Burgeoning cottage cheese brand Curdi has ceased trading after founder Mili Kenworthy faced up to the insurmountable challenges of getting a dairy startup off the ground.
Kenworthy founded the business last year and launched Curdi’s flagship ‘OG Creamy’ cottage cheese SKU through wholesalers such as CLF Distribution and Cotswold Fayre.
The brand was set to make its retail debut in March this year with a listing in Selfridges.
But instead Kenworthy voluntarily wound the business up because of the difficulties in building a supply chain for a short-shelf-life product at a small scale.
“Early interest and orders validated the brand and product, but bringing the business to market also sharpened the reality of chilled and dairy for early-stage businesses,” Kenworthy told The Grocer.
In a post on LinkedIn, she added: “Building something deeply personal, getting it to the start line, seeing genuine momentum and finally accepting that early-stage dairy is a cold-chain, short-shelf-life, capital-intensive business where the economics don’t work responsibly without far greater scale and funding.
“I feel heartbroken (without being dramatic) but I am so proud of what I built and just as proud of having the judgment to stop when pushing on no longer made sense.”
Kenworthy, who has a background in brand consulting, launched Curdi with an ambition to reimagine cottage cheese as a modern, brand-led product for a new generation of health-conscious consumers.
She said consumers who tried the product repeatedly told her it was the best cottage cheese they had ever tried.
Plans were in motion to develop an XL Protein SKU and other functional variants in the coming year.
“I have nothing but respect for anyone brave enough to build in fresh food,” Kenworthy said. “It’s a different beast entirely and one that teaches you a lot, very quickly.”
The cottage cheese category is growing rapidly in the US and the UK. Last week, Texas-headquartered Good Culture agreed a $500m sale to PE firm L Catterton.
In the UK, Arla has this year launched in cottage cheese, while challenger All Things Butter expanded its dairy offering into the category in Sainsbury’s and Ocado.
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