Launching into Central Market
To say getting into Central Market so early wouldn’t do the word ‘lucky’ justice… On the last day of our first production run I checked my email before walking in to start making the first batch of Blueberry Parfait. There was an email from a distributor asking me to begin filling out paperwork for Central Market so that we could launch in a few weeks time to be a featured brand of Central Market’s ‘Legendary Tastes of Texas’ event.
They hadn’t even tasted our Frozen Greek Yogurt before offering to bring us in! There was no way that I was going to let them order two pallets of TruJoy Yogurt before even trying it, so I forced a meeting with the Central Market Ice Cream Buyer at their headquarters in Dallas. He was pleasantly surprised with the taste, texture and mouthfeel of our Frozen Greek Yogurt and stuck with his decision!
The whole point of our first production run was to have a finished product to send to the likes of Central Market, Whole Foods Market and Sprouts. I had fully planned on sending off those samples and then spending the rest of the summer selling TruJoy Yogurt out of the back of my 4Runner to small grocers across Austin (which i’m still doing!). The first order from Central Market took down over half of our inventory and I had to scramble to organize the second production run to support the volume that Central Market could move.
When Central Market brought in TruJoy, I promised them that i’d do everything I could to make sure it moved out of their freezers as fast as it moved in. So I planned a ‘Tour de Central Market’ and spent the first half of the month running around Texas visiting all of the stores and passing out samples. Hopefully these efforts pay off… I still plan on demoing our Frozen Greek Yogurt as much as possible and look forward to doing it at more retailers!
If you had asked me how long it would take for TruJoy Yogurt to make it into a big store like Central Market a few weeks ago, I would’ve said, best case three months. But by sheer luck and being in the right place at the right time, it was closer to three weeks! I’ll forever be grateful to Central Market for the opportunity they gave TruJoy Yogurt. Running around the State demoing at every store and meeting the Foodies at each was a True Joy!
Posing in front of the Fort Worth Store. Since starting this whole project, my goal had been for my Mom to be able to go to this store and look in the freezer and be able to say ‘there’s Charlie’.
Our demo schedule!
A special guest at the demo in San Antonio - Barbara was my landlord at the apartment I lived in while developing our recipe. I will forever be grateful for her tolerating me using a diesel generator to power the batch freezer!
