Thanks to the support of our crowd – generous individuals who’ve funded me since Happy Cow 1.0 shut up shop – we’ve had the opportunity to re-think our approach to kinder, greener, fairer dairy.

Today, I want to explain what we’ve come up with. Because you have the chance to become an owner of Happy Cow 2.0 when our equity crowdfund launches soon.

We believe dairy is broken.

Too many emissions, too many nitrates and too much packaging that doesn’t get recycled. The consequences are climate change, polluted rivers and plastics piling up.

A disruptive model.

To have any hope of reducing these impacts, we knew we had to come up with a new approach – one that could be repeated on farm after farm here and overseas. Like so many industries before us (music, transport, accommodation), disruption comes by using new technology to connect producers directly to consumers, circumventing all the ticket-clipping steps in the middle.

Introducing our milk factory in a box.

The existing dairy industry has a lot of steps between the farmer and customer – transport, processing, wholesaling and retailing. With a simple but revolutionary piece of technology, we’re able to get around all these steps – to deliver fresh, local milk with zero packaging!

Here’s how it works.

Each “milk factory in a box” holds 130 litres and is about half the size of a residential dishwasher. The farmer fills the tanks with fresh milk and presses a button. The smart units pasteurise and cool the milk, ready for transport. The units are lifted onto the back of a truck and driven to our community retailers – these can be cafes, schools, community groups or individuals set up at a farmers market. Customers bring their refillable containers and with each transaction, a portion goes to the farmer, the retailer and to Happy Cow. 

Zero packaging

We can argue about glass versus plastic till the cows come home, but zero packaging goes one step further. When you buy Happy Cow milk, you bring your own re-usable container to fill.

Ready to prototype and trial

We’re now raising money to build the prototype and run a trial with our first farmer. Once we’ve proven the model, we’ll grow one farm at a time – connecting each to a community of consumers who will be able to buy this single-source milk. They’ll know where it came from and how it was farmed!

Why equity crowdfund?

We’re so grateful for the support of our crowd, we thought it only fair to offer the first shares to the people who encouraged us to keep going. We’re excited to bring the world kinder, greener, fairer dairy and we hope you’ll join us on our mission.