The Biggest Breakage Ever

We have had an absolutely stellar run of deliveries. Not one jar broken for weeks and weeks. And then, last week, after picking up our boxes of yoghurt from us for the weekend delivery, the cage in the truck came loose on the way back to the depot in Hamilton. Absolute yoghurt carnage – imagine a sea of white yoghurt running everywhere with once-happy-coconut lids turned upside down into frowns. A grand total of 168 smashed into smithereens jars. Yup. We had to contact stockists letting them know their order would be delayed – not a fun job I must say. Our week schedule got rearranged, trying to fit in extra brewing sessions. But wait; it gets worse. Our delivery of large jars was delayed, so we had about half the jars we needed for the extra brewing session we’d organised. *sigh* Throw two of our yoghurteers being away on holiday into the mix and you’ve got yourself a very stressed-out Mr & Mrs Coconut.

To Be or Not To Be – The Great Site Question

The site we had lined up for our kitchen fell through due to a combination of reasons, including issues of getting the right land-use consent from the district council in time. Mr Coconut went into a flurry of calling and meeting locals, looking for a new site to take its place. It was all looking grim, until the Universe started to balance itself out and some very good news lined up …

Why hello there, investors!

The company we’ve contracted to design and build our kitchen had expressed interest a while back in being involved as shareholders. We’d kept the conversation going back and forth for a number of weeks, and had a couple of meetings in person with the team. We were really impressed with both the genuine nature of the people involved and also the experience and technical expertise they would bring to the table. So last week, we confirmed that we’d like to have them as part of Raglan Coconut Yoghurt. This is very exciting for us as it makes the kitchen-build possible without needing to put the business under a lot of financial pressure, and also fills the gap of technical/manufacturing experience that we haven’t had until now. Woo hoo!

Some coconut-relations join the yoghurt family

As mentioned in our last post, two of our beloved yoghurteers are off on travelling adventures from mid-August, so something else on our minds has been who would replace them. That question was answered when my parents bought a house in Hamilton yesterday! They’ve been following all our ups-and-downs from far away up in Dargaville, and since it was time for a change anyway, decided recently that they would come down to the Waikato and get involved. My younger brother and sister are excited to start work as our new yoghurteers, making it a real family business. We are both super excited to have four more Randalls down here soon.

Other cool stuff going on:

• We got into NOSH this week! Head Office has given us the tick.
• Taste Magazine featured us in their latest issue
• Raeward Fresh did this amazing interview and write-up about our back story
• Our Facebook following hit over 3,000 likes so we did a ‘Probiotic Power Pack’ giveaway which went down a treat
• Some fun new food-makers are using our yoghurt, including mobile drink-vehicle ‘The Beverage Sisters’, and amazing caker Addison & Eight

Current challenges:

• Securing a site for our kitchen is the number one priority – we have two good options but need to iron out any kinks and confirm one pretty soon
• Demand is exceeding supply, our runs are filling up quicker than they ever have, which means we’ll need to somehow squeeze in extra brewing sessions (probably at ridiculous hours of the morning) until we have our kitchen

Image: Cranberry & Coconut Yoghurt Fairy Cake