Yasso’s odyssey to success
Yasso co-founders Drew Harrington and Amanda Klane have raised the culinary bar with their frozen Greek yogurt treats.
The local entrepreneurs and childhood friends, both 27, are revamping their brand, website, flavor count and recipe so their product becomes more than just a novelty staple for snacking.
“You don’t find many people picking up ice cream sandwiches for breakfast but we want to make a product that you can eat for breakfast that has the same amount of protein as an egg,” Klane told the Herald.
Derived from the Greek greeting “yassou,” the 2-year-old company currently sells three frozen bar flavors in 15,000 stores nationwide, including Stop & Shop, Shaw’s and BJ’s Wholesale Club. Next month, coconut, mango and vanilla bean join Yasso’s existing lineup of blueberry, raspberry and strawberry.
The company soon will churn out Greek yogurt in Walmart stores and Publix supermarkets across the country. Yasso bars also can be found in all U.S.-owned military base commissaries overseas.
The Easton natives retooled their gluten-free products — now 80 calories a bar with at least six grams of protein — with food scientists in Nebraska with help from fans on the company’s social media pages.
“We would just throw out questions — ‘What flavor would you like to see?’ — and we would, within minutes, get hundreds and hundreds of comments about different flavors,” Klane said.
While Dannon has the star power of actor John Stamos to hawk its Oikos Greek yogurt, Yasso relies on in-store and outdoor promotions and viral wordof-mouth, Harrington said, adding a new loyalty program that dispenses everything from coupons to free prizes soon will be accessible for consumers on the Yasso website.
“We’re a small company, so we have to be very nimble in everything that we do,” he said.
Stuart Klane, Yasso’s head of sales, said the company curdles other Greek yogurt makers such as Chobani and Yoplait because its frozen bars are displayed among other novelty ice creams, not on dairy section shelves.
“We high-five still on every new account,” he said. “Four years ago, if you talked to people, they didn’t know what Greek yogurt was. Four years from now, there will be a lot of frozen Greek yogurts and we want to be the best one.”
With four Greek yogurt flavors under its belt, novelty ice cream purveyors Ben & Jerry’s will debut a new one this winter, with “a few” more arriving in the spring, said spokeswoman Kelly Mohr.
At this time, the Vermont-based company has no plans to sell frozen Greek yogurt bars. Ben & Jerry’s already sells mini 3.6 ounce cups of its Raspberry Fudge Chunk and Banana Peanut Butter flavors.
But Amanda Klane said Yasso strives to make something sweet without a guilt factor attached.
“We’re trying to be the product you can eat every day and not feel bad about it,” she said.