⁠⁠This couple couldn’t find good Greek yoghurt in S’pore, so they built a factory from scratch

Most yoghurt consumed in Singapore has travelled thousands of kilometres before it reaches the fridge.

It typically starts at a dairy farm in Europe, Australia, or the United States, before being processed, packaged, shipped across oceans, and stocked on supermarket shelves weeks later.

Singaporean Haanee Tyebally and her American husband and co-founder, Braedan Tegenfeldt, both 36, wanted to change that. The result is Annie’s All Natural, which claims to be Singapore’s first commercial producer of Greek yoghurt and cultured creams, made in a 2,000 sq ft factory in Mandai.

We spoke with Haanee about how she and Braedan—both with backgrounds in international development and no prior experience in food science, dairy, or manufacturing—built the factory from the ground up and a supply chain that now serves some of the country’s most prestigious hotels.

A family recipe

Braedan handled all of Annie’s operations in Myanmar by himself from his family’s garage./ Image Credit: Annie’s All Natural

Annie’s story began not in Singapore, but in Yangon, Myanmar, where the couple grew up and built their lives together.

Braedan founded the business in 2014 after spotting a gap in the market. His mother had begun making Greek yoghurt at home after a holiday in Greece, recreating a staple of his American upbringing in Myanmar.

At the time, the country was seeing an influx of returning nationals and expatriates, but good-quality Greek yoghurt was virtually impossible to find. Seeing the opportunity, Braedan decided to turn the family recipe into a business.

Alongside his full-time job, Braedan started producing artisanal Greek yoghurt out of his parents’ garage, made in small batches and entirely by hand. Gradually, the business grew steadily from supplying small luxury hotels such as Belmond’s Governor’s Residence to being stocked at Myanmar’s largest grocery stores.

Haanee, who was working in Myanmar at the time for an NGO focused on family planning and women’s health, wasn’t involved in the business then. However, she later joined as his co-founder when the pair eventually moved to Singapore in 2020.

Annie’s was available in Myanmar at supermarkets and farmers’ markets up until 2020./ Image Credit: Annie’s All Natural

During the circuit breaker, the couple watched supermarket shelves empty as supply chains strained, and found nothing locally made that matched the quality of the Greek yoghurt they’d been eating and producing in Myanmar.

We didn’t really see anything that was comparable that was available in Singapore—something made either locally or within our region, something high quality, made of really good milk.

The same gap Braedan had spotted years earlier in Myanmar had emerged again, this time in Singapore.
That convinced the couple to make a bold move: build a production facility from scratch and establish a new life in Singapore.

From July 2021 to early 2023, the couple spent nearly two years building the facility from the ground up. They commissioned custom machinery from Italy, installed cold rooms, fitted out a food-grade processing plant, and ran batch after batch through R&D until they were satisfied with the final product.

The investment came close to six figures—a scale that was far beyond anything they had undertaken in Yangon.

But what makes Annie’s different?

Image Credit: Annie’s All Natural

The answer lies in almost every step of its production process.

Firstly, it’s the brand’s flavours. Annie’s sources grass-fed, free-range milk from New Zealand, specifically from a dairy processor powered by geothermal energy—one of the few in the world to run on a renewable energy source.

According to Haanee, sourcing milk from Southeast Asia wasn’t a serious option because the region’s tropical climate isn’t well suited for dairy cows. She also believes grass-fed milk offers a better micronutrient profile while reflecting higher animal welfare standards.

The brand is equally intentional about its flavours. Rather than sticking to the usual fruit varieties, Annie’s offers six options: plain, vanilla bean, passionfruit, ginger, coffee, and its newest flavour, raspberry.

Haanee and Braedan visits Annie’s production facility daily./ Image Credit: Annie’s All Natural

The biggest difference, however, is how the yoghurt is made.

While many products labelled “Greek yoghurt” achieve their thick texture through mechanised straining or added milk proteins and solids, Annie’s follows the traditional method. After the milk is cultured, the yoghurt is transferred into large cloth bags and left to strain naturally for 14 to 16 hours.

According to Haanee, this slow process naturally concentrates the yoghurt’s proteins, fats, and flavour, creating a dense, creamy texture without thickeners, stabilisers, emulsifiers, or other unnecessary additives.

We really want consumers to have the experience of eating a super minimal product that’s made in a way that takes time, effort, intention, and care.

