Painterland Sisters Yogurt Closes Seed Round To Fund Rapid Retail Growth, Connecting More Americans To Organic Dairy Farms

Painterland Sisters cofounders Hayley and Stephanie Painter

Painterland Sisters

Pennsylvania dairy farmers Stephanie and Hayley Painter recently took a trip to Iceland–in awe of the arctic terrain’s similarities to their Appalachian farm. Steep, green hills, difficult to grow crops on, but absolutely perfect for grazing cows.

That’s when it all started to click for the sisters, at the early stages of building a dairy empire, inspired to create creamy, nutrient-dense Icelandic skyr for every American–part of an ambitious effort to boost support for organic farms. They nearly had to shut down their fourth-generation family farm when the dairy market began prioritizing industrial-scale farming. Now its the last one standing in their region, thanks to their carefully crafted approach to selling skyr.

The precocious brands heads one step closer to that empire today, about three and a half years since selling its first cup of yogurt. Painterland Sisters reveals to me it has raised a 7-figure seed round while also expanding its presence nationwide at Whole Foods Market, marking 5,000 shelves in all 50 states.

“Our mission is to connect consumers and farmers together,” Hayley Painter tells me. “We want to bridge that gap to keep farmers farming.”

Life In Tioga County

Painterland Farms, the source of everything Painterland Sisters, is the last remaining dairy farm in the Westfield, Pennsylvania region, along the New York State border. “The Township used to have a bountiful amount [of farms]

,” Hayley says. “There were hundreds…all small. They had their barn, their house and their grazing hill.”

Growing up, farming is all that felt right in the Painter household. “We couldn’t even afford yogurt,” Stephanie tells me. “Yet our lives were so full and we were so proud.”

The Painters have been milking cows in Tioga County, Pennsylvania since the 1940s. The Painters are one with their land and one with their cattle.

“We knew that it would be our turn to take the baton to preserve this way of life,” Stephanie says, “but we didn’t know exactly how we were going to do that.”

The difficult terrain in the region makes for less than ideal conditions for conventional farming. “These hills and valleys here are so steep,” Hayley explains. “You can’t put a house there, you can’t grow vegetables.” During the Great Recession, railroads stopped going to Tioga County because more money was to be made elsewhere where more milk could be produced in industrial settings. Dairy processing plants shuttered and organic farming as a whole there essentially disappeared.

“If we don’t graze our animals there, then we can’t access those nutrients,” Hayley says. “The biodiversity that grazing cows benefits for the ecosystem is so huge–the bees, the butterflies, the wildlife–they all flourish if cows can access that land.”

“A lot of farmers struggled and just had to hunker down and live thinly,” she continues. “We sold a lot of hay those couple years to mushroom farmers.” Sadly, after about a decade of getting by, the dairy market tanked. “We called everywhere in the country…no one would take our milk…we were going to have to sell the cows.”

But as Stephanie says, “we’re farmers…you figure out how to create something with a shoestring and bubble gum.”

Ultra-Filtered Icelandic Skyr

The Painter sisters refuse to ever remain at the mercy of the market, so they decided to move forward with creating a dairy product to help save their farm. The only one that was totally off the table was yogurt, which neither of them were big fans of, whatsoever.

But fate would have it so that they would meet a co-manufacturer, Gunnar, who had just moved to Pennsylvania from his native Iceland to try and globalize the popularity of skyr. “His family is made of a long line of skyr makers,” Stephanie says. “He’s uncompromising on quality.” Instantly, they knew skyr yogurt would be the product to bring to market, shocked at how different it was from everything they knew yogurt to otherwise be. “We wanted to bet everything on skyr.”

Gunnar has since hosted Stephanie and Hayley in his Iceland to experience with their own eyes, ears and hands how authentic skyr is made. “Vikings needed nutrient-density….the cultures that they put in there make it so the protein is higher and the sugar is lower,” Hayley explains. “They filtered it to concentrate it down because they’re traveling with it, bringing it on hikes over that rough terrain.”

Even though each single-serve container of Painterland Sisters yogurt is 5.3oz, they each contain four cups of milk. That’s because the ultra-filtration process creates a concentrate, inspired by Vikings straining milk through a cloth to create their classic skyr.

