🎙️ Shelf Help Podcast: Elan Halpern - Dealing Yogurt Via Citibikes and Backpacks

Описание: On this episode, we're joined by Elan Halpern, Co-Founder of Sourmilk - the NYC-based functional greek yogurt brand designed to actually deliver real probiotic benefits, not just the perception of them. Elan is a Stanford CS grad and former tech PM who, alongside co-founder Kiki, started out selling yogurt on bikes out of backpacks across New York City.

We dive into the science behind why most yogurts fall into one of three probiotic traps, and how Elan narrowed forty thousand bacteria strains down to the handful that are probiotic, survive in yogurt, and taste good.

Elan breaks down organic dairy sourcing realities, demand planning for a perishable product, building a two-thousand-person waitlist before the first production run, and selling the first pallet on city bikes in seven days. We also dig into the forced rebrand from Beny to Sourmilk, launching with one SKU in bright blue packaging to stand out in the yogurt aisle, why Happier Grocery was the right first retail partner, and what Elan's tech background brought to CPG.

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Episode Highlights:

🥛 Why most yogurts fail at being truly probiotic (three traps)
🧪 Narrowing 40,000 bacteria strains to find the right probiotic combo
🏭 Finding a dairy co-packer the old-fashioned way (cold calls, not Google)
🐄 Organic vs conventional dairy supply chain economics
📦 Building a 2,000-person waitlist before the first production run
🚲 The "drug deal model" - selling yogurt on city bikes in brown bags
💻 Custom-coding a Shopify pickup feature (Stanford CS advantage)
✏️ Cease and desist to rebrand - from Benny to Sourmilk
🎨 Bright blue packaging to stand out in the sea-of-white yogurt aisle
🛒 Why Happier Grocery was the right first retail partner
🎯 Localized activations - gym pop-ups near retail stores to drive velocity
🗺️ NYC-first retail expansion, then regional, then California
👀 Maintaining brand authenticity at scale (Rōsa as a model)

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Table of Contents:

00:00 – Intro
00:43 – Origin story and the gut health problem
04:32 – Formulation and the three yogurt traps
06:22 – R&D - narrowing 40,000 bacteria strains
07:43 – Finding a co-packer in an old-fashioned industry
09:48 – Scaling from home kitchen to co-man production
11:49 – Organic dairy supply chain and sourcing challenges
17:27 – Demand planning with a perishable product
18:48 – The drug deal model - selling yogurt on city bikes
20:01 – What tech taught him about building in CPG
22:28 – The rebrand - from Benny to Sourmilk
26:10 – Packaging design and standing out in the yogurt aisle
28:46 – Straddling the food vs supplement brand identity
30:00 – Pros and cons of the direct-to-consumer pickup model
34:41 – Getting into retail and using zip code data
35:49 – Why Happier Grocery was the first retail partner
36:32 – Advice for brands launching into their first retailer
37:51 – Retail expansion strategy - NYC first, then regional
38:30 – Brands and trends they're watching
40:29 – Where to follow Sourmilk

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Links:

Sourmilk – https://www.sourmilk.com/
Follow Elan on LinkedIn –   / elan-halpern-99a018193  
Follow Sourmilk on LinkedIn –   / sourmilk  
Follow me on LinkedIn –   / adam-martin-steinberg  

For help with CPG production design - packaging and label design, product renders, POS assets, retail media assets, quick-turn sales and marketing assets and all the other work that bogs down creative teams - check out https://www.kitprint.co/