What happens when you can't find a coffee fix? You make it yourself. That's what former Queensland dairy farmer Dave Temple did when he created Australian-style Thunder Coffee Milk.
Mr Temple, who is now based in Florida, could not find decent coffee milk in America that could match what he had tasted back home.
"Coffee milk is so popular in Australia but it's unavailable in the US and you couldn't get anything with the same taste, so that's why we came up with the idea," Mr Temple said.
"We came up with the name Thunder from Down Under because Americans love Australia."
We came up with the name Thunder from Down Under because Americans love Australia
- Dave Temple
Mr Temple teamed up with Ed Henderson, a multi-generation dairy farmer who sells milk directly to consumers in Ohio.
He said the original plan was to value add their own milk but processing capacity, logistics and costs steered them in the direction of simply purchasing their milk requirements.
"It's good quality, a good story (progressive animal welfare audit system in place) and it is low cost," he said.
Mr Temple is a second generation dairy farmer who grew up in Queensland and while at university he had the opportunity to spend six months on a dairy farm in Florida. Due to changed in the dairy industry in Australia, he moved to Florida to dairy in 2003 where he now milks 1500 head with his wife Gina and two girls Emma and Sarah.
When asked how different dairying in the US compared to Australia, Mr Temple said it was "more intensive, more price volatility but more opportunity".
The milk was launched at the Alltech's ONE19 conference in Lexington Kentucky recently. Alltech supported the milk company by developing labels and logo as well as on-line marketing strategy.
Alltech supplied the coffee, 100 per cent fair trade Haitian, for the product used at the ONE19 conference.
"We see the world changing around us, more and more food being bought online," he said.
"This trend along with the increased ease of inventory management and customer convenience meant it fit our project very well and hopefully also the market."
It is "shelf-stable" using a retort process, which he said was "kind of like pressure cooking your vegetables".
"Retort has been around for years and many, many products on the shelf are retort processed," he said.
The milk is only available online in the US but Mr Temple hoped they could drive demand online to distributors and retailers would be welcoming.
"We hope to slowly grow sales so that we can keep up and do a good job," he said.
"We hope to remain nimble and will continue to add more products to our line up to stay ahead of the competition."
Journalist based on the Mid North Coast for The Land.
Journalist based on the Mid North Coast for The Land.
