 For whatever reason, I think part of it, it was just to our benefit, we were headstrong, we were naive, we really wanted to take on the big guys. Like, we really wanted to have YASO at every major grocery store and affordable price and displace these big international conglomerates. Then you actually get on their level, and I saw a stat, you know, I think last year we officially surpassed Klondike Bar for more products sold in the United States, and that was a moment where you're like, you know, holy shit, we grew up eating Klondike. We were raised on Klondike, and to be able to kind of then surpass them, I think is a testament to what the mission of the brand is and how many great people that we've brought into the YASO culture. This is Startup to Storefront, the podcast where we inspire entrepreneurship through truth. Today's guests are Drew Harrington and Amanda Klain, co-founders of the frozen Greek yogurt brand YASO. Drew and Amanda have been friends for a long time. Since kindergarten, to be exact, they were also both Division I athletes in track and soccer, respectively. Nutrition is a very important component to athletic success, but let's not pretend that athletes are immune to cravings. Drew and Amanda would try and mitigate these cravings by searching for items in the Better For You categories, but when it came to ice cream, the choices were seriously lacking. So what's better than creating a great tasting ice cream alternative? Creating it with a lifelong friend. And if that ice cream alternative should someday surpass Klondike bars in terms of units sold? Well, that's the sweetest reward of them all. So listen in, we cover everything from their initial strategy to give away thousands of free bars in order to cultivate a grassroots following, how they persuaded their friends with beer in exchange for product testing, and why when creating a new product, they have to keep it 100. 100 calories or less, that is. Now, back to the episode. All right, guys, welcome to the podcast. On today's show, we're talking to the founders of YASO. Thanks so much for joining. Either one of you can take this question, but for people who don't know, what is your business? What is YASO? YASO is a frozen Greek yogurt novelty that we sell in the ice cream segment of the store. So what we did is we really took the goodness of Greek yogurt and turned it into a delicious, great tasting ice cream. It's pretty guilt-free. It's an amazing product. I have a lot of friends who enjoy this, which is always nice to talk to people on the podcast when we have people already in our ear saying how excited they are just to hear your story. What made you guys want to start the company? Yeah, the goal behind the company really was, Amanda and I grew up as athletes, was always interested in our own health and wellness and nutrition. And around 2009, Greek yogurt was just surging here in America and it was really offering consumers. One of the first times, just a new take on the traditional yogurt set with higher protein, less sugar. And we thought that could be an opportunity to bring that kind of better for you mentality to a category we've always loved, which is ice cream led by two of our idols, Ben and Jerry's. And we looked at that market as an opportunity to displace your diet brands of like skinny cow and weight watchers by using Greek yogurt, better few ingredients, but bringing some of the fun of Ben and Jerry's by way of inclusions like chocolate chips and better, more on-trend, indulgent flavors. So that was kind of the goal was, can we create the best of both worlds and deliver nutrition, but not sacrifice on taste? And was it always a popsicle or were you guys playing around with different versions of this sort of like this dessert, guilt-free dessert option? When we started for some reason, and I don't even know if we know why we were like, outside of portion control, we're like, we want it to be on a stick because portion control is extremely important. We knew that from housing, a bunch of kinds of Ben and Jerry's in our past. So we knew we wanted it to be on a stick. It was funny though, like, we didn't know too much about manufacturing novelties. So we learned a lot about like the true terminology and what we wanted to move forward with was called extruded novelties. They're just higher end, more premium, and it's kind of the shape you see today that YASO has. And so we always knew we wanted it to be a stick to start, but knew that we would probably expand on that as the brand grew. But portion control was kind of where we were focused when we launched the brand. And it shows our age and how naive we were because extruded novelties is probably the hardest thing to manufacture and as people take you seriously in terms of willing to commit on two kids, just it's a tremendous amount of startup costs just to do one single run in a day. So it requires a lot of money. And there's not many people that make extruded novelties. So that was a big part of our early days was people either saying, no, we won't run your product here. But then also frankly, the challenge of even finding people that theoretically could run it took a lot of hours and hours on Google and traveling to different trade shows. And ultimately we got a factory to run it. It was interesting and classic kind of startup that we had no idea that what we chose from the get go is going to be probably the hardest road. And did you guys experiment with different flavors at the beginning or were you guys just dead set on kind of creating like your favorites and just running with that? So what we thought in using having no money to do true