ANAHEIM, CALIF. — A little more than a year after acquiring La Colombe Coffee Roasters for $900 million, Chobani, LLC is set to scale the business and expand its reach. Keys to growth will be partnerships and innovation. 

“Last year was all about investing in the business and getting this partnership with Keurig Dr Pepper off the ground and getting proof points across the marketplace,” said John Frost, chief customer officer for Chobani, during an interview at the Natural Products Expo West tradeshow held March 5-7. “This year you are going to see the products show up much more prominently across retail.”

Prior to Chobani’s acquisition of La Colombe, Keurig Dr Pepper had acquired a 33% stake in the business and became the business’ main distributor. The arrangement remains and is central to Chobani’s plans to scale the business.

“KDP touches the entire US, so they are a great partner of ours and it gets us into places that, quite frankly, are very difficult to get into like dollar stores and convenience stores,” Frost said. “The scale of this is really ramping.”

Frost added that key synergies from the acquisition are Chobani’s food science experience and developing a relationship between Chobani’s creamer business and La Colombe.

“The reality is when you look at the composition of (La Colombe) there is real dairy science involved that we have been working on for 20 years,” he said. “If you look at the ready-to-drink (coffee) segment, there are a lot of artificial ingredients, a lot of products that consumers tell us don’t taste that great, and there are a lot of products in the segment that are very high in sugar.

“We can take our dairy science knowledge and apply it to a specialty coffee in La Colombe and we can create a ready-to-drink coffee that is affordable when compared to its competitive sets with 50% less sugar, 7 grams of fiber and somewhere between 6 to 7 grams of protein.”

The company also has plans to use Chobani’s coffee creamer business to innovate and expand La Colombe.

“We have a very big creamer business,” Frost said. “It’s roughly 10% of the creamer business across US grocery, but it’s 70% of the growth. So now think about the opportunity to take our creamer business and a multi-serve coffee in La Colombe and combining them together. Inside the store we can offer those together at a great value.”

Frost said there are four trends that are guiding Chobani’s innovation strategy.

“We see that there is a growing demand for fresh protein, which fits into a dairy-based component of what we do,” he said. “Second is consumers are looking for high protein and low sugar.

“The third one is the most important and that’s clean ingredients. Because it’s difficult to get high protein and low sugar and do that without having a long list of ingredients on these products that some consumers say they don’t want. So, doing that with natural ingredients is really important.

“The fourth is affordability. We hear a lot from consumers that they are literally doing the math on the cost per gram of protein in some of these products. Whether it’s empirical or its quantitative, we are starting to understand there are a lot of options for protein out there, but they need a level of affordability associated with it.”

One trend Frost said Chobani is watching is the use of GLP-1 weight loss medications.

“GLP-1s are definitely out there and there is a big base of consumers who are consuming it,” he said. “Those consumers tend to consume more nutrient dense products, and we provide a lot of nutrient dense products, so some consumers tell us there is a natural marriage there.

“For us, we are really focused on nutrition, and as a part of having nutrient dense products, we know that applies to GLP-1s, but we also know that it applies to people not on GLP-1s. So for us, it’s not an element we are totally focused on. We know that what we’ve been working on for 20 years is providing nutrient dense products that every consumer can enjoy.”