Waikato Business News January/February 2020

WAIKATO BUSINESS NEWS January/February 2020
5
Tesh, left, and Lara showcasing their product at a food expo
uct drew unexpected interest
from locals, and a business was
“accidentally” born.
It was, Randall reflects, not
the best timing. The couple had
just got engaged and were planning
their wedding, they had
schemes for developing glamping
accommodation and were
putting a lot of energy into The
Good Agency. Randall also had
a couple of books coming out
and was editing a travel magazine.
But the yoghurt sideline was
fun and they were meeting lots
of locals, so they decided to
tackle it seriously, setting a target
of selling 1000 jars a week,
which would allow them to hire
staff and have a “self-sustaining
little local food enterprise”.
Their business backgrounds
and smarts paid off. These days
they sell their product around
the country and overseas to
the tune of about 75,000 jars a
month - giving them 49 percent
of the New Zealand non-dairy
yoghurt market, Randall says.
They have begun exporting
to Hong Kong, Singapore and
Pacific islands, and source their
coconut cream from an Indonesian
supplier which has a school
and hospital for its workers.
They have 24 staff, and
have bought a site at Nau Mai
business park on the outskirts
of Raglan, which will allow
them to treble their currently
cramped and ever-expanding,
leased factory space off the
town’s main street.
Theirs is a story not only
of commercial flair, but also
of a commitment to doing
good. They use organic coconut
cream, sell their product in
glass jars with easy-peel labels
so the jars are easy to reuse, are
CarboNZero accredited and
pay their staff at least the living
wage.
They have taken that commitment
to fairness an intriguing
step further. No one at the
company, including the owners,
can be paid more than three
times the lowest-paid worker.
The average in New Zealand
for CEOs and upper management
is 30 to 50 times the
lowest wage, Randall says. “In
America, it’s something more
like 500 times. And that’s just
the scale of the inequality that
we have in our system, which
is broken.”
Randall and Walter
addressed that by imposing
the wage cap, one which also
changes incentives so that anyone
at the higher end wanting a
pay increase will have to come
up with a way in which everyone
else also gets paid more.
“I don’t think it’s fair that,
say, we hire a general manager
and they get paid five,
six, seven, 10 times more
than someone who’s making
yoghurt. Because the person
making yoghurt is working
really hard, they’re working
long hours, they’re taking care,
they’re making the actual product,
and then why is someone
who can do a spreadsheet getting
paid a lot more? I don’t
think it’s fair.”
That thoughtfulness is similarly
evident when Randall
talks about their environmental
commitment. The couple memorably
rapped a double-hander
poem about the urgent need to
shift to a plant-based economy
when they took the stage to
accept a sustainability award at
the Westpac Waikato Business
Awards in November.
“That’s the thing, we try
and make it fun,” Randall says.
Preaching is an ineffective
strategy for getting people on
board, she says. “We try and
keep it fun and playful and
we share stuff but not in an
aggressive and judgey way. At
least that’s how I hope it comes
across.”
But she is well-researched
and passionate in her views.
“It just seems overwhelmingly
clear that the planet cannot
continue with the high rate
of meat consumption and dairy
consumption that it has at the
moment - that’s not going to be
possible for the billions of people
on Earth,” she says.
“We cannot sustain it, we
do not have the land mass, we
can’t grow enough corn and soy
and all these things you need to
feed animals with.
“The ratio of land required
to grow feed for an animal and
then the land that the animal
takes up versus the amount of
actual finished product you get
out to feed people with, it’s just
a terrible ratio compared to if
you’re growing a tonne of vegetables
on that same land.
“And the fact that you have
to cut down rainforest in order
to grow those that corn and soy
- I mean, it’s just a very flawed
model in a lot of different areas.
“Even if it tastes good to
people, that’s not really the
question any more. It just
makes sense to me that we
would increase growing and
eating vegetables, fruit, seeds
- plant-based foods that are
taking carbon out of the atmosphere
as they’re growing.”
She believes the world has
“a lot less” time to change than
many people realise but she is
also optimistic, particularly in
New Zealand, citing the Zero
Carbon Bill as a step in the
right direction. She also sees
innovation in farming, having
grown up in rural Dargaville
where she would spend time
on her dairying grandfather’s
farm. An example comes from
a friend who, when she inherits
the family farm, plans to grow
hemp.
“That’s great, that’s an
opportunity. There are plenty
of opportunities to do things
with the land that we have and
also the tech that we have here
and the experience we have in
growing things.”
Raglan Coconut Yoghurt
itself is, as she says, representative
of the trend towards
plant-based, healthy and environmentally
friendly.
There have been plenty of
business challenges along the
way, including building a factory
which started with a shipping
container. Rebuffed in
the early days by banks, they
brought in a kitchen equipment
manufacturer as a shareholder.
“That was how we’re able to
make the first factory happen.
We basically traded shares for
equipment.”
Developing a formal staff
structure was also uncharted
territory. The stability and clarity
staff need around their roles
is quite different from Randall’s
entrepreneurial mindset.
These days, as they prepare
for a shift in May to their purpose-built
850 square metre
building, banks are more than
happy to be on board.
Raglan, full of like-minded
people, has been a perfect place
for them to get started. Now 29,
Randall, who cannily caught
the early Trade Me wave as a
youngster, remains an entrepreneur
for her time.
See earlier story at http://wbn.
co.nz/2019/12/02/yoghurt-thesustainable-way/
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