The Yogurt Industry Has a Waste Problem. Here’s How One Business Is Fighting Back—And Building a Community Along the Way
Our products are handmade and labor intensive at The White Moustache, a handmade, hand-strained yogurt business based in Red Hook, Brooklyn that I founded with my father. Our business model is by design and intention not a volume business (and thus sometimes confusing to potential investors). The goal isn’t to learn how to mass-produce, but to profit by staying small and connected to the product and our sources and our customers. And my heritage. This is our quiet political statement.
White Moustache Yogurt will always find a way to use whey
Merely existing is not the end of our advocacy efforts. We recognize that the value in our company is not just in the dollars that we provide our staff, but in the staff themselves. We also came to realize we could no longer continue to ignore the fact that yogurt companies’ main byproduct—yogurt whey—was damaging to the environment.
Whey is the liquid reserve left after one strains yogurt. It is a glorious, nutritious, and hard-earned liquid form of yogurt. To my amazement when I started selling yogurt, I learned that almost all commercial yogurt makers throw away this incredibly versatile and nutritious liquid. I made it my mission to change this.
Initially it wasn’t a problem, because making only eight gallons of yogurt yielded enough whey for our family to consume ourselves. But as The White Moustache started making more yogurt commercially, from twenty gallons to eighty-five gallons per day, we found ourselves swimming in whey. There is no market for whey in America, and whey, still being dairy, eventually goes bad. So we had to dispose of what we couldn’t consume. But throwing out all that whey—which we had always thought of as perfectly good food—felt wrong.
And we were part of a much bigger food waste problem. Currently, most yogurt manufacturers pay to have their whey carted away. Some pay farmers to take it as animal feed. Pigs, cows, and chickens love it, but there’s only so much they can consume. These manufacturers pay additionally for wastewater treatment companies equipped with anaerobic digesters to haul away their whey and convert it into biogas (usually methane), which can be converted into energy—a good use, I admit, but the process is expensive. University research departments are looking for other ways to use whey by separating out the protein, lactose, acid, and water for use in industrial food manufacturing, but these technologies are still in the early phases and, again, the process is expensive.
A 2013 article in Modern Farmer magazine by Justin Elliott, “Whey Too Much: Greek Yogurt’s Dark Side,” was one of the first media sources to call attention to the yogurt industry’s open secret. The story—and several subsequent ones in other outlets—reveals how whey, if dumped directly and untreated into waterways, can destroy life therein. The bacteria already present in the water devour the lactose in the whey, which depletes the oxygen. With no oxygen, all the fish die. A high and unnecessary price to pay for thick, creamy yogurt.
The bacteria already present in the water devour the lactose in the whey, which depletes the oxygen. With no oxygen, all the fish die. A high and unnecessary price to pay for thick, creamy yogurt.
Because The White Moustache is a small, handmade-yogurt company, we are closer to our product and feel the loss of the whey more personally. In our view, it’s as nonsensical to throw out gallons of liquid yogurt whey as it would be to toss out gallons of solid yogurt. These two yin-yang products are equally nutritious. If you lived in a world where everyone knew what to do with egg yolks but always threw out the egg whites, wouldn’t you share your knowledge and teach everyone about meringue?
And so, in August 2014, after only a year and a half in business, we made a conscious and intentionally un-savvy business move to cap our yogurt production until we had created a market for our whey. We were not going to make more yogurt and end up with more whey on our hands than we could use.
In our view, it’s as nonsensical to throw out gallons of liquid yogurt whey as it would be to toss out gallons of solid yogurt. These two yin-yang products are equally nutritious.
When we fight to improve—rather than worsen—our food system, everyone wins
While it might be seen as a counterintuitive business decision to focus on selling an unfamiliar ingredient like yogurt whey, we see it as a long-term, ambitious strategy. Even if we make a ton of yogurt, it doesn’t feel like a true success if we’re creating all this waste. We consider our celebration of yogurt whey to be the greatest contribution that The White Moustache can make to the food system.
When we made yogurt at home, my family just drank the whey left over after straining. We considered whey to be hydrating, light, and an aid in digestion. My dad would have a sip, pass it to my mom, she would drink it and make a face, then I’d get it and take a gulp and pour some in the dog’s water bowl before my sister would grab the glass, sip it, and give any remaining dribbles to a plant in the yard.
We thought that’s how we would present it to consumers: Drink whey! There was no blueprint—there are no packaged whey drinks back in Iran or elsewhere in the world that I knew of to use as inspiration or reference. There is no widespread reference to using whey in cooking because home cooks have only a little bit of whey at their disposal. Commercial yogurt makers throw out the product or sell it to be dehydrated, making sure it never reached the mainstream the way yogurt had.
We put our whey in one-liter bottles and slapped on a label that said “Whey!” We went to stores that carried The White Moustache and asked the buyers to drink it. These bottles hit the shelves. We priced them fairly as a byproduct. The bottles shone bright with their natural neon-yellow hue, full of the probiotics, calcium, and riboflavin (a B-vitamin) that gives the whey its brilliant color. And then we waited. And waited.
No one knew what to do with the whey or which section of the store to put it in. Was it a juice? A kefir? Even stores that were fully behind the idea of a food product that reduced waste were unsure of how to communicate this to their customers.
And so, the customers did not come. Fearlessly honest New Yorkers were not shy about letting us know what they thought: “It’s weird” and “The color is strange” and “We don’t know what to do with it.” We scrambled to make it more familiar, by adding descriptions of what whey was, how it tasted, and what to do with it, but the bottles of whey just didn’t sell.
But where we failed in our attempts to explain whey’s uses directly to retail customers, we found a curious and receptive audience with chefs, restaurateurs, and bartenders. They dazzled us with their creative applications. Chefs are trained to play with ingredients, to come up with new flavor and texture combinations, and to be acutely aware of the bottom line, finding uses for scraps and leftovers rather than throwing them away. Whey fit the bill perfectly, and so my traditional, old-world yogurt-making technique with its modern, new-world child (whey) was suddenly being tested, coddled, and heralded by talented chefs.
Holding fast to our yogurt-making technique and Zoroastrian values while celebrating the inspired innovation coming out of our New York City community felt like a symphony orchestra breaking out into a Britney Spears cover: fun, light, unexpected. That’s how it feels to cook with yogurt whey.
Holding fast to our yogurt-making technique and Zoroastrian values while celebrating the inspired innovation coming out of our New York City community felt like a symphony orchestra breaking out into a Britney Spears cover: fun, light, unexpected. That’s how it feels to cook with yogurt whey.
Curbing our growth when we have a wait-list of stores that want the yogurt was a stubborn choice for a small company like ours to make. And yet, that commitment to slow down and look at all aspects of the business allowed us to grow and innovate in meaningful ways. Watching The White Moustache succeed given all the obstacles and challenges we’ve faced has helped redefine my notions of success and failure. As the business grows, we’re building a community of chefs, scientists, and home cooks who are inspired by yogurt and the process of making it—and for me, that's a powerful whey (ahem, way) to move forward with our business.
Excerpted from Yogurt & Whey: Recipes of an Iranian Immigrant Life by Homa Dashtaki. Copyright © 2023 by Homa Dashtaki. Used with permission of the publisher, W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. All rights reserved.
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