research is we kind of looked at the yogurt category and we're like, what are the best selling yogurt flavors? And it was historically strawberry, blueberry, raspberry. So we're like, that must work. We'll go with that. And I think we talk a lot about just continual improvement and changing throughout the years. And now if you look at the portfolio, we don't really have any of those flavors. So I think what we learned over time is that what people are looking for with yogurt in a breakfast occasion is a lot different than what people want when they're going to the ice cream category. And so we had to evolve and continue to change the flavors over time. And what we found through sampling at Falmouth Road Race and a lot of other events is like, everyone was like, do you have chocolate? Do you have caramel? Do you have mint? And we're like, no, we have fruit. So we had to evolve the flavors over time. But out of the gates, our original thought was, yogurt base, let's go after what's working in the yogurt category and just transition it. Now I want to talk about sort of early days. So I can imagine you have this product that requires some sort of refrigeration. If you're going to farmer's markets, maybe you're bringing freezers with you. But at the end of the day, it kind of makes it tough. And so as you guys were thinking about your strategy at the very beginning, right? You have the options are maybe going to farmer's markets, but you have the options of getting into distributors or getting into stores and going down that racket. Did you try both? So that way you're getting sort of like a constant feedback loop or was it like we need to clearly just get into grocery stores as fast as possible. What was kind of like the first step into getting into a location or into the consumers, the consumers fridge? We went directly from a revenue perspective. We went directly to distributors that then fed into grocery stores or the club channel. And we were super fortunate in that way because we have this incredible catalyst of Greek yogurt and the refrigerated set that was truly, there might not be a product like it since the days of Faye and Chobani that has truly changed a whole massive category. You know, there's been some new categories that have sprung up over the past 10 years, but refrigerated yogurt was extremely disrupted by the entrance of Greek yogurt. And we had the benefit of then creating the first ever frozen form. So like any retailer we presented to was interested in taking it because we, you know, it was just such a hot item within refrigerated. So we just went directly to that, tried to be first to market with retailers here in the Northeast and then some club customers in the Midwest. And then on the opposite side of your question, we then took whatever extra inventory we had and bought an old ice cream truck or rented trucks with reefers and literally spent every weekend just sampling to any event that would take us. We usually didn't pay a sponsorship fee. You know, the first one was the Falmouth Road Race and we promised that we'd bring 10,000 bars to give away. And that really kicked off the beginning of like a massive grassroots sampling initiative. And we gave away, you know, to date, you know, millions and millions of bars around the country. But that was huge to Amanda's point. We learned a lot from what that kind of hand-to-hand interaction with consumers. We understood what they wanted. It was a grind, but it was really authentic. It was genuine and for us as young entrepreneurs, it really shaped our brand in terms of how we just spread awareness and then supported the retailers by just, you know, frankly letting people try the product and if they liked it, they went to their local store. That's pretty amazing because in some way, you know, we talked to different brands on the podcast around either clothing companies or whatever they're working on and there's a lot of like, they have to create a brand at the same time, right? So if you go town to the consumer path, you have to create this like stickiness or a community with your audience before they even purchase your product. In your sense, you kind of, you're in the grocery store and so to some extent it's a little bit easier, but that branding component is still part of it. And so as you guys think about your business and even creating that brand, how do you go about it? I mean, the ice cream truck idea is amazing where you're just giving away all these free ice cream at all these events. That's super sticky and I'm sure like, who doesn't want that? But how do you guys think about branding and marketing and your strategy to do that? You know, really from day one, a big strategy because we were so limited with funds was truly to support the retail business. So we really leaned into our retailers and tried to promote the product at an affordable price because our goal from day one was to really steal, share from skinny cow and weight watchers. So to be able to do that, we wanted to be able to provide Yasso to the whole country at an affordable price. So we dialed a lot back in terms of just trial through store working with our retail partners on price. And then to support that just really leaned into this idea around continuous evolution of the brand from a product standpoint to a marketing to a branding. It's interesting, nothing from day one is really the same outside of our customers and the grassroots sampling that everything has changed from calorie counts to packaging to flavors like everything has been a continuous improvement which is interesting because I think when brands launched today in 2021, it's