It’s hard to believe that Greek yogurt has been in dairy aisles in the United States for over 20 years. However, it wasn’t until 2009 that it began exploding off the shelves.
As Greek yogurt gained popularity in the United States, Steven Ionnou and his nounó (godfather) John Belesis, co-founders of West Babylon, N.Y.-based Nounós Creamery, could not understand why many of the “Greek-style” brands were lacking the richness and flavor of authentic Greek yogurt they loved while growing up in Greece. The pair traveled back to Greece to research and learn the traditional craft of yogurt-making in the hopes of providing a real Greek yogurt experience for people in the United States. They came back with a family recipe and introduced a new authentic Greek yogurt to the dairy aisle.
The problem
Nounós Creamery spent years developing and creating a great-tasting premium product, but the challenge came during its production process. The company struggled with accurate and efficient forecasting, which often left it with inevitable over-production — or shorting on orders about 10% of the time.
Originally, Nounós Creamery was manually comparing data from its accounting software and its inventory management system to try to accurately predict how much yogurt was needed and what flavors should be produced. However, this task was both complicated and time-consuming, and it resulted in incompatible data, which made production planning more difficult and left the team guessing.
The solution
Nounós Creamery realized that if it wanted to more efficiently and effectively communicate exactly how much of each yogurt flavor to produce, it would need a smarter and more efficient system. The company turned to New York-based Crisp Inc. for its weekly demand forecasting to improve its production process and reduce wasted time and energy for its team.
“Crisp automatically imports our data for immediate forecasts. We can put in estimates for sales orders as we see fit and plan effectively for our production team,” said Belesis.
Real results
Crisp’s forecasting platform harnessed consumption-driven, demand-influencing data much faster and more accurately, helping Nounós Creamery create a more efficient manufacturing process by making more timely projections and anticipating actual expected demands. Additionally, Crisp helped Nounós Creamery improve profitability by providing a more accurate weekly forecasting platform.
“Data automatically uploads daily from QuickBooks to Crisp, and Crisp changes the projections on the spot,” said Belesis. “I click two buttons and everything is ready to export. What used to take one to two hours now takes 10 minutes.”
Nounós Creamery started as a family endeavor to bring delicious and authentic Greek yogurt to dairy aisles everywhere. The company knew that if it could fix the production challenges it faced, it would become an even more successful brand. With the help of Crisp’s forecasting platform, Nounós Creamery’s overproduction fell by 40%, and it was never short on orders. Additionally, the company was able to eliminate time spent forecasting and create a more efficient, effective and profitable production process, helping the family-owned business continue to produce high-quality, authentic Greek yogurt to the delight of its consumers.
