Inside the dairy plant: Noosa Yoghurt, with a side of milk
A Colorado dairy farmer had a nice milk bottling operation. Then he founded a yogurt company with an Australian ex-pat. Today, yogurt far eclipses the milk business.
Rob Graves is a dairy farmer and dairy processor who owns Morning Fresh Dairy in Bellvue, Colo. He sells his white and flavored milks up and down the front range of Colorado’s Rocky Mountains. Business was good for the fourth-generation farmer. Demand was growing from home delivery customers, restaurants and Whole Foods. Graves had plans to expand the milk processing plant. That is, until yogurt got in the way.
Enter Koel Thomae. She had just acquired a yogurt recipe from an Australian dairy processor and was looking for someone to make it in the United States. (See related article.) She found Graves and together the two of them started noosa yoghurt (the company prefers lowercase letters).