Within the increasingly crowded plant-based RTD latte category, Táche believes it has something truly innovative.
Last month, the New York-based brand quietly introduced its first-ever single-serve product, Táche Pistachio Milk Latte, sold in 11 oz. cartons. A labor of love for founder/CEO Roxana Saidi, the drink is also a critical piece of the company’s growth strategy for growing awareness and acceptance of pistachio milks.
“The origin story of Táche is that I had two lifelong passions that unexpectedly collided one day and one of those passions was for pistachios, a cultural centerpiece in my Middle Eastern background, and the other one that is just as relevant was for coffee,” Saidi explained. “In launching a barista pistachio milk, there was always [the idea for] a latte brewing in the background and what that would look like.”
In the U.S., coffee has been an integral component of non-dairy milk’s prodigious category growth story over the past decade, starting with Oatly’s early traction in specialty cafes. That brand’s success helped inspire competition and jump-started oat milk’s rise to the second-largest plant-based milk category.
Táche is walking something of a similar path. While fighting for retail gains for its four-SKU line of 32 oz. multi serve cartons – available in Original, Unsweetened Original, Vanilla and Unsweetened Vanilla for $8.99 each at stores including Bristol Farms, Erewhon and Nugget Markets – the brand has also been seeding its barista-edition pistachio milks behind the bar at specialty cafes; it’s currently in around 3,000 locations nationwide, including premier roasters like Stumptown and Intelligentsia. There have also been more purposeful collaborations, like a partnership with Devoción Coffee Shop in Manhattan to use Tache’s pistachio milk in an off-menu “secret” drink.
Those relationships influenced learnings around formulation and positioning, though Saidi noted that Táche has delayed partnering with a roaster thus far in order to bring the product to market faster.
Still, the process wasn’t necessarily quick; the brand spent over two years testing more than 30 iterations of its latte before settling on a recipe featuring 100% Arabica cold brew from Peru. The final formulation contains 13 grams of sugar per serving and boasts a creamier consistency than oat milk, Saidi noted. The new RTDs are being manufactured by the same copacker that produces its pistachio milks. Design work was handled by the Táche team and external contributors like Smash and Co Creative and Enrike Puerto.
After quietly launching online last month, retail shoppers can expect to find Táche’s new lattes priced at $6.49 at a handful of independent markets including Orchard Grocer (New York City), Monsoon Market (Phoenix) and, later this summer, in Whole Foods and Target.
For the company itself – still a small operation of around seven full-time employees – the shift to a smaller format unlocks some significant marketing opportunities. For one, it’s easier to demo and simply get into people’s hands; since the latte’s introduction last month, Táche’s social media reach was somewhere around 28 million metric encompasses (cumulative impressions, shares and overall visibility within that time frame). It’s also become the second best-selling SKU on its online store.
“We’re jumping into these big retailers with our one liter [carton], and we’re going to be doing a demo program and really driving more trial for those,” she said. “So it feels like now we’re really rowing in the same direction.”
In contrast to oat milk-based RTD coffees, Táche’s pistachio lattes have less direct on-shelf competition, at least for the moment. Alt-dairy specialists Elmhurst have a Pistachio Creme flavor in its recently launched 24 oz. RTD coffee line, and Three Trees markets an organic Pistachio Nutmilk in 28 oz. bottles.
Yet Saidi pointed to her brand’s position as one of the only “true” pistachio milks on the market (other products also include ingredients like almonds and rice), as well as the stability of its global sourcing partners, as the most protecting Táche from immediate rivals. That also means plenty of gas for fueling potential forays into other food or beverage categories.
“If it was easy to create the supply chain for high quality pistachios that we’ve created, then everybody would be doing it,” she said. “It’s incredibly challenging, and that’s why to this day no one’s been able to do true pistachio products.”