O'My Dairy Free Gelato is everything low-sugar, allergy-friendly dessert dreams are made of.
Allison Monette, of Richmond, was working in marketing and sales at PepsiCo, and later Altria, when her vision of creating a line of desserts catering to those with dietary restrictions first came to be.
While working in an incubator group at PepsiCo - the same group responsible for creating Stacy's Pita Chips - Monette discovered her passion for the consumer goods industry.
Three years ago, Monette approached Julie Bishop, who was working in product development for Ukrops, about teaming up on "a creamy, delicious treat made for more people to enjoy." After about a year of development on a business model they could easily scale, the pair had their line of O'My Dairy Free Gelato on the market.
"I knew early on that I wanted to make a really clean label, delicious dessert," Monette told Inno. "I was really inspired by people impacted by allergies and dietary restrictions so we decided to make it fully allergy-friendly as well."
Now O'My Dairy features a line of 10 gelato flavors, two of which (I Love Chocolate and Cake Walk) were released in January and feature a lower sugar formulation; both flavors have only two grams of sugar per serving (for those counting, that's only six grams of sugar in the entire pint).
"Even though our product is already lower in sugar relative to other premium ice creams, there are people who legitimately should not be having 17 grams of sugar in a serving," Monette said. "Over and over we had consumers asking us to do a lower sugar product. We've been very thoughtful around diversifying [our products] depending on how we're seeing lower sugar products performing compared to our core line.
O'My Dairy has raised around $850,000 since launch, with the most recent funding coming from Charlie Ventures, as well as a friends and family round in 2018. Monette also said the company has been seeing revenue generation nearly double the industry average.
The frozen dessert company's big break came when they secured Wegmans, their first big customer, bringing a distribution network that spanned between Virginia and Massachusetts. While at first, O'My Dairy was mostly placed in natural grocery stores, since expanding to Wegmans, Arizona-based natural grocery chain Sprouts and Krogers in Virginia and Georgia, they have expanded to nearly 1,500 grocery stores in 48 states.
The timing of their transition to larger grocery stores helped the company get through the Covid-19 pandemic relatively unscathed. While product restocks have been delayed in many stores, Monette added that a general increase in traffic in the frozen foods aisle has also helped them grow their consumer base as people try new brands in lieu of more popular brands being sold out.
O'My Dairy Free Gelato works with a manufacturer in North Carolina, where Monette and Bishop visit during every production run to ensure the ice cream stays allergy-friendly. The Richmond-based team has five members and is also officially certified as a women-owned business.
The certification has not only been good for the brand, but Monette said it has given them access to a network of women business owners and opened doors for them as retailers to seek more diversified suppliers, Monette said.
"Being certified women-owned has been a big and fun part of our journey, trying to specifically seek female investment in our organization and employment" she said. "We have an all-female team, which has been fun for me as someone who comes from a more corporate workplace where that was not the case."
