UFO Blasts Off with Clean Label Hemp Milk Line

As the market for plant-based milks grow to “out of this world” proportions, so to speak, some consumers are taking note of the sugars and preservatives used in leading brands. Enter UFO (standing for Udder Free Only), a California-based brand of premium, clean label hemp milks made with chia and oat flour.

Founded in 2019, UFO is available in Unsweetened and Vanilla flavors and retails for $6.99 per 32 oz. glass bottle. The Vanilla flavor contains 5 grams of sugar per 8 oz. serving. Currently produced in a wholesale kitchen by the co-founders, Drew Schwartz and Daniel Art said they believe UFO can stand out in a competitive plant-based milk category as a clean label offering.

“We like to position our product as a healthy alternative to Oatly,” Art said.

Art and Schwartz first met as roommates 10 years ago and spent the ensuing decade in entertainment — Schwartz in the music business and Art as a financial planning and analysis manager at film studio Lionsgate. Schwartz first began developing UFO in 2019, selling early versions of the product at farmer’s markets, and brought Art into the business to help with financing.

UFO launched into retail in 2019 and had begun building a small footprint in local Los Angeles independent stores. At the end of February 2020, the brand scored one of its biggest accounts to date at the corporate headquarters for Sweetgreen.

But months of hard work was undone in a matter of days when the COVID-19 pandemic hit the U.S. in March. According to Schwartz, UFO lost over 80% of its business due to lockdowns and for a brief moment it appeared that the company would go under before it ever got a chance to get going.

It was Schwartz who suggested the idea of a milkman-style delivery service. The duo set up an online ordering system, promoted through Facebook and Instagram ads and ran promotions, and the response was swift: Over the course of two months, using their own cars, Art and Schwartz delivered over 500 orders and 700 units to customers across Los Angeles.

“It was the perfect time to start delivering service in Los Angeles,” Art said. “Everybody was staying home, nobody was driving. Like, this was something that we’re never going to see in Los Angeles ever again — clear roads.”

The experience also allowed UFO to learn more about its consumer base and served not only as a data collecting tool, but also as an opportunity to get live feedback face to face with their shoppers. Many of the brand’s consumers, Schwartz said, were lactose intolerant but either had nut allergies or some other dietary restriction that prevented them from using products like almond milk. Others were diabetic and sought out hemp milk because it was low in sugar but still delivered nutrients.

Though the concept of the doorstep delivery milkman is often associated with early twentieth century Americana, UFO was hardly alone in revitalizing the service. Canadian brand Lark has dubbed itself a “minimalist milkman,” repackaging milk delivery as a premium, environmentally-friendly experience. The company is planning to launch in the U.S. in the near future. Other regional players such as Manhattan Milk, Bay Area Milkman and Pennsylvania-based Doorstep Dairy have invoked nostalgia in their branding. Another Los Angeles brand, Mylkman, also delivers plant-based products.

For UFO, however, the goal was never to be a full time delivery service, Art said. By the summer, traffic had returned to Los Angeles and with long highway backups once again a part of daily life the brand ceased delivering and began focusing on growing its brick and mortar footprint.

In July, UFO launched in 11 Whole Foods stores in the Los Angeles area, which was followed in October by expansion to a further 35 locations throughout California. At this early stage, the brand has mainly focused on its Whole Foods locations for retail distribution and some independent accounts — as well as tapping into Amazon Prime to drive online orders from the store. UFO is also distributed through HiTouch Distribution.

But Schwartz said UFO is aiming to scale quickly over the next three months and expects to be in about 600 stores by the end of 2021. The company is also preparing to add Chocolate and Banana flavors to its lineup in the near future.

Breaking through amongst a sea of upstart plant-based dairy alternatives won’t be easy, but UFO’s experience in building through the pandemic has given Art and Schwartz confidence in their ability to adapt to the conditions. Unable to give out samples inside Whole Foods stores because of COVID, the pair instead purchased an astronaut outfit and, dressed as “The Spaceman,” handed out full bottles to consumers in the parking lot.

“I would like to say that I got better at dancing but I’m not really sure if I did. I will say that I got some more calluses on my feet,” Art said. “But this has been the hardest part of COVID. You have to get extremely creative with how you reach your audience and actually get them to go in the store and just try your product, at a bare minimum.”