Necessity : mother of innovation
The inspiration for Coconut Cloud came from Carlson’s healthy obsession for coconuts and her dietary need for a dairy-free, gluten-free creamer that was healthy as well as portable.
“Kerry travelled a lot, and it’s really challenging to be able to find a great coffee creamer to take with you,” Lauren Walton, Director of Innovation for Coconut Cloud told DairyReporter. “She spent two years searching for a coconut cream powder, which is the base of the entire product, of the utmost purity and quality.”
Coconut Cloud is available for purchase on Amazon, and is packaged in 8 oz. re-sealable pouches that do not require refrigeration, with a guaranteed two-year shelf life.
Ingredients: few and far between
Using coconuts sourced from Thailand, Coconut Cloud is made up of 85% coconut cream, which is milled into a fine powder and sweetened with non-GMO tapioca syrup at the company’s manufacturing facilities in Lafayette, Colorado. Each serving has less than two grams of sugar, the company said.
The blend also includes rice starch, which adds a creamy texture and promotes whiteness. Lastly, dipotassium phosphate accounts for less than 2% of the blend and is added to the powder to prevent clumping.
‘Super food’ qualities
In addition to being soy-free, non-GMO, and gluten free, CoconutCloud contains superfood nutritional properties, the company said.
According to Walton, it was through Carlson’s “exploration of curing bodily ailments through food, coconuts rose to the top as the super food.”
The main super food quality of coconut is the abundance of naturally-occurring medium chain fatty acids (MCTs) that can only be found in tree-nut products like coconuts, Walton said.
MCTs have been linked to weight control and faster metabolism since they do not require special enzymes to be broken and can then be used directly as energy instead of stored as fat, according to an article by the National Institute of Health.
Relief for the allergen conscious
What started out as a personal “product of passion” Walton said, is now addressing an emerging and growing market of allergen conscious consumers.
“Alternative allergen conscious consumers are our target market and certainly the non-dairy generation is at the top of that list,” Walton said. “We really wanted to target what those eco-consumers are craving, it’s a product that can really meet the various needs."