You’ve seen certain brands pop up on your feed. They have a polished aesthetic, a dedicated following, and a palpable buzz, all before you can even buy their product. But how do they do it?
While others wait for a big launch, the founders of Sourmilk are already building their empire, one Instagram reel and pop-up at a time.
And New York’s wellness insiders are taking notice! On the fifth episode of How She Got Here | Season 2, Kiki Couchman pulls back the curtain on the strategies you’d normally have to pay a consultant to hear.
This candid interview with Kiki, the founder of the yogurt brand, Sourmilk, is a gold mine of information for entrepreneurs building a food startup. So, don’t miss the inside story. Read on!
Building Sourmilk from Scratch
Many people dream of starting a brand, but few understand the relentless process of building one from the ground up. Sourmilk is a real case study in turning a compelling idea into a tangible business through sheer will and intelligent strategy.
Now, Kiki Couchman is on a mission with her best friend, Elan Halpern. The two co-founders are creating delicious, grass-fed, organic yogurt packed with countless probiotic benefits.
Meet Kiki Couchman
Born and raised in the small town of Sonoma, California, Kiki’s upbringing was surrounded by agriculture. Her dad owned a dairy farm in the Central Valley.
Growing up with a large garden and cooking with fresh produce shaped her profound appreciation for quality food systems. And this became a foundational element of Sourmilk’s quality-first approach.
Stanford Days & Meeting Her Co-Founder
A Human Biology degree from Stanford might not seem like the typical launchpad for an early-stage CPG brand owner. But Kiki’s story suggests otherwise.
Stanford was where Kiki met her best friend and Sourmilk co-founder, Elan Halpern. Though from different academic backgrounds, they bonded in a food systems class. She recalls Elan being a total biohacker who experimented with optimizing her health.
During her biology course, Kiki gained a holistic understanding of human experience. She tells Cass how it all surprisingly connected to brand-building, especially the element of service and teaching people, which is core to Sourmilk’s ethos of starting a brand in public.
Turning a Passion for Wellness Into a Business
Both Kiki and Elan found themselves in New York after their initial post-grad jobs in San Francisco. Despite professional growth, Kiki felt a personal stagnation and a desire to branch out.
With a shared feeling that their learning had plateaued, it sparked many conversations about “what’s next?” The two knew they wanted creative freedom to build something of their own. And that is what kick-started their food and beverage founder journey.
The Biohacking Origin of Sourmilk
Every great product begins by solving a real problem. For Sourmilk, that problem was personal. The “aha!” moment wasn’t conceived in a boardroom but born from Elan Halpern’s own kitchen experiments to combat chronic inflammation and bloating.
She wanted a food-based solution that was more bioavailable and enjoyable than a daily supplement pill. Moreover, the remarkable health benefits she experienced were proof of concept. She had improved skin, hair, sleep, and energy.
During our female entrepreneur podcast episode, Kiki talks about the leap from this personal project to a scalable vision. Most often, this stage is where many ideas falter! But for Kiki and Elan, it was a natural extension of their shared passion for practical wellness.
Creating Realistic Customer Personas and Testing the Market
So, how to launch a food product when you’re new to the industry? Kiki Couchman started with strategy! The first step was creating a deck outlining Sourmilk’s mission, vision, values, and what differentiated it in the market. She and Elan carefully developed customer personas.
They ditched generic buyer profiles like “women aged 22-32,” and targeted specific, realistic individuals. Amazingly, many of their customer personas were based on real people, including their friends and family!
Furthermore, both co-founders interviewed around 100 people, asking about yogurt habits, premium CPG (Consumer Packaged Goods) buying habits, loyalty, and probiotic awareness. Clearly, this research was crucial to validate their assumptions and understand if there was genuinely a white space for Sourmilk!
Lessons on Building a Brand in Public
The decision to build Sourmilk publicly is one of Kiki Couchman’s most powerful strategies. It shifts marketing from a launch-day activity to an ongoing process of building brand community.
