PHIL AND THERESE MEERS, co-founders, Saga Dairy: Time to unleash your inner Viking?
Phil and Therese Meers don’t hail from Iceland, so are taking a novel approach to marketing their high-protein ‘skyr-style’ yogurts, by going back in time to present yogurt as the fuel that powered the Vikings on their epic voyages across the Atlantic.
Saga Dairy – which has opted for a Viking ship rather than the IKEA-style designs you’ll see on Smari Organics, for example – is, it says, re-introducing Americans to a product that the Vikings first brought to their shores more than 1,000 years ago:
“In The Saga of Erik the Red and The Saga of the Greenlanders, the exchange of milk and yogurt products is vividly recounted… After a thousand years, we are thrilled to be able to bring Viking Icelandic Yogurt back to America for you.”
But the fact that Saga Dairy (which is based out of Boston and Chicago and manufactures its products in upstate New York) is a family-run business producing a high-quality product is more important to retail buyers – and consumers – than whether the founders are Icelandic, says Therese.
“People really like the fact that we’re a family owned business and they want to support what we’re trying to do, which is make high protein, lower sugar yogurt more accessible, something you can eat daily, not a treat [each 6oz pot has 16-19g protein and 5-14g sugar].”
It’s very early days– they only went into commercial production in January – but so far the product is available in around 130 stores in greater Chicago including Mariano’s, Sunset and Treasure Island and is available in select Schnucks stores in Missouri, Wisconsin, Indiana, and Iowa.
Click HERE to read more about Saga Dairy.