As a small business ourselves, we always enjoy the opportunity to partner with other like-minded small businesses, especially when they’re female-founded. For our latest collaboration, we teamed up with milli mylk to create a delicious, new seasonal matcha latte at our cafés. If you’re not already familiar with them, milli makes flavor-packed, nutritious, and earth-friendly plant-based mylk. We sat down with co-founder, Maacha Le Blanc to learn more about the story behind their innovative, freeze-dried mylk.
Like Matchaful, milli was first conceived in response to a health need—in this case, it was their son’s dairy intolerance. When their son, Jack, was born with a severe intolerance to dairy, founders Maacha Le Blanc and Caleb Ferguson needed to find a plant-based milk alternative that they were comfortable giving to him. Although Maacha had been drinking plant-based milk for years, it wasn’t until Jack arrived that she really examined the ingredients—she was not happy with what she found.
At this point Maacha began making her own plant-based milk at home. In doing so she learned two important things: fresh, homemade plant-based milk is the best way to drink plant-based milk and, secondly, that making homemade plant-based milk is a messy, time-consuming chore. After years of watching tons of new, plant-based milk brands launch with the same formulations and no innovation, she recognized that there was a huge gap in the market for a plant-based milk that tasted as good as homemade but had the convenience of store-bought.
To help realize this vision, Maacha and Caleb partnered with food scientists and Michelin-awarded chefs to perfect their formula. Together, they worked to develop a product that:
- Tasted great
- Delivered homemade quality without the heavy lifting
- Was a holistically conscious process
The result: the first and only freeze-dried plant-based mylk. Their mixed botanical blend uses real coconut meat and adds almonds, cashews, and tiger nuts to make it tasty, creamy, and functional. The freeze-drying process removes water and suspends the ingredients at peak freshness, flavor, and goodness, which means that what you put in is what you get out—no chemicals or other junk, just tasty mylk. Then to make fresh mylk at home, all you need to do is add water to their freeze-dried mylk mixes and shake.
From the very beginning, Maacha and Caleb knew they wanted to be a truly conscious company at every step of the process. All ingredients are organic and ethically and sustainably sourced. Their Starter Kit comes with a reusable glass bottle to make and store mylk, and their packaging is backyard compostable. Freeze-drying is not energy intensive, and milli's entire production emits 3x less carbon than their carton counterparts. They even had a third-party firm audit all of their practices from farm-to-doorstep to ensure they were operating sustainably across the board. Milli is set to be carbon neutral within their first full year after launch.
We’re such big fans of milli’s approach to plant-based milk and commitment to sustainability. If you’re in the NYC area, visit one of our cafés to try milli’s Coconut Mylk in our Winter Nog Matcha Latte seasonal special.
Matchaful Winter Nog Matcha Latte
Ingredients: Hikari Ceremonial Matcha, nutmeg, cardamom, astragalus, vanilla extract, cinnamon, maple syrup, and milli Coconut Mylk (coconut, cashew, tiger nut, almond milk)