Healthy products promise a lot. But they can also ask a lot in return: new routines, extra steps, higher costs. The ones that last don’t ask people to change. They add value to what people already do.
Greek yogurt is marketed as a gut-health staple. But for Elan Halpern, it wasn’t working.
Despite doing what health-conscious consumers are told to do (buy the “good” yogurt, get the protein, trust the probiotics), Elan dealt with chronic gut issues for years. “I was already eating yogurt daily,” she says. “It had the potential to be great for my gut. But I couldn’t find any that actually made an impact.”
Instead of adding supplements or changing routines, Elan started making her own yogurt. What began as a personal experiment led to three years of recipe iteration and real results. Last year, Elan and her best friend Kiki Couchman turned that idea into Sourmilk, a yogurt built to deliver probiotic benefits first, taste second. No added sugar. No extra steps. A daily staple that does its job.
Start with the problem you’re solving, not the category you’re entering. Elan and Kiki didn’t start with “let’s make a better yogurt.” They started with a simpler question: how do you deliver probiotic benefits through something people already eat every day? Get the problem right first. Then, the product follows.
Get something out early, even if it’s unfinished. The first batches of Sourmilk didn’t even have a brand. They were yogurt in glass jars with tape labels. But that early feedback was what they needed to move forward. Waiting until something looks “ready” just delays the most useful signal: whether the product actually works.
Use content as proof of work, not promotion. There’s a long stretch where the idea exists but the product doesn’t. So Elan and Kiki documented their journey: factory tours, brand concepts, quitting their jobs. People followed because they were watching a company take shape, not because they were being sold to. By the time the product launched, demand already existed.
Get close to customers before you scale away from them. Sourmilk first sold directly through limited, pre-scheduled drops around New York. The model not only got product into people’s hands quickly, it also built in-person interaction and recognition. Now, when Sourmilk shows up on shelves, it’s a brand people already know.
Protect velocity, even if it means pausing growth. “We think it’s more important to be a high-velocity, high-demand product in a few stores than a mediocre one in a hundred,” Elan says. Especially with perishable products, low velocity creates immediate problems. More doors only help if the product is already moving.
Market insight → Functional food is shifting from novelty to routine. As health claims get easier to ignore, habits are what keep products in rotation.
It’s a culture thing
Can you finish these five sentences?
If not, the product probably isn’t ready.
1. The Habit Anchor
People already ______ every day. Our product fits that moment by ______.
→ If you can’t name a real, repeated behavior in the first blank, you’re still early or guessing.
2. The Effort Audit
To use our product, someone has to remember to ______ and do ______ differently.
→ If it’s easy for you to fill this out, adoption might not be as easy as you think.
3. The Shelf Sentence
This is for people who want to ______, so they can ______.
→ If this takes more than one sentence to explain out loud, it won’t be easy to understand.
4. The Replacement Test
If our product disappeared tomorrow, people would ______ instead.
→ If the answer is “nothing” or “go back to normal,” a habit hasn’t formed.
5. The Repeat Trigger
People buy this again because it helps them ______ without having to ______.
→ If you can’t finish this cleanly, you’re relying on novelty, not function.