almost like everything shows up perfect. Yasso would just launched into a different era. It was 2011, it really felt grass rooty and authentic and you look back and we were proud of the product and the branding and the marketing back then but it's outside the name. It's so different from what it was. And I think that was in the spirit of just improving and I think that's been our approach on marketing and branding. You really have to meet the consumer where they are and for us, our big revenue channels was our retail partner. So we did a lot and we still do a lot to support those partnerships. Well, when you're constantly pivoting and changing your perspective on what's working and what's not, how long is it before you realize it's not working versus how long do you give something to actually take hold and impact the market either positively or negatively? How do you balance those two sides of the coin? Yeah, I'd say on the product side, it's a little bit easier these days because we have more funds to test things and see the results of how it's working in the marketplace. Early on that was a little bit different but it really was looking like a year into a product you can kind of see on a more established brand. You can kind of see are the velocities in the movement where we need it to be if not let's tweak it and we have more ability now to do some CLT testing to understand is it the color of the flavor, the mouth feel, whatever it may be and kind of hone in on that. Obviously from like a packaging side again, it's a little bit different and may take a little bit longer to see whether it sticks just because we usually soft flow things into the market so it takes a little time to actually catch up. But I'd say as we got more mature, we have put more focus and time and money into like true consumer research on what is and what isn't working. Early days it was truly just like every weekend us and our friends would go out to these events and ask people exactly like what do you think? Like what flavor do you want to see? Is this working? Is this gross? Is it good? And then we'd pay our friends and beers and we'd all go out but that was really how in the beginning we were getting a lot of our feedback was just from whether it was moving at shelf and what people were saying to us on social and in person. I know that during COVID a lot of people, I would think about it this way, there's anecdotal evidence on my side. So my wife, she has three other siblings. If I open up their freezer, there's literally nothing inside. There's just ice and a couple of cups of beer that are just cold. And so what happened what I saw in terms of behavior like COVID hits and now everyone's going to the grocery store and the freezer section is almost like experiencing this revival where it's not just a frosty glass, people are actually opening it and seeing what's inside because everyone's trying to buy or stock whatever it might be. And so like frozen milk as an example became one of the most popular search terms during COVID. What did you guys experience during this time? What did you learn? What was it like for your business? I imagine a dessert during COVID is something everyone would have wanted. But I'm just curious to hear like how your business shifted if at all during that time. I mean, like a lot of brands tremendous growth. I think what we saw like at the early onset of pandemic it almost slows a little because people were just like hoarding toilet paper and paper products and shelf stable foods. But then as it went on and people realized like I'm still in my house. Like of course like those permissible indulgences and anything that made you feel good kind of shot up. We saw tremendous growth through that time period. And so like a lot of brands our whole team was just working on how do we catch up and stay in stock during this extreme growth period. But the good thing for us is, and if you guys have had the product it tastes great. So our repeat rates are the strongest in the category. So people kept coming back. So we haven't really seen that growth slow. So it's been extremely beneficial for the brand and that I think we got a lot of new users. And now our repeat rates are extremely strong so they're coming back for the brand. Yeah, and I feel like COVID from a consumer perspective like reframed the idea around like snacking just because everyone was home. So I struggle for YASO historically had been how do we effectively communicate and almost convince people to use our products not just in the evening after dinner but through other day parts. And where everyone was home people to your point were going in the freezer. You know, maybe after like a two PM zoom call or maybe pre-launch grabbing something that they normally would have been at the workplace for. So that was an interesting thing for a brand like us that was kind of usually more, you know, six PM, seven PM post-dinner occasion. So that really opened up opportunities for us. And during COVID we launched a new line called Poppables which is that, you know, major national retailers and it's more bite-sized chocolate and robed YASO in the center. And that is just more of like your true snacking. You can have multiple on one occasion. So that's been a real highlight of the past like, you know, few years has been that more brand expansion into snacking occasions versus the traditional dessert set. Do you guys get any data around like your customers in terms of like, maybe this is focus group centered but why they buy. And so for example, some people buy cars for no other reason than miles per gallon. Are you guys seeing anything? Like