I’m really excited to welcome Joel Canada (pictured on the left), co-owner of MALK Organics, to my Plant Chat today. Joel has a passion for clean, sustainable foods, so when the opportunity arose for creating a business based on whole, plant-based milk alternatives, it was an easy concept for him to get behind. I’m a huge fan of MALK Organics nut milks, which are dairy-, soy-, gluten-, GMO- and lactose-free, and vegan friendly. They are also free of carrageenan, binders, colors, or artificial sweeteners, and the products are made with six ingredients or less. With so much to offer, MALK Organics is the delicious alternative to artificial.
I stumbled across Joel in my journeys in Austin, and couldn’t wait to sit down with him to chat about the inspiration behind MALK Organics. Read on to learn more about his journey.
What was your inspiration to start up MALK?
My partners are August Vega, my cousin, and Justin Brodnax, her brother (pictured above). We would get together and talk about what we could do to work together—we are really more like siblings. August had an epiphany as being allergic to dairy, and her son Vincent had the same issues. She had been making plant-based milks at home, because really everyone in the family had some kind of intolerance to dairy. She had been making almond and cashew milks. She noticed that there was an empty space in supermarkets for plant milks, everything had carrageenan or was cooked—nothing was truly fresh. They all had additives, and everything was really thick. We realized that this is it, there is a need for plant-based milks and dairy alternatives.
In 2014, it was very clear. We decided to take that on, not really knowing what would happen. We started at the farmers market in Houston, and we wanted to see if people would like it. We started selling out at every farmers market we were at. We were making it by hand, just like in your kitchen. Per the city code, we had to rent commissary kitchen space after hours. We started making it in mason jars, and giving it out, and taste testing it. We tightened the recipe up. As soon as it hit farmers markets, we bought round glass bottles, making it at the commissary on Friday nights, and putting it in coolers to take to the farmers markets on Saturdays. It had a 3-day shelf life. We made it in Vitamix blenders that we bought, and then put it through nut milk bags, squeezing the pulp. We continued this process, and also offered it at a few local retailers in Houston and Austin, like coffee shops. A local forager at Whole Foods found us and started talking with us about a plan to launch at one of their locations. At the end of 2014, it steamrolled into a regional launch. It’s really tough to get a really fresh product to distributors across the nation. Now Blue Bottle Coffee Shop carries MALK.
How did you go from a small fresh product to big distribution?
From day one, August had it in her head that we were going to be a big company. Fans were preordering it on Facebook, but we knew that we didn’t want to cook the product or pasteurize it, which defeated the purpose of the product having sprouted nuts, and live enzymes. There was only one option: HPP (high pressure processing). We figured out that it’s the best way to keep the food product as fresh as possible. It kills the microorganisms that allows fungus to grow, but allows enzymes to still be alive. It is done in a cold environment. Our production line is custom, nobody else is making plant-based milks like we are. It truly is a cold-pressed product. We get 49 days of shelf life from the day that it is processed. It needs to stay refrigerated constantly. Once you crack the bottle open, you have to finish it in seven days or it will spoil.
We have our own facility in Houston where we make it. Most brands don’t make their own products, they send a recipe to a packer, but we had to do it ourselves because of our own process. We created our own plant and hired our own people, overseeing everything. We have someone tasting every single batch when it goes out. We sprout the nuts, which is important for flavor and nutritional value and the gut health aspect of it. People weren’t going to do it for us, so we had to do it ourselves. We have the same team with a total of 30 employees. My cousins and I, and my aunt—we run a tight ship. We didn’t hire out any bigwigs or anything like that. MALK is available in every state in some retailer; in August it went national at Whole Foods in all locations. We’re in HEBs here in Texas, and in 75% of natural grocers, in a lot of independents, and in Target.
I do the product reviews and mange the sales teams. We brain-stormed on names, and from the beginning, it made since to call it MALK. We wanted the aesthetic of the label to be a true dairy replacement. We wanted to sort of reboot milk, and the name is a stand-in for almond, and now we say it is a dairy alternative. We have an old school look of a milk bottle and a catchy functional label that draws people to it. In most cases, it’s the most expensive plant-based milk in the grocery store, but people are drawn to pick it up and look at it. They are more likely to look at it and be interested in it. There is a food revolution now, where more people are buying food based on quality rather than price.
What did you want to achieve with MALK?
It was really simple for us; we had a problem as a family. If we wanted plant-based milks and wanted to get something that was fresh and had true nutritional value, we knew it was important to other people—that was the whole idea behind it. Nobody is sprouting nuts, and even if they did, the product was cooked, which defeated that purpose. We think this is something we need as a family and it solves the problem for us.
How did you want it to differ from what was already out there?
We started with almond milk, sourcing our almonds from Spain; at the time the drought was bad and we didn’t want to contribute to that. And we wanted nuts that were not pasteurized. Then our pecan milk came about—we already had it created before almond, but we had to have a locally sourced ingredient to sell it in the farmers market. We were using organic pecans from Rio Grande Organic, and at the farmers market it was a top seller. It was really selling a lot, then at Whole Foods it sold even more, and the guy from Rio Grande Organics wanted to invest. We have cashew milk now and cold brew coffee—we get sustainably grown coffee from Chiapas, Mexico to blend with the pecan milk.
Everything we do we are trying to do it right, but that is harder and not as profitable, and we are not able to grow as fast. Everyone on our team is happy; the production guys are paid $2 more per hour than the going wage in Houston, and we are giving paternity leave.
It really is just nuts, salt and water in the product. We get it so creamy because we use a lot of nuts. It seems to us that the industry standard for nut milks is 3% nut content, ours is 33%. We use 28-ounce bottles of unsweetened milk, which will have a little bit over 1 cup of almonds in there, and water and Himalayan salt. It is the perfect formula. It is expensive to do that, but it’s the only way to get a good, true almond milk, otherwise it’s just fillers. What’s different about us, is that most companies are using an almond paste to start their process, where as we are sprouting whole nuts over 24 hours. We sweeten products only with pure maple syrup.
How do you use MALK in cooking at home?
I cook with it sometimes. I’ll make it for coffee. For anything I need creaminess, I use cashew milk—I use it in everything.
How has MALK been accepted by people?
From what we can see, it has solved a problem for people who didn’t want gums in their dairy alternatives, and who are suspicious of the percentage of nuts in the bottle. We have transparency in what we do, and we are clear as we can be about the process and why it looks like we’re different. The takeaway from most customers is what it says on the bottle: only three ingredients. They know it’s cold-pressed and why it costs this much. The clean label and clean table of ingredients is what people seem to love.
What is in the future for MALK?
We do have a lot of exciting things coming that we can’t talk about, but they are all plant-based. And it is going to be stuff everyone is going to dig when it comes out. We are launching two new flavors very soon, a chocolate almond and a throw-back to Nesquik days—a strawberry cashew. We announced them at a food show and they were freaking out with the strawberry cashew with organic strawberries.
