Chat with Meraki: COCONO Yogurt

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Good morning and welcome to “Chat with Meraki.” I’m Rie and today we’re talking with Justin who is the owner and founder of COCONO which produces natural coconut yogurt. Thank you Justin for joining us today.

Hi good morning!

I just wanted to say that I’ve been eating your coconut yogurt the past week and it’s so delicious so creamy and I wanted to ask what makes COCONO‘s yogurt different from other non-dairy yogurts currently in Japan?

Thanks, I’m really glad that you enjoyed the the coconut yogurt. In Japan it’s something that’s existed but really not being available in a lot of places. That’s what led me to to making it myself. I tried it in Australia a long time ago and I was like, “I want to be able to eat this every day!” Unfortunately no one else made it for me so a few years later I started making it myself. When we started the brand last year I had a few key goals that I wanted to try and aim for. One of them was to make something that was plant based that was delicious – so delicious that even if you are someone who ate meat and dairy everyday, you still wanted to eat it. You could be vegan, you could be vegetarian, you could be a meat eater, you could be flexitarian – you still wanted to eat it. So that was one thing and that’s who I am. I’m not vegan, I’m not vegetarian, but I’d like to be a bit more plant based. I ate coconut yogurt for the first time and was like, I could eat this every day. The second thing was to try and make a product in a way that was as natural as possible. We don’t use preservatives – sorry that’s my my business partner Hazy.

She’s like “Yes, no preservatives!”

Yeah, no preservatives, no added sugars. When I started making coconut yogurt myself I just started with coconut milk and probiotics. I wanted a thicker consistency so I looked at what can I use that’s natural, Japanese local ingredient then we added kanten, agar-agar, and that was good but it wasn’t good enough. We eventually added konyaku flour and that’s it, those are the only four ingredients we use. So a natural plant-based product that’s really delicious. The last thing was to try and do it in a way that is as environmentally sensitive as possible. We don’t use any single-use plastics and we’re in glass jars at the moment, no stickers, no seals. We’re going to try and switch to paper packaging. Those are three key goals that I started with at the beginning of last year

What are some of the health benefits of COCONO‘s coconut yogurt?

It’s a really good question. I’m not a food scientist. I am someone that has historically eaten too much, enjoyed food too much. I try and look after myself, I try and keep fit. For me personally, just anecdotally, what I love about coconut yogurt is that apart from being dairy free, it doesn’t leave me feeling heavy or bloated. There’s a real richness and creaminess to it and that comes from the coconut oils and coconut milk. This morning I’m eating oatmeal with two spoons of coconut yogurt on top with roasted apple and some granola. That two spoons of coconut yogurt is far less yogurt than someone might eat with dairy yogurt but it leaves you feeling full for a really long time. I obviously have looked into a lot of the research and there’s a lot of scientific studies out there that put forward the argument that coconut oils ,which contain a lot of MCT oils, medium-chain triglycerides, are the sort of saturated fats that help you feel much fuller and help you convert the the fats into energy much quicker. The research shows that coconut oils, MCT oils, they’re very good for helping people be healthy but also if they’re trying to lose weight, to help them lose weight as well.

At the end of the day it comes down to what works for you. This yogurt’s not going to be perfect for everyone, but for me, my customers and my friends it’s delicious and it makes you feel good.

Can you share a bit about yourself, where you’re from and what was the inspiration behind COCONO?

I think you can tell from the way I look, I am not 100% Japanese. I’m half Japanese, half British. I was born in Japan but grew up pretty much for all of my life in the U.K. I went to boarding school etc. In my previous life I worked as a risk  management consultant which meant I investigated corruption and fraud and all these crazy parts of corporate world. But how did I come to start COCONO? Well, about six or seven years ago I was on a business trip to Australia and that’s when I first tried coconut yogurt. I’ve always had a passion or interest in getting involved in the food business. I’d run a catering business in my 20s and when I had coconut yogurt I thought, “This is amazing!” This is so rich and creamy, but because it’s plant-based after I eat it I feel fresh, don’t feel heavy at all. 

