The set-up was gorgeous – lots of people, fancy food, big screen displaying all the finalists before the announcements. Seeing our jar of yoghurt up on there felt pretty humbling considering that just eight months ago we were only selling to locals knocking on our back door!

And then even more exciting: they actually called our name out as the winners of the Gourmet Category! WOW. Such a buzz. After bounding up onto the stage and not knowing where to stand for photos, we did manage to find our way to the microphone to give our acceptance speech as a rap (figured we’d mix things up a little). I’m sure video footage will emerge eventually.

The night kept getting better when our foodie friends won their categories too – congrats to Ahi Ka Tonics, Blue Frog Breakfast, and Dr Feelgood for giving us great reasons to cheer! We finally got to meet the people in person who we’ve been swapping emails with for months like Roman from Fix & Fogg and Sophie from Poppy & Olive, and caught up with Tiana from Maiden South Pacific. All in all – a great night. Definitely came home on a high ready for a big week of yoghurt production.

Truck gets stuck

On a less glamorous note – our delivery truck got stuck the other week. Our current collection point driveway is far from ideal, but we’ve managed to work with it. I was out at the time and received the below photo from Mr. Coconut with the caption ‘We’ve got ourselves a situation here’. Pretty funny having to call in a tow tractor to haul it out! Yet another reason (the reasons grow by the day) that we need our own facility that’s properly set up for this kind of scale.

Time to trademark?

We love our signature coconut smiley face and have decided that it’s probably a good idea to get it trademarked. The intellectual property lawyers at Kensington Swan are yoghurt fans and approached us right when we were thinking about it, so we said ‘let’s do it!’ and have sent our application off. It was interesting learning more about the trademarking process as it’s all new to us – there are so many different classes to consider trademarking within.

The Waikato Home Show is just around the corner…

…and I must admit that at this point we don’t feel very prepared at all. It will be our first ever show, so somewhere in between the usual madness we’ll be squeezing in preparation for our stand. Come say hi if you’re in Hamilton 1-4^th October!

Highs:

• Got to be the NZ Food Award. That’s a big enough high to last us months!
• Oh and The Caker’s book launch party was a-mazing. Loved trying all the little cutie cakes.

Lows:

• Demand is increasing every week, and this kitchen can’t get here soon enough! We’re doing double shifts of brewing and boxing many days and it does get tiring.
• Kissing our planned and paid for trip to Bali goodbye. It had seemed a great idea when we booked flights a year ago, but now the responsibilities of yoghurt-ing mean that holidays are a bit of an impossible luxury. 
• We got in our biggest ever order of cardboard boxes, Seb painstakingly stacked them all, and then we woke up the next morning to find they had toppled over! He patiently restacked them all and they’ve stayed put since thank goodness.

Image: The Caker – Plum, Lime & Coconut cake with Raglan Coconut Yoghurt