Why Social Media is Key for CPG Brands
For an organic yogurt startup with a perishable product, awareness is everything. An expiration date meant Kiki couldn’t afford to launch to an empty audience. As brands like Sourmilk rely on grocery store sales, building a pre-launch audience can greatly help!
Thankfully for our viewers and listeners, episode 5 of HSGH reveals Kiki’s social media strategy for startups in the F&B industry:
- Ensure Day-One Demand: Building an audience before launch mitigates the significant financial risk of unsold inventory. Also, it ensures that a customer base is already primed and eager to purchase when your product hits stores.
- Build a Narrative, Not Just Ads: Modern consumers connect with authentic stories, not slogans. Documenting the process of building the business creates a convincing narrative. Transparency on social media channels builds trust and emotional connection that traditional advertising struggles to achieve.
- Turn Consumers into Advocates: Granting your social media audience behind-the-scenes access creates a sense of inclusion. When people feel they are part of your story, they transition from passive consumers to active brand advocates. Before you know it, the same audience will champion your product within their networks!
For more actionable tips about social media for startups from seasoned marketers, subscribe to the HSGH Podcast YouTube channel.
From Pop-Ups to DMs: How Sourmilk Is Growing Its First Customers
Kiki Couchman took on the primary content creation role, realizing she genuinely loved it. Given her magnetically upbeat personality, we believe it couldn’t be better! For her, it is a daily reflection exercise and a mode of creative expression and storytelling.
While many founders are obsessed with scaling fast, the Sourmilk team focuses wisely on scaling deep. Currently, they are in small-scale production, making 20-50 units at a time in a commercial kitchen.
Through drop sales, Kiki and Elan hand-deliver products, gather direct feedback, and building brand community. Their signup list already boasts over 350 people, with an 800-strong mailing list – impressive numbers for a pre-launch, bootstrapped brand!
Sourmilk’s strategy involves plugging into existing communities and events where their target audience exists, offering samples and demos. Needless to say, it’s going to pay massive dividends as their target NYC audience sees or tries the yogurt multiple times before it even lands in stores.
Kiki’s Advice to Aspiring Founders
Kiki Couchman is not secretive when it comes to sharing her knowledge. And the whole HSGH team appreciates that she shared some golden advice for our audience! What’s better is that these tips come from a place of immediate, practical experience.
Let’s go through some of her wisdom, which can help anyone in the early stages of starting a brand.
Find Advocates in Every Space
“Find those mentors and those people who want to invest in you,” Kiki advises. She credits her first manager for being instrumental in her development and support. The right people are the advocates who will open doors and provide guidance when you need it most! Therefore, never underestimate the power of genuine connections in your life.
Done is Better Than Perfect
This is a mantra Kiki swears by. She discusses how you can never expect everything to be perfect when starting your project. So, the best time is right now!
So, trust yourself, make a decision, and go. This is especially true for social media, where consistent output often trumps elusive perfection.
Parting Thoughts
Episode 5 with Kiki Couchman peels back the layers on their journey of building a food startup in one of the most competitive markets. While this is the story of a yogurt company, its implications are far broader.
Kiki’s journey is a microcosm of a big shift in consumer culture. As consumers, we are moving away from polished perfection and toward radical transparency. More than just buying products, we buy into people, their stories, and their values.
The trend is evident as we regularly see social media personalities influencing people’s buying decisions. In the modern economy, your vulnerability might just be your greatest strength. So, listen to the full Kiki Couchman interview on the HSGH’s YouTube and Spotify channels to absorb all the insights and inspiration.
Building your own brand? Cronix helps early-stage startups like Sourmilk with strategy, web, and growth. Talk to our team today!
How She Got Here | Season 2 is proudly brought to you by Cronix, a full-service eCommerce and digital marketing agency. Our VP, Cass Cross, and the whole team work tirelessly to bring you the most authentic stories from women and femme-identifying leaders who are reshaping eCommerce and tech for the better.
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