Building a client base from scratch

(Left): Besides yoghurt, Annie’s crème fraîche (S$9.98) is also available for sale directly to consumers; (Right): Annie’s is a familiar face at farmers’ markets./ Image Credit: Annie’s All Natural

When Annie’s officially launched in Singapore in 2023, it had no distribution network, no established connections in Singapore’s F&B industry, and no existing retail relationships. What they had was yoghurt they believed in.

Their first strategy was to target the hospitality sector.

Hotels, they reasoned, consumed large volumes of yoghurt on breakfast buffets, had stringent food safety standards that played to their strengths, and had procurement teams who could evaluate products on merit. Getting through those doors required a lot of cold emails and door-knocking, but it eventually paid off.

Today, Annie’s supplies an impressive roster of properties: Shangri-La on Orange Grove Road, Fullerton Hotel and Fullerton Bay Hotel, Sofitel City Centre, JW Marriott South Beach, W Hotel in Sentosa, and multiple Resorts World properties, including the newly opened Lis Hotel. Hotels and restaurants now account for the bulk of the company’s sales.

Beyond Greek yoghurt, Annie’s also produces sour cream, crème fraîche, and labneh—a lightly salted yoghurt cheese—with culturing times of between 24 and 40 hours to meet the needs of its hospitality and foodservice clients.

Annie’s is regularly stocked at Little Farms’ supermarkets, apart from RedMart./ Image Credit: Annie’s All Natural

On the retail front, Annie’s has been stocked at Little Farms since shortly after launch, a partnership Haanee shared was built on shared values around clean ingredients and transparent sourcing. The brand has also expanded online through RedMart, with each 120g tub retailing for S$4.20.

For now, though, major supermarket chains still remain out of reach.

High listing fees, upfront production costs, and long payment cycles pose significant barriers for a small producer, though Haanee hopes Annie’s will eventually make its way onto mainstream supermarket shelves so more Singaporeans can access its products.

A growing market

Image Credit: Annie’s All Natural

Today, Annie’s produces more than 4,000kg of Greek yoghurt each month, processing over 8,000 litres of milk.

Haanee attributes that growth to changing consumer habits. Once a niche product, Greek yoghurt has become increasingly mainstream as social media, greater nutrition awareness, and more well-travelled consumers drive demand for high-protein foods.

She also noted that Greek yoghurt’s naturally lower lactose content than regular yoghurt makes it well-suited to Asian consumers, many of whom are lactose intolerant.

To reach more customers, Annie’s has been doing pop-ups at various farmers’ markets like City Spouts, AIR restaurant at Dempsey and the Singapore Agro-Food Enterprises Federation over the years.

That said, the team remains small, comprising six full-time and part-time staff, with Haanee and Braedan still directly involved in daily production.

Haanee shared that labour is one of the industry’s most persistent challenges. Finding people willing to do the physical, time-intensive work of food manufacturing in Singapore is increasingly difficult in the F&B sector.

The other running challenge is cost. Producing at a small, artisanal scale with premium ingredients in Singapore means that its price point cannot compete with multinational dairy brands that benefit from industrial-scale economics.

Annie’s yoghurt isn’t cheap, and Haanee doesn’t shy away from that, but she believes that her products provide good value for customers for a high-quality dairy producer.

To reduce costs, Annie’s encourages its corporate clients to participate in its very own glass jar recycling programme. It collects, sterilises, and reuses yoghurt jars for its next batch of production.

In the past year alone, close to 40,000 jars have been recovered and reincorporated into the supply chain rather than going to waste.

In it for the long run

Annie’s currently offers six flavours./ Image Credit: Acapella Photography, Annie’s All Natural

Haanee is cautious about trend dependency.

Greek yoghurt is having a moment between viral social media content, growing protein consciousness, and a more nutritionally savvy consumer, but the goal at Annie’s isn’t to ride the wave. It’s to outlast it.

“I hope that our products build beyond trends and that people actually eat them—one, because they enjoy them, but two, because they are really good for you,” she said.

For a brand that spent close to six figures building a factory here before selling a single jar, that long-term thinking is baked into everything Annie’s does, from its values to the 14-hour strain. It’s a business built around doing things the hard way, because the founders believe the product speaks for itself.

We want to make sure we are doing the best by our customers and making the best product we can and standing by every ingredient we use.

• Find out more about Annie’s All Natural here.
• Read other articles about Singaporean businesses here.

Also Read: ⁠This 52 Y/O kopi business roasts 1,000kg of coffee every month & is winning over younger drinkers

Featured Image Credit: Annie’s All Natural