THE POWER OF GREEN

By Christian Shane Dougherty

Avocadomilk is environmentally responsible. Our farms are all irrigated with rainwater only – no additional irrigation systems used. All our bottles are rPET. This means that they are made from 100% recycled plastic and can keep being recycled. The company uses 100% vegetable inks for all labelling. I recently had the pleasure of chatting with Terry Daly, owner of Avocadomilk.

Can you tell us a little about where you are from and how you were inspired to create Avocadomilk?

Avocadomilk is from New Zealand. It is owned by three New

Zealanders, Nick Siu, Sachie Nomura (Nicks wife) and Terry Daly (me). Sachie is a chef and she invented avocadomilk - she was trying to make a mayonaise out of avocados, and it was very liquid and she thought it tasted great - got Nick and I to try it, and we liked it. We had never seen an avocadomilk before so thought we should make it.

With your new distributor, do you anticipate making the product available in more cities, or just California for now?

We are now with Kehe and Unifi. We employed a sales manager for the USA earlier this year, we are now in over 200 supermarkets in California, the Rocky

Mountain Area, Texas and the Midwest. We are in final discussions with supermarkets in New York and Florida so should be on shelves across the states in September.

Where do you get the avocados?

Mexico - we wanted to have a grower that was sustainable and used only rainwater that looked after the land that they grow on and the people that grow the fruit. And most importantly, the best tasting avocados can be found on our farms in Mexico!

What keeps you motivated as an entrepreneur?

I really dislike the word entrepreneur. It has always sounded like someone who is in between failures to me. I am motivated by people - I love being involved with something that does some good, I love showing my kids that you can sit in New Zealand and dream up an idea that no one else has thought of and he can get Jimmy Fallon to talk about it! Or, get it on Good Morning America. But, most of all, I just really like avocados.

I drink it every day on my granola (we call it museli in New Zealand) - I make my daughters smoothies with it. The benefit is that you are adding a superfood to your diet every day.