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Piako yoghurt on the production line - Source: ONE News -
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A small family business that started making its yoghurt on mum's kitchen bench will soon be stocked on the shelves at Harrods.
Kiwi-owned Piako Yoghurt is using its one-third share of the $1 million Entrepreneurs Challenge winnings to tap into the lucrative UK market.
It currently makes its gourmet yoghurt at a export-standard facility in Sylvia Park, Auckland, but co-founder Shaun Jacka told TVNZ today its beginnings were anything but luxurious.
"It was literally two of us. We were basically just making it by hand in the kitchen and running it down to stores as required," he said.
Piako is now selling 10 flavours of gourmet yoghurt and additional products like frozen yoghurt and sectioned tubs of museli and yoghurt.
Jacka says Kiwis are very keen on consuming dairy products but there was still a gap in the market back in 2008 for a gourmet option.
"No-one had thought of looking at that high-end market and now that segment's really taken off, we've been able to grow with it."
Piako received a development grant from small business incubator Icehouse and the University of Auckland's business school but Jacka says it was not an entirely smooth process going from niche to small-medium.
"We got our capital injection and a factory underway but then bit off a bit more than we could chew.
"(But) with the help of the ANZ bank - who were fantastic when we completely blew everything out of the water - we've been able to get things up and running."
It's about to put its products on the shelves of upmarket UK stores like Harrods and Waitrose under the brand Little Melton Products.
Jacka told AMP Business it was a deliberate strategy to produce and sell the same yoghurt under another name over there.
"There's a very strong move back towards small, gourmet brands... (and in the UK) they have a strong loyalty to their own dairy industry. So we went for a UK brand so we can genuinely say we are a small, UK-produced product."
Back home, the company has signed a distribution deal with dairy giant Fonterra which Jacka describes as "huge".
He says it's tough for a small company to successfully sell in supermarkets and it will use Fonterra's abilities and scale of operations to its own advantage.
"We get to keep our identity but we get to leverage off their entire teams of people for merchandising and things like quality control to be available on a national scale."
Jacka admits the gourmet yoghurt business has rapidly attracted many producers but believes Piako's simple goal of providing the best possible products will mean it continues to be spooned up by keen customers.
