Adelaide Central Market success story The Yoghurt Shop set to expand to Victoria

SOUTH Australia’s yoghurt success story to expand interstate.

CENTRAL Market success story The Yoghurt Shop is expanding to Melbourne after a decade of growth.

Owner Simon Reynolds launched The Yoghurt shop in 2004, with a plan to produce a locally-made, high quality yoghurt product.

Starting with a store in the Central Market, the company expanded to its first suburban store at Marryatville in late 2005.

The Yoghurt Shop has since grown to 10 branded, retail locations across Adelaide, most of which are run on a franchise model, and it supplies about 200 independent grocers.

Mr Reynolds said the vision was always to supply a niche, high quality product.

“I was in food and hospitality and we stumbled across what we thought was the best yoghurt in Australia at the time and it wasn’t available in South Australia,’’ he said.

Mr Reynolds, who was living in Queensland at the time, set up the Central Market retail outlet to distribute the other company’s product.

After some time he believed the third party product was declining in quality, so the decision was made to make their own yoghurt.

“That started about five years ago ... we got in a really experienced Greek manufacturer who made a yoghurt identical to what we were used to in the beginning, so we were trained by, I suppose, an old master.’’

Once the company’s stores were set up, The Yoghurt Shop branched out into supplying others, with the outlet at The Avenues shopping centre initially serving as an ad hoc distribution centre.

“When we finished at The Avenues we’d close retail-wise and then be out the back finalising the wholesale orders,’’ Mr Reynolds said.

The company does its research and development at the Central Market, letting the public decide what flavours work, before rolling new lines out to other stores.

Flavours include apricot crumble, honeycomb, and cappuccino, while the company also offers gourmet dips, smoothies and frozen yoghurt. There is also the base classic yoghurt, and a natural yoghurt which has no added sugar.

The Yoghurt Shop directly employs about 50 people across its retail sites, management and a manufacturing site at Burton, with about 150 across the franchise network.

Mr Reynolds said the company was aiming to open its first Melbourne store in a site similar to the Central Market, which reflected its niche, high quality focus.

The company is also the official yoghurt supplier for the Port Adelaide Football Club.

For information visit http://www.theyoghurtshop.com.au/