How much would you spend on yogurt?

Review #6 - The Coconut Cult 🥥

I spent way too much time taking pictures of myself with yogurt this week

What can I say, gut health is king.

Review #6 - The Coconut Cult 🥥

What Is It

The Coconut Cult makes “artisanal probiotic yogurt” that delivers “gut health that feels and tastes good”. They claim to offer a non-dairy means of restoring digestive health through “insanely probiotic” living foods, creating an actually healthy yogurt unlike other “dead” alternatives on the market.

They offer jars of plain, chocolate, and strawberry coconut yogurt at health food stores, along with limited edition/collab flavors that drop sporadically on their site for their subscribers.

The kicker? It’ll cost you a pretty penny. A one-time purchase on their site will run you up ~ $80 ($40/jar with a 2-jar minimum). There are other ways to get your hands on the stuff without dropping major bills… more on that later.

Aesthetic

I’m not sure I have the words to describe The Coconut Cult’s visual identity, but here’s my attempt.

Retro Miami Minimalism with a Sprinkling of Emojis™️

There’s something endearing about the way The Coconut Cult doesn’t adhere to the colorful, high-contrast branding that screams Wonderkind was here. The packaging feels purposefully outdated and deprioritized, in that charming old-school-health-food way. The fact that their wordmark changes with each new flavor could be scoffed at, but to me, it’s silly.

It’s a breath of fresh air in the world of ultra-produced, VC-budget branding and a good reminder to the creative strategists of the world (eyeroll but I’m one of them) that at the end of the day, none of this s*** is that deep.

*UPDATE FROM THE AUTHOR: After writing the above section, I’ve since been informed that The Coconut Cult debuted their new branding at Expo West earlier this month. Check back in on me in 2-4 months for a formal retraction.*

Brand / Marketing

Their marketing is untraditional and weird, which I guess is to be expected from a small batch fermented, highly-active, living plant-based yogurt company. There’s clearly a copywriting issue here (I’m available for hire!), but the clunky language on their site doesn’t really matter when the majority of their owned content is video footage of their founder being a goofball.

Make no mistake, goofball is not a pejorative. In fact, it’s the absolute genius behind this whole brand and the reason it’s exploded online (literally 😉). The only thing this man takes seriously is differentiating his product from yogurt flops of yore, democratizing health foods, and, like any good wellness-lover, the dangers of seed oils. Thus, he’s able to utilize social media the way God intended: spewing conspiracy theories and dancing on video.

thecoconutcult

A post shared by @thecoconutcult

Noah’s joie de vivre (ok, chic) is now synonymous with the brand’s persona, a humanness that he assures won’t go away even with their new branding. Noah essentially treats thecoconutcult’s Instagram and TikToks more like personal accounts and less like those of a business, meaning he’s having actual conversations with people on posts and in the DMs. I’d imagine this is what paved the way for long-lasting influencer and brand friendships, which is actually how I learned about The Coconut Cult years and years and years ago.

So with these genuine relationships, in addition to hiring Ari Raz as CEO, their team has been able to direct all creative energy towards innovating on limited edition collab flavors, like Matchaful’s Iced Honey Frappuccino and @kalejunkie’s Apple Pie.

thecoconutcult

A post shared by @thecoconutcult

I do find it annoying that these drops sell out in a matter of hours and require you to spend $70 on two jars as a baseline. And that’s only if there’s any left once the subscribers with first dibs snatch them all up.

Alas, some people refresh their browsers for sneaker drops, others do the same for dairy-free yogurt.

I should add, I understand that fun flavors with a quick turnaround comes at the expense of production quantity, so hopefully Whole Foods actually responds to Noah’s plea so I can finally get my hands on a jar of the Hu Kitchen Chocolate Banana Bread.

Efficacy

Two parts here: this yogurt is meant as an edible probiotic supplement, so I’m judging on both gut benefits and taste.

Gut Stuff: Yep, these cultures are alive and active. They mean it when they say to start with a 1-2 TBSPs before you eat a whole bowl of this stuff. Since this shit isn’t cheap ($10 at Whole Foods is the cheapest I’ve found) I don’t use their yogurt as a replacement for my probiotic (more on that here). However, I can say that I have absolute faith in its digestive health powers, given that a yogurt of mine once exploded.

Gut flora = diverse

Taste: I love this stuff, especially the chocolate mousse flavor as an after-dinner treat. The best word I could use to describe the whole experience is “effervescent” so props to their copywriter for that one. It’s not as overwhelmingly sweet as a DF Chobani or god forbid, Oatly, but that’s the whole point — the ingredients are 10/10. Also, the Harvest Strawberry flavor tastes like Go-Gurt, if you’re into that sort of thing.

Overall Thoughts

I cannot in good faith recommend this product without warning you that it’s a financial commitment. Now that I’ve tried it, it’s pretty hard for me to go back to my longtime love, Cocojune. I’m not yet a member of the cult though, it’ll take some advancements in flavor accessibility for me to fully get on board.

Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️/5

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In Other News…

• My sincerest condolences to the members of the Huberman Harem…

• So long, Stevia, there’s a new natural sweetener on the block now.

• Snack-sized apples are now a thing, because apparently apples aren’t already naturally snack-sized.

• Unfortunately, I must admit that I did indeed take a quiz to unlock an opportunity to purchase a Rizzoli book about the beauty of bacteria. I wish I could put those words back in my mouth. It was for research, ok!

• Gwyneth-dupe alert! You know her, you love her, ladies and gentlemen, Meghan Markle, former Duchess of Sussex.

That’s all for now. If there’s a product you want reviewed or just want to chat, reply to this email. :)