When Siggi Hilmarsson moved to New York City from Reykjavik, Iceland, in 2002, he quickly grew nostalgic for the thick skyr yogurt he grew up eating as a kid. At the time, all the yogurt in the U.S. was so runny and packed with sugar, he couldn't stomach it. Hilmarsson was getting his MBA at Columbia and went on to take a job as a consultant for Deloitte. But his hankering for skyr, the thick tart yogurt traditional to Iceland, never faded.
In 2004, Hilmarsson's mother faxed some recipes for skyr from her local library in Iceland, and he began tinkering in the kitchen of his Manhattan loft. The first batch was terrible and the next couple were hit or miss. Hilmarsson quickly learned that making yogurt requires controlled temperatures he couldn't get in his drafty Tribeca loft.
The following winter, Hilmarsson told his boss at Deloitte he was going on a ski trip, and instead went upstate to a university dairy plant he rented out for three days. There he made his first batch of professional yogurt. He still didn't know if this was a nerdy hobby or a viable business idea. He just wanted to make tasty yogurt.
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