While it started small eight years ago, COYO coconut yoghurt is now available globally, stocked in some 7000 supermarkets around the world.
In mid 2017, COYO was picked up by Woolworths, and is also stocked in more than 800 Coles stores.
This is on top of the 600 independent health food stores it already supplies domestically.
The success of owners Henry and Sandra Gosling is due to hard work, understanding their customer, developing new products around horizon trends – think low sugar and certified organics – and knowing good ways to approach different markets.
Semi-retired on Australia’s Sunshine Coast, with their seven children having grown up, Henry, the former general manager of a small Queensland cheese manufacturing company, was wanting to bring the benefits of coconut to the world in a new way.
“I ran a dairy company just outside Noosa for eight-and-a-half years [Kenilworth Country Foods] and we made yoghurt there – beautiful yoghurt. Then I came up with this idea in the middle of the night to make a yoghurt out of coconut milk,” he says.
The brand name COYO came at a lunch with friends, and is simply short for “coconut yoghurt”. Typical of the speed at which Henry moves, once the name was decided he “quickly went and trademarked it all around the world”.
There are now six COYO yoghurt flavours in four sizes, and nine ice-cream flavours in two sizes.
The business now has 35 employees operating at the Yandina facility in Queensland’s Sunshine Coast hinterland. The dairy-free, gluten-free, vegan and organically certified product is made in small batches.
The brand won Best Organic Product 2017 at the Naturally Good Expo, the latest in a series of accolades, including the Queensland Government’s Emerging Exporter of the Year Award and Best Original Small Business (Queensland).
