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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Coconut Collaborative

The Collaborative Raises $7M to Fuel U.S. Expansion of Coconut Yogurt Empire

The Collaborative, a plant-based yogurt startup formerly known as The Coconut Collaborative, has closed a $7 million Series A funding round led by PowerPlant Ventures.

Founded by twin brothers in 2014, The Collaborative started off making coconut-based yogurt and desserts in the U.K. They expanded to the U.S. market in 2018. It’s currently available in retailers nationwide and will launch on Amazon Fresh in May.

It looks like The Collaborative will use its new funds to really put down roots in the U.S. market and expand its retail footprint. The company is also updating its yogurt offerings to include new sizes (like a multi-serve size) and expanding its dessert lineup.

The Collaborative frames its product as a more sustainable alternative to regular yogurt. While dairy has a hefty environmental footprint, coconut harvesting has its own share of evils. To offset its impact, The Collaborative works with Pur Project to plant coconut trees in Southeast Asia to replenish the ones it uses to create its yogurt.

Despite the coronavirus pandemic slowing down the economy, a slew of plant-based companies have announced funding over the past few weeks. Rebellyous Foods raised $6 million for its vegan chicken nuggets, and Impossible Foods announced an eye-popping $500 million raise to help it weather the COVID-19 storm. As restaurants close and people turn even more to retail, animal alternatives have been experiencing a boom in sales — that’s good news for The Collaborative.

The bad news is it has plenty of competition to contend with. The plant-based yogurt space has really been heating up over the past year. Startups like Yofix, Kite Hill, and Lavva, who makes yogurt from pili nuts, are all jostling to come out with a yogurt tasty enough to convert dairy lovers. Even Big Food corporations, like Chobani and Yoplait, are getting in on it.

With so many new entrants crowding the plant-based yogurt section of your grocery shelf, the differentiator will come down to one thing: taste. Our own Jenn Marston (and self-described dairy lover) sampled some of The Collaborative’s coconut yogurt a few years ago and thought it did a pretty good job of imitating the taste and texture of regular yogurt. With its new funding, The Collaborative will be able to launch new products — in new areas — to try and get even more dairy skeptics on board.

Coconut Collaborative Bets on Taste to Woo U.S. Plant-Based Dairy Market

If you told me to give up dairy tomorrow, there’d be claw marks on the milk carton when you pried it from my fingers.

If, on the other hand, you told me there was a plant-based dairy alternative that tasted more “dairy” and less “alternative,” I’d be on board in a second.

That’s tough to find, though, which may be one reason The Coconut Collaborative is gaining a steady following worldwide.

Founded in 2014 and based in London, the company makes dairy-free coconut yogurts and desserts. The idea behind The Coconut Collaborative’s mission that a plant-based dairy alternative shouldn’t have to taste bland in order to be healthy. Or to put it the way the company’s tagline does, The Coconut Collaborative’s products are “free from dairy but not from temptation.”

Clearly, identical twins Edward and James Averdieck (the latter of UK dessert business Gü), the masterminds behind the brand, aren’t alone in that thought. Their operation has expanded rapidly since 2014, first in its native Britain then across European markets including France and Germany. And just recently the products arrived stateside, where they’re available in the the New York Metro area, New Jersey, parts of Virginia, and a few other states.

“We love dairy yogurts and that’s what we benchmark against,” Edward Averdieck recently said. “With coconut you can make a plant-based yogurt taste as good or better than a dairy equivalent. We absolutely see this category just exploding if you can make the products taste good.”

It’s an approach that’s slightly different from a lot of dairy alternatives on the market, whose labels use rhetoric like “vegan” or “dairy-free” but don’t put a lot of emphasis on taste. The Averdieck brothers, on the other hand, have been very vocal about their desire to deliver on taste as much as on health benefits. 

That’s a significant point in markets like the U.S., where coconut-based dairy alternative have come under heat in the past for their high amount of saturated fat, low levels of protein, and, in many cases, added sugars.

Coconut Collaborative says its products have about half the sugar of big-brand alternatives: roughly 5 to 7 grams instead of 12 to 24. (Admittedly, though, the products are still pretty high in saturated fat and low in protein, according to the ingredient labels).

The company also makes it a point to give back through its work planting coconut trees with the Pur Project in Southeast Asia. They give seedlings to farmers in the Philippines and North Bali. Farmers plant them, and, once the trees are grown, sell the produce at markets or use it to feed their families and livestock.

But does all that give the company a viable shot in the U.S. market? I went around the block earlier today and bought some of Coconut Collective’s Mango & Passonfruit cups and was pleasantly surprised to find it actually tasted quite a bit like real yogurt. And with flavor beating out both health benefits and ingredient sources in a recent survey on why consumers choose plant-based dairy, it’s looking more and more like the Averdieck brothers’ betting on taste could win the company a serious following here very soon.