is it the calorie count? Is it the protein content? What's the thing that gets, let's say, me to buy? What's the thing that I'm a consumer? These are the three things I look for. That's why I purchased these. Yeah, what are those things? For YASO, it's definitely been calories historically. I, you know, from the beginning that was the interesting thing too about when we launched we came out at 70 calories. And to us, our thinking was the lower the calories, the better, right? And we didn't have any data at all. We just thought that like, okay, skinny cow and weight watchers are here. We need to be lower. That was really one of the first true tests of us to do we have the agility and the ability to kind of move off our first point to someplace that might be better. And what we did is we actually bumped up to 100 calories so we could afford to have cookie dough, mint chocolate chip, peanut butter, more dessert occasions. And then we learned with that spread of 30 calories the consumer really didn't care as long as you weren't over 100 calories. And then from that point we've continued to stay at 100 or below. And that has really been the magic thing for us in combination with natural ingredients, the use of Greek yogurt, better sources of sugar, higher protein than you would normally get in a dessert offering. So a bunch of those things combined. But for us, given the market share we took away from those diet brands it was big on calories. Taste by far in our category is most important if people are gonna eat it every day. Like it's not worth it for 70 if it tastes like crap. So I think that's like one thing we've learned to with like development is like we have to put taste first. We're in ice cream and indulgence. Like it is the biggest thing but calories to juice point pulls them in. And where are you guys at from a fundraising perspective? We're along on your company journey, are you? So we've went through the fundraising stages. Super fun. I think Mindra have probably called most private equity firms in this country by now. You know, we did a deal with a group out of Boston called Castaneda back in 2017. And so, you know, they've been part of the brand since then and they've been a really great partner for us. Right now we're in a really good position financially and not looking to be raising anymore money. So that's a nice feeling. Is the goal right now just more stores? More like, are you guys in pockets of the United States and trying to expand to new territories? We had another podcast the other day and they were saying like they crush in Indiana for some super odd reason. Like that's, you know, they're everywhere but Indiana is like, no one's beating Indiana. We'll have to check it out. We'll have to look at our data in Indiana. Yeah, I don't know that. It's definitely not our number one place. Yeah. We're always looking to strengthen our partnerships with our existing retailers and customers. There's definitely some white space out there for sure. We have been fortunate to be partnered with some of the best grocery stores and club channels nearly from our beginning. And now for us it's really just increasing brand awareness. We have great loyalty with the consumers that know what YASO is. And if we can just continue to expose the brand to more consumers, as especially as we introduce more innovation that might be applicable to their life, that is kind of our major focus point right now. In addition to providing that innovation to our existing customers to get more shelf space. We used to have a goal that we wanted a whole shelf and now we're at the goal of we want a whole door. And we feel that YASO for how we've pioneered better for you dessert, we're deserving of that. And some retailers have given us that shot. You start to see that full door effect, that awareness just acts like a billboard but in the grocery store and it's amazing that our repeat and our loyalty, once people try it once, they usually come back. So that's the goal is to introduce YASO to more folks. To that point, will you guys ever consider maybe making like an alternative milk or something like a derivative that you can just freeze or create or spin into something that's an indulgence category also? Yeah, we're looking at a lot of different things and innovation I think for us right now our sweet spot is really continuing to deliver. Amanda said it earlier, it was portion control but the other thing that we did from the beginning was convenience, right? People could just reach in their freezer and we really want to expand on that across multiple product lines and really expand this YASO snacking occasion. So I think for us in the short term and long term, it's to be able to reach in your freezer and grab exactly what it is you want with great nutritionals and superb taste and probably less so on like the do it yourself mixes and things like that. You know, you mentioned that your whole focus was growing brand exposure and awareness. What's your game plan for that specifically? Does it involve say like traditional advertising or social media influencers getting your product or what have you done and what are your thoughts for where to take it in the future? Yeah, I mean it's a mix of kind of all of those things. We've definitely put our foot a little bit more on some of your traditional advertising. So we have commercials running now. I don't know, obviously you haven't seen them yet but hopefully you get, you know, Fed one soon but you know, I think last year we did a little bit more just testing certain concepts and this year we've kind of put a little bit more fuel on the fire. I think just due