The buzz around a certain yogurt billionaire has been thick lately, but the cash-cow potential of fermented milk products is no secret to Julie Smolyansky, the chief executive officer of the kefir maker, Lifeway Foods.
Smolyansky, now 37, became the youngest female chief executive officer of a publicly held company after her father Michael Smolyansky died unexpectedly in 2002, forcing her hasty scramble from Lifeway's top marketing executive post to the CEO office. Since then, she and younger brother Edward Smolyansky, the chief financial officer, built it from a $12 million-a-year business to one that hit nearly $80 million in revenues last year.
We sat down with Julie Smolyansky recently to talk about kefir, which is a cultured probiotic beverage similar to drinkable yogurt, and which announced a major expansion with Target (NYSE: TGT), from 170 stores to 453 stores in mid-May, a sign that a cult-like product that’s been a staple in Whole Foods (Nasdaq: WFM) and similar health-food chains is moving deeper into the mainstream. Her father Michael Smolyansky, a mechanical engineer who emigrated to the United States from the former Soviet Union with his family in 1976, had a bit in common with Turkish immigrant Hamdi Ulukaya, who founded the Greek yogurt company Chobani (and whose net worth hit $1.1 billion on $745.6 million in revenues). He started Lifeway as an immigrant in search of the American dream—and one who saw something from home missing in the food aisles of U.S. supermarkets.
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