Wallaby Yogurt Company was born out of an adventure Down Under. During the Christmas season of 1992, founder Jerry Chou and his wife traveled to Australia for a vacation. “We were awed by the country’s many natural wonders,” Jerry recalls. “But interestingly enough, one of our most impressive discoveries turned out to be the yogurt. It was fresh, subtly sweet and creamy in a way that we weren’t used to finding in the U.S.”
They decided to quit their technology industry jobs and build a company that would make Australian-style yogurt for Americans. They named it Wallaby Yogurt in honor of the place where the idea got its start.
The couple’s very first step was to decide on the core values of their new company. Once thse were established, they started to learn about yogurt. “We had no experience with yogurt-making, so we did library research, contacted experts, and made trial batches in our kitchen. We made an incubator out of an old refrigerator, a light bulb and a thermostat and made one batch after another.”
Finally in early 1996, they came up with a product that they were happy with. Jerry describes their simple sales tactic. “We took our yogurt to natural food stores and independent supermarkets in the San Francisco area and asked buyers to taste it. The first 15 buyers who tried our product decided to carry it! We made the yogurt a few days each week, and spent the other days driving a refrigerated pick-up truck to deliver the product and stock the shelves.”
With the popularity of the yogurt, the capacity of the plant soon became inadequate, so in 1999, Wallaby Yogurt moved into a brand new, custom-made facility in Napa County, California, where their unique production methods could be employed. “We don’t thicken our yogurt with starches or gums. Instead, we start off with more concentrated milk and use a much longer incubation time of 8 to 9 hours -- double the industry norm. After incubation, we must handle the yogurt very gently to avoid losing viscosity. While a typical yogurt plant can make 3-5 batches of yogurt a day, we can make only 1 batch in a 24 hour period.”
Jerry explains the reason for the company’s growth and success. “Being directed by core values clarifies our management process immensely. The key question we ask ourselves each day is what kind of company we are building. The most gratifying thing about building Wallaby Yogurt has been in assembling a team of people who share in the core values and are united in the vision for the company. I feel that our success can be directly attributed to the uniqueness of our product and the quality of our people.”
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