to some supply chain challenges we've had this year, we still have to pull back a little bit, which is unfortunate because the brand has been doing so well but we need to let our supply chain catch up. So I think what you'll see going to go forward is kind of a mix of a lot of different buckets but definitely just more money spent towards hitting a broader audience. Did you guys ever think you guys would create a business? Like I think you're the second fastest growing in your category in the United States presently. Did you ever think it would get here? I think it's what we hope for and both for it to actually happen. I think all those early days and just a lot of that grind and grit it's what you're always charging towards for sure. I think for whatever reason I think part of it it was just to our benefit we were headstrong, we were naive, we really wanted to take on the big guys. Like we really wanted to have YASO at every major grocery store and affordable price and displace these big international conglomerates. Then you actually get on their level and we saw a stat, I think last year we officially surpassed Klondike Bar for more products sold in the United States and that was a moment where you're like, holy shit we grew up eating Klondike. We were raised on Klondike and to be able to kind of then surpass them I think is a testament to what the mission of the brand is and how many great people that we've brought into the YASO culture and there's a lot of people that wake up every morning and work really hard for the brand and we've been fortunate over the years to have just like unbelievable partners. I think it takes a lot of hard work but it also takes a lot of luck and it takes a lot of good people to give you opportunities and for us people gave us opportunities and sometimes we had to pivot and they still stuck with us and we were able to evolve and ultimately get to this spot like you said, number two snacking brand by growth and yeah it's been incredible and we're super fortunate. Are you guys making a jingle? I mean it's a commercial included like a catchy jingle that is very on... We need to. We should. If it's up to us it might not be that good but it could go viral because it could be so bad but we'll see. My mom did text me when she saw the first commercial like a few weeks ago and it was after like 12 years of YASO I think I finally made it and her minds when she saw the TV commercial I was like, this is good. That's so funny that that works that way. Yeah, you guys should like do a Super Bowl ad. That would be incredible and very expensive but they have a good way of hitting which is pretty crazy. Yeah. How did you guys settle on the name YASO? So the name... Took a while. It did take a while. We actually had to create a bank account before we had the brand name so we actually, the first name we came up with was Apollo Food Group because Apollo was the Greek god of drink and dance and we figured that guy was probably in the good time so we picked that as the corporate name and then a friend of mine who was Greek knew that Amanda and I were working on this healthier Greek yogurt offering and I saw her one day and she said, you should check out the name YASO which means hello in Greek and shot a text to Amanda or so long ago it was probably Blackberry Messenger if anyone remembers those days. Yeah. Definitely. And then we sent it off to the designer and it was cool. She came back and she said, I hope you don't mind but I dropped the letter U from the end of YASO. What do you think about YASO? And it was an ownable, unique, no one had ever created that name and we just rolled with it. And so the definition is definitely, the origin is hello in Greek and we felt that that was like a very friendly way to have a brand like ours that's kind of rooted in friendship and ice cream is just a fun category. Yeah. Well listen, what's next for the brand? What can you tell us? What are some of the things that we as fans and consumers can expect in either 2022 or even late this year as the holidays approach? Yeah, so I think Drew mentioned it like innovation is at the core of what we do. This is our 10th year in market so we are launching a birthday cake flavor for our 10 year birthday. So that has been long awaited. We used to make pints for a little while and it was one of our favorite flavors back then. So it is coming out in a stick bar this year which is extremely exciting. We're also continuing to hone in on that snacking category so you'll see more items that fit into that more kind of mindless munching as we call it. So you'll see those hit shelf next year. I'm always curious. So I have a question in terms of like for big brands, right? That I don't know if it's a play but to me it makes sense where if you're a big brand and most people find you at the grocery store and now there's this new concept of like ghost kitchens is there a play where we can just do ghost freezers and like I can go on Uber Eats or Postmates and instead of going to Gelsons and finding your product there it's like the Yasso storefront but it's not a real storefront it's just a delivery service that goes to this grocery store and then ships me Yasso. So it's almost like you can connect directly to the brand without an intermediary like a grocery store. Is that something you guys are considering or have even thought about? I know it's kind of it's out there but to me it's always like sometimes when a brand has that stickiness people just wanna buy the brand they don't wanna go to the grocery store to buy the brand. No, it's a great idea. I think that's the exciting part right now of consumer