Our meeting

 

Phil and I met in 2002 but we lost touch over the years until Phil visited Boston in 2008 to compete in a rowing event. We began dating … then we were engaged … and soon after planning our wedding.

 

As we were building our life together, we knew part of that would be building a business together. It had to be something that we could be proud of and could share with our friends and family – something that combined our passions of athletics, healthy living, and eating while being fun. Something everyone could enjoy. Most importantly, we wanted to be involved in the community.

 

Our Love of Yogurt

 

Yogurt became a staple in our home. We had always enjoyed Icelandic yogurt and other thick yogurts but noticed that these “homespun” yogurts we enjoyed had changed. They began selling out to large multinational corporations and dumping the philosophies they claimed to cherish.

 

The serving sizes had become too small, down sized from the traditional 6oz to 5.3oz even as low as a 4.4oz cheater cup while their prices remained full sized. They had become too expensive, too commercial, and began adding additional lines such as yogurt tubes packed with sugar for children.

 

We felt that these yogurts no longer had our best interest in mind. They went from individual passionate owners to boardrooms with an influencing interest. We knew we had to do something. Too often we had seen products, websites, and ideas we cherished irrevocably change.

 

It was at this time we took matters into our own hands. We began reading Viking Sagas and history books and started making our own traditional Icelandic yogurt.

 

We decided to launch our own Icelandic yogurt and our own community initiatives. We wanted to create something at a price that everyone could enjoy. Eating well should be within everyone’s reach.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Building Viking Icelandic Yogurt

 

We knew building Viking Icelandic Yogurt would not be easy or quick and we made the decision early on that we would not “speed things up” by sacrificing our ideals. We knew all too well many other “local yogurts” had sacrificed their authenticity. We gathered together all of our savings and began working on Viking Icelandic Yogurt full time.

 

We first made yogurt one pot at a time on the stovetop of our cramped studio apartment. We experimented with mixing milk and cultures and flavors until we had the recipe just right.

 

We were eating our yogurt daily and passing it along to friends and family. It was getting closer and closer to our wedding. Our pots of yogurt, with more protein than sugar, helped keep us fit and trim during the holiday season leading into our winter wedding.

 

With the holidays, a wedding, and the added stress of starting a business during an abnormally cold Boston winter, people began to wonder how we were staying so fit. The answer was simple. Viking® Icelandic Yogurt with More Protein than Sugar® had become the staple of our diet.

 

It was our friends who inspired us to come up with the Unleash Your Inner Viking® slogan found on the tabs of our yogurt tops. One even said “this must be how the Vikings stayed so fit during the winters in a place called Iceland before crossfit.”

 

After perfecting our recipe and almost burning down our apartment building in the process, we realized it was time to take the plunge and move to a place that would allow us to bring Viking Icelandic Yogurt to your local store.

 

We looked long and hard and found the perfect place in the pastoral Chenango River Valley. The open fields of the Chenango River Valley of upstate New York with its traditional farms that share our values was the perfect place to make Viking Icelandic Yogurt. It was only a few hours drive for us, close enough for us to personally make sure our standards were met … not that Phil needs an excuse to go visit a farm.  

 

Gone were the days of wrapping pots in towels while the yogurt incubated in our oven. The only place predictably warm and dry enough to incubate our yogurt. By moving to the Chenango River Valley, we no longer had to worry about our towels catching fire when one of us would forget and accidently turn on the oven for dinner.

 

 

Therese & Phil