek yogurt concept and reaching out to Drew. Both share the phone call memory and the decision to team up. | |
| Early Kitchen Formulation and BBQ Taste Test | 4 | 3 | 1 | 0 | Guy explains the mechanics of ice cream spinning and air incorporation. Amanda and Drew agree and expand on how removing fat/sugar while adding protein created an icy, bad initial batch that failed family BBQ taste tests. | |
| Midroll Teaser: Co-Packer Obstacles Ahead | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | Midroll ad break featuring sponsor messages. Monologue/ad format, scored zero across scales. | |
| Show Subscription Reminder | 2 | 2 | 0 | 0 | Amanda shares the story of sneaking into Penn State ice cream short course on one ticket, and Drew explains how a Greek coworker suggested 'Yassou' before packaging design streamlined it to 'Yasso'. | |
| Formulation with the University of Nebraska | 2 | 3 | 0 | 0 | Amanda explains utilizing the University of Nebraska's affordable student food science program to develop their initial 70-calorie fruit flavors. | |
| Manufacturing Complexities of Extruded Greek Yogurt | 3 | 4 | 0 | 0 | Guy asks about the manufacturing mechanics of Greek yogurt straining. Amanda educates on how thick, high-protein formulations create foam that bursts co-packer pipes. | |
| Securing a Manufacturer and the Mr. Cookie Face Meeting | 3 | 3 | 0 | 0 | Amanda clarifies that extruded novelties require specialized machines possessed by only a few co-packers in the country, leading them to their last option, Mr. Cookie Face. | |
| Financing the Pilot Run and Family Seed Capital | 2 | 2 | 0 | 0 | Drew explains pitching Tammy Shaw at Mr. Cookie Face despite a scheduling mix-up, and Amanda describes scraping together nearly $100,000 from friends and family for the trial run. | |
| Trial Runs and Fall Retail Pitches | 2 | 2 | 0 | 0 | Drew explains launching with an imperfect strawberry formula and blaming TSA dry ice confiscations during buyer presentations to buy time for reformulation. | |
| Positioning Against Legacy Diet Brands | 3 | 3 | 1 | 0 | Guy asks if retailers categorized them beside legacy diet brands. Drew and Amanda clarify their deliberate rejection of the 'diet' label in favor of mainstream indulgent positioning. | |
| Securing Early Accounts and Club Store Traction | 3 | 2 | 0 | 0 | Amanda describes the billboard marketing power of Costco and BJ's club packs, and Drew recounts the dramatic beer spill on their crucial first $100,000 Costco check at a local bar. | |
| Early Operational Disasters: Truck Crash and Mislabeled Cartons | 2 | 2 | 0 | 0 | Amanda recounts early catastrophic logistics errors, including losing an entire truckload of product on Marathon Monday and packaging cartons printed with upside-down back graphics. | |
| Sponsor Message: Rocket Money | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | Midroll ad break featuring Mint Mobile and Rocket Money sponsorships followed by a transition into revenue figures. | |
| Navigating Slotting Fees and Supply Chain Efficiencies | 3 | 3 | 0 | 0 | Amanda breaks down the high expense of grocery slotting fees, while Drew illustrates supply chain improvements from manually scooping 32oz yogurt containers to bulk tanker deliveries. | |
| Confronting Conglomerate Competitors | 3 | 2 | 0 | 0 | Drew recalls discovering a Ben & Jerry's Greek yogurt billboard directly outside their office window. Amanda explains how they countered deeper-pocketed competitors attempting to buy them out of freezer slots. | |
| Institutional Capital and Achieving Profitability | 3 | 3 | 1 | 0 | Drew and Amanda explain raising institutional capital and their short-lived venture into pints to counter Halo Top, which they quickly abandoned due to unsustainable price promotions. | |
| Private Equity Transition and Unilever Acquisition | 3 | 2 | 0 | 0 | Guy asks about their exit trajectory. Amanda explains handing over operational reins after having children, partnering with Castanea PE, and ultimately selling to Unilever. | |
| Reflecting on Hard Work, Timing, and Luck | 2 | 1 | 0 | 0 | Guy poses the classic How I Built This question on hard work versus luck. Drew and Amanda both acknowledge a combination of timing, resilience, and luck. |
Statements from this episode (23)
Drew Harrington: Developed inflatable beer pong table on the side
“No, I did it on the side, so I continued to work full-time, and Scott and I would effectively kind of brainstorm ideas of what these products could be, and then we started ideating around this idea around an inflatable beer pong table, which was fitting for tw…”
Harrington invested $50,000 into Poolside Pong alongside a mentor match
“But my mentor at the construction company matched a 50,000 dollar investment that I had made too.”