goods, right? We have a lot of this like technology and accessibility where you can start to play around with these really interesting it might be a marketing play or to your point it actually might be a real revenue play and like how do you kind of evolve and do that? Historically, the tech wasn't really there but now it is there. We just to Amanda's point earlier we've definitely been caught up in a surge through COVID of just demand. So we're waiting and working very hard to let our capacity and supply catch up to meet demand. And then I think you'll see moving into the 2022 and beyond us explore ideas like that to piggyback on some of the national media and TV we're running because you guys asked a question earlier on marketing it really always does need to be holistic. A slice of the budget might go towards one particular thing but then I think the brands that stick out and get some of those moments and just relate to people are the ones that do some unique interesting stuff and there's definitely been a few over since we started Yasui look at like you know that's cool and that idea that you had is definitely next level but the infrastructure is definitely more there today than it ever was to be able to do something like that. I just know it's something I want. So I was like a consumer. You know I was- Well at least do one for you. We'll put one in your LA name right? This would be a no brainer. Shipping ice cream. We didn't think that through fully either. We chose the hardest category to actually transport. Oh frozen is so hard. We used to go to food shows and we'd be envious of like any guy or girl that was an entrepreneur in like salted snacks where like you have no idea how easy it is to send potato chips around the country. We had many sleepless nights where you have a huge event the next day and you're just praying the reefer doesn't break down and you have a bunch of melted products but that actually happened on the first shipment we ever sent to Costco. The truck derailed, crashed and all the product melted. So wow what happens in that case? Do you guys like is it like sorry? Does Costco care? Is there an insurance claim or is it just like oh it's over? It's stressful. It's an insurance that takes a while when you don't have a ton of money you have to remake the product. You know I mean I think we were lucky we had retail partners that understood like accidents happen but it was I mean when you're new and have no money you're like it's the end of the world to some degree. You're just gonna kind of figure it out. We really had no money in those days too but we knew what we were doing and we didn't you know not celebrate every big move and actually related to that first Costco order. They were the first ones to send us a check that we desperately needed because we were building so much inventory at our facility and it was a facility in New Jersey and a great gentleman there but he used to call me every Friday and I happened to miss the call every Friday because I couldn't pick up because I didn't have the money to pay him and I just ran out of excuses and then ultimately the Costco check finally arrived at our office and we needed it in the bank that day to pay him or he was truly we were out of excuses he was done threatening us and he's like if I don't get the money by today you know we're just not gonna run your product and so we got the check around like noon time in the mailbox and you know the I don't know irresponsible or immaturity of us as 23 year old entrepreneurs we're like well we have to walk this to the bank but on the way to the bank as a bar we should go get a beer and a burger and celebrate this. So we were like looking at this check it was like a six figure number that we needed every cent of and it was our first one and as the lady put down our beer on the bar she spilled my beer all over the check and the Costco check was just soaked so they had to put it in the back kitchen on industrial air dryers to dry out the check and we brought it to the bank and it actually cleared and the money hit the account and off we went. The only thing that could have made that story worse is if somehow by putting it in the back kitchen it caught on fire. With our luck at that point it could have happened but. It's funny you almost feel like you're doing something wrong when you deposit the check too like it's almost like it's not yours it's not real but it was it was. Please clear. I promise this is real it was dry and flat an hour ago. I love that story at those things when those things happen when bad things happen you always have this like feeling of like maybe this isn't meant to be right you have that you can easily go eh it's just not for us and this is a sign a sign from the forces out there that's brutal. How much is a box of Yasuo? Anywhere from like $4.99 to $5.99 yeah I think that was like definitely part of our strategy is like we had to be competitive to Drew's point with like the big brands. Yeah well listen I love the story I'm rooting for you guys I really appreciate you coming on the podcast just final to let everyone know where they can find you what grocery stores you're in all the good stuff. Yeah I mean we're sold in most grocery stores across the country so you know we can be found in all 50 states so go to your local grocery store and you know you should see us. Right on and if you're in Indiana get some more. Yeah step it up step it up Indiana. The next big thing Indiana we're gonna be there. Thank you for the support guys and to all your listeners we appreciate you guys hanging out with us today. Yeah thank you so much for coming on the show.