Koel Thomae, co-founder of Noosa Yoghurt, reflects on pitching the Australian founders of Queensland Yogurt in 2007 to license their recipe.
Opinion
Thomae: ShopRite is one of the hardest retailers to work with
“Come to learn that ShopRite is probably one of the hardest operationally retailers to work with. Like, if you miss their delivery window by, like, five minutes, they'll refuse you, and then you have to reschedule.”
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Dannon, Hain Celestial, and Kroger launched six Noosa copycats between 2012–2014
“So within, I would say, sort of that, 20 12 to 20 14 time frame, there was probably six knockoffs that came into the market from Dannon, from Hain Celestial to even Kroger doing a private label version of Noosa.”
Opinion
Thomae preferred Advent-backed professional era over founding era due to culture
“So I sort of see these two very distinct chapters that I was involved with at Noosa was sort of like the Wild West chapter, and then our professional chapter, which we, I think we created an amazing internal culture, and I had an absolute blast in sort of that…”
Opinion
Thomae: Emerging Greek Yogurts Did Not Taste as Good as Queensland Yogurt
“Yeah, they were just coming onto the market, so I could see that there was a trend happening with Greek, but it, to me, it didn't taste as good as Queensland yogurt.”
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Thomae: Queensland Yogurt agreed to licensing and investment on a handshake
“They essentially said, look, yeah, we think there is an opportunity in the U.S., so We'd happily license to you. We'd want to invest in the business, and we'd be happy to bring, like, a yogurt maker over and just help with the initial startup of the business. …”
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Mathewson family licensed their yogurt recipe to Noosa for one dollar
“The Australian family was willing to do a pretty, pretty minor lease on the product. Basically it was a dollar license agreement. Because they wanted to be investors.”