I was living in Japan and came back and said, well I can’t find it in Japan. So 2018-2019, I contacted a lot of coconut yogurt manufacturers in Australia and went on a trip to Australia. I met with them and actually came to an agreement with one manufacturer to import coconut yogurt to Japan. I’ve never done this business, I didn’t know anything about it. I came back to Japan and tried to find out how do I look at importing something. I spoke to customs agents etc. In the end I had to give up on the idea because I realized that the only way to import coconut yogurt into Japan was by air freight. Flying yogurt is very expensive but also it’s just environmentally ridiculous. I’m someone who in my 30s, I became more and more aware about climate change and the impact that we have on the environment. I realized I need to try and start doing a bit better in terms of the way I live, so the idea of starting a business in my 30s that was going to be based on flying yogurt around the world was ridiculous. I gave up that idea and then it was a few years later when I thought, ‘Okay, I’ll start trying to make it myself.’ Once I realized I could make it, after a few months I was making a yogurt that I really enjoyed tasting, then I got started. I had the confidence to think, ‘Maybe I can start my own brand.’ I needed to find a factory, found a factory, fast forward two years and and that’s where we are now.

What’s some of the feedback or the comments you’ve received from the Japanese market? We were talking earlier that there’s a lot of yogurt in Japan, but it’s usually dairy based and most taste the same. But yogurt, especially yours that’s very natural, sometimes you get that fermented fizz. So how has it been met in Japan?

When I started COCONO, I knew that the international market in Japan, the expats, Japanese people who’ve lived overseas, they’ve probably heard of coconut yogurt and a lot of them would be interested in buying it if it’s available in Japan. For me my big challenge was, how is this going to go with your average Japanese customer? In July last year after about four months of production, we started selling in a food company, a chain of supermarkets in Daikayama, Gakudai, Shinjuku and Shonan. Their customer base is 99% Japanese and it was selling out there. That was before me explaining anything about it and gave me a lot of confidence.

Since then I’ve done a lot of tasting events, I go to farmers markets etc. What I’ve realized is that, as you say a lot of people in Japan are used to eating yogurt and it’s sweetened yogurt, so there’s a surprise about an unsweetened yogurt that has some acidity. Whenever I do tasting events I always combine the yogurt with, let’s say granola or with some fruits and help people understand that something that is sour, if you combine it with something sweet it enhances both flavors. It makes the flavor much more fukai in Japanese, much deeper and well-rounded. I’ve realized that initially there are people who are a bit surprised by the acidity but generally people really like it. For me the best response is “I feed this yogurt,” – which is pretty tangy at times – “to my kids. Kids love it.”

I think it’s just a question of how you present it. The other thing is there are people who don’t like the flavor of coconuts particularly in Japan which I didn’t quite realize. What I’ve been pleased to see is that even though it’s a coconut yogurt, actually the coconut flavor is pretty subtle. I have customers who have tried it at a tasting event. They’re like, “I don’t really like coconuts,” but I say, “Just give it a try,” and they realize it doesn’t actually taste that strongly of coconuts and they’ve been happy to buy it. Overall the response from the Japanese market has been really good.

I think there’s a lot of people like myself who want to be a bit more plant based and haven’t enjoyed eating soy yogurt or almond milk yogurt in the past. They’re amazed the same way I was when I first ate coconut yogurt, that it’s so creamy, it tastes so much like normal yogurt.

Yeah, I was surprised that – well, I love coconut so if it had tasted like coconut I would have been okay with it – but I was surprised that it wasn’t coconut-flavored yogurt. It’s like regular yogurt with that same consistency especially if you shake the bottle. If you mix it with granola or for me I like making frozen coconut yogurt bites, and then that just like ice cream to me.

Are you planning on expanding your products or do you have any future plans for COCONO?

Yeah we do, it’s been a really interesting experience starting this business and growing it. We started just as an online direct consumer business and then along the way we started selling in supermarkets and stores. Since October last year we also provide COCONO to a lot of really high-end hotels around Japan. At the moment I’m actually raising seed funding to really grow the business from here. The goal is – and this goes back to the name of the brand – but the goal is to to create plant-based products here in Japan, make them in an environmentally responsible way as possible which is something that I think Japan is starting to appreciate but we’re still so far behind in terms of our use of packaging etc. Ultimately the most important thing is to make plant-based products that are just delicious, so delicious that it doesn’t matter who you are but you want to eat them. It’s not an alternative, it is a legitimate option in terms of delicious foods that you can eat out there. In that sense I feel like not being vegan, not being vegetarian, is something useful for me in terms of really bringing about some change and having an impact in having plant-based foods. We need to be able to help your average customer have more of a plant-based diet and we need to be able to do it with products that haven’t been flown in or haven’t been shipped halfway around the world. We need to be able to be a bit more local, self-sufficient.

That goes back to the name. There’s that connection with coconuts but also the thing that made me decide on this name was, in Japanese it’s “Cocono,” like “Coco no mono,” a food of the place. The goal is to create a plant-based brand for Japan.

Learn more about COCONO or buy online here.