Harrington: Poolside Pong hit roughly $1M in revenue by years two and three
“We sold them on our website for 4999 plus shipping. And so the first year I think we did about somewhere around a hundred, 150,000. And then it got up into year two and three when we added in Spencer's, we eclipsed about a million in revenue.”
Harrington: Defective inventory for Spencer Gifts doomed Poolside Pong
“The issue there was we had just taken a huge order from Spencer Gifts, and we had built up considerable inventory for that order. And the issue was, which is important, is that all the rafts that had arrived to the states had pinhole holes in them, so they wer…”
Klane: Pint manufacturing is easier than ice cream novelty bars
“Pint manufacturing is a bit easier than ice cream novelties, which is what we make.”
Klane: Replacing fat and sugar with protein makes frozen desserts icy
“What makes ice cream so smooth and have this great mouthfeel when you eat it is fat and sugar. And we wanted to remove or reduce those items and add in protein. And so we were taking out a lot of the key components that does make ice cream so delicious. And th…”
Yasso Founders Shared One Enrollment to Penn State Ice Cream School
“Yeah, we didn't actually have enough money to sign us both up for the class, so we signed up for one entry into it, and it's in the middle of Pennsylvania in the dead of winter, which is just cold and barren at that time of year, but we signed up under Drew's …”
Klane: University of Nebraska offered low-cost product R&D using students
“What we found was that the University of Nebraska had a food science program, and as part of that, they would do product development, and it ended up being an extremely affordable way to develop products because they would lean on students to help the developm…”
Klane: Few US manufacturers could produce Greek yogurt when Yasso started
“Greek yogurt was still fairly new to the U.S. Market, and there weren't a ton of people that could actually manufacture Greek yogurt.”
Klane: Yasso ruined factory equipment over a 10-year period
“We ruined a few pieces of equipment and plants over the last 10 years.”
Klane: Only three to five US co-packers could manufacture extruded novelties
“Outside of your big national food companies that have their own brands, in the co-packing world, there was maybe Three to five people that actually make this.”
Harrington: Ice cream retail category reviews happen only once a year in fall
“Those meetings for the ice cream category happen once a year, and they happen September through November or early December”
Klane: Yasso's initial three-flavor pilot run cost nearly $100,000
“I don't remember the exact amount, but you kind of pay for like the day that the line is shut down, not producing something that's paying them full price. So like shy of a 100,000 dollars, but enough where we needed to like figure out how do we raise a little …”
Harrington: Yasso blamed TSA for missing strawberry samples during retail pitches
“So we would tell a few white lies where one of the hard things about frozen food is you're always handling dry ice, and early on we realized that the TSA would confiscate Our dry ice. And when we realized strawberry wasn't as great tasting, we'd kind of show t…”
Harrington: Ice cream alternatives require indulgence like cookie dough or chocolate chips
“Something that we believe wholeheartedly now and we didn't know when we launched is that to be an ice cream You have to have some indulgence. You have to have some chocolate chips or cookie dough. And once we unlocked that, we unlocked tremendous flavor.”
Klane: Club stores provide a massive packaging billboard effect over standard grocers
“Just because it's limited SKUs and just a massive display, you almost get this like billboard effect with your packaging that you don't necessarily get a regular grocer because you have potentially two to three SKUs on shelf in a way bigger category with more …”
Harrington: Yasso's initial Costco order resulted in a $100,000 check
“I remember the check was about a 100,000 dollars, which for us at that moment, because they were first and the terms are so great it actually came in much quicker than some of our retail customers, and we needed that cash to keep up with the demand.”
Klane: Yasso Generated $5M in Year One and $18M by 2013
“Oh, we did it five million dollars our first year in business by 13. We were doing around 18.”
Harrington: Yasso Scaled to $18M on Gross Margins in the Teens
“No, with a gross margin in the teens.”
Klane: Frozen and dairy are among grocery's most expensive shelf spaces
“Frozen and dairy are two of the most expensive spaces in the store because they require electricity”
Harrington: Early Yasso manufacturing required hand-spatulaing 32-ounce retail yogurt tubs
“The first bottleneck we really experienced was they were legitimately shipping in 32 ounce containers, and there was a laborer on the line that would spatula out the Greek yogurt out of a 32 ounce container, which is what, you know, a family probably consumes …”
Harrington: Yasso Pulled Its Eight-Flavor Pint Line After One Year
“So we went into pints with
Eight flavors, and we got some distribution, and it was in those moments that we truly realized the marketing frenzy that was happening by some of these brands that was creating the velocities that were contributing to their revenue…”
Harrington: Yasso hit profitability in 2015 and partnered with Castanea Partners in 2017
“When we got to a certain point around that breakeven year of profitability in 2015, we started to look more seriously in 16 as who could be a longer term partner. And in 17, we built a great relationship with a private equity firm, and we partnered with them a…”