The yogurt has a unique consistency. Not as thick as Greek yogurt, but just thick enough to stay on your spoon if you were to hold it upside down for a couple of seconds. Still though, Painterland Sisters skyr is different from others you may find on US retail shelves.

The thickness also stems from its double cream 6% milkfat. “We wanted to reclaim the narrative on milk fat,” Stephanie says. Hayley was inspired by all the Brie that was growing in popularity at the time. “If you can have a double cream Brie,” she remembers thinking, “why can’t you have a double cream yogurt?”

Painterland Sisters concentrates its skyr in a more gentle manner than other ultra-filtered yogurts, which are often processed in a centrifuge to remove water. “We keep all those micronutrients, all the whey protein in the product. When you treat the product more gently, it’s easier to digest,” says Hayley.

The practicality of the nutrient-dense Icelandic skyr that spoke to the Painter Sisters was just the starting point. It was the emotional connection too that made it a no-brainer to continue down the path of producing skyr.

“Even though we were countries and generations apart, we had the same heart and the same mission of continuing our families’ legacies and quality products,” Stephanie says about her experience with Gunnar in Iceland. “Our roots are the same.”

Creating A Stable Dairy Market

Stephanie and Hayley milk hundreds of cows multiple times every day. That’s to say, they have a lot of dairy. “We needed to figure out what to put this milk into,” Stephanie says. “We took our destinies in our own hands.”

The covid pandemic brought about many silver linings for entrepreneurs. In the case of the Painter sisters, the organic dairy market started to turn around for the better. They seized on that, knowing they would to make it as easy as possible for the average consumer to buy the product. “It had to be bigger than a farmer’s market,” Stephanie says. “We’re trying to get consumers high-quality products from a farmer at the convenience of their everyday, which is retailers.”

Their first retailer was a giant leap from a farmer’s market: Giant Food, the Pennsylvania-based conventional grocer. The retailer took a chance on selling a three-dollar single-serve yogurt because it would strengthen its commitment to local brands. Painterland Sisters sold its first cup of skyr yogurt in March of 2022 and became a national brand within six months.

Shortly after, they met Daniela D’Ambrosio, a Philly-based forager for Whole Foods Market, and its Senior Product Development and Innovation Expert. “I couldn’t believe it,” D’Ambrosio says about the first time she tried the product, still in makeshift pastic containers. “It tasted like crème brûlée.”

Within a few months, the product was in all of Whole Foods Market’s stores in the Mid-Atlantic region. “I didn’t want to sleep on it,” D’Ambrosio says. “I wanted to make sure that we jumped on it and could be one of the first retailers to have this product.”

All 500-plus Whole Foods Market stores will now carry Patinerland Sisters. Due to the high demand, Whole Foods also carries a multi-serve tub in Vanilla Bean and Plain flavors in addition to its single-serve cups of Blueberry Lemon, Passion Fruit, Meadow Berry, Savannah’s Peach, Strawberry Fields, and an upcoming flavor that will be named after Stephanie’s son, Wilder.

“There’s just so much hard work and love behind [the brand],” D’Ambrosio says. “But the bigger picture is really being good stewards of the land.”

Funding Farmers

Painterland Sisters initially got the brand off the ground through a grant from the Center for Dairy Excellence. The sisters then looked to their own agricultural community to continue the momentum. Stephanie and Hayley wanted fellow farmers to be able to have a piece of the yogurt. They started raising on WeFunder and were able to bring on 700 investors with a minimum investment of $100.

The Angel Group and Spacestation Investments both led the more recent seed round that just closed at an unspecific 7-figure amount.

The majority of American grocery shoppers are women, and the Painter sisters were confident that if they showcased who they were by naming the brand after themselves that it would speak to the very women who are taking out their wallets at the checkout counter. “A lot of yogurt brands have taken the gender neutral approach,” says Jaxon Stuart, Principal at Spacestation Investments, which contributed $615,000 to the round. “But Painterland Sisters is very feminine from the forefront… that was something that immediately grabbed us.”

“We grew up in the middle of northern Pennsylvania on a dairy farm as two young women,” Stephanie says about their branding strategy. “Let’s relate to the general public in a way that most people can’t as dairy farmers.”

Spacestation has a general rule against investing in products that need refrigeration. But the growth data made it hard to ignore. In the past 12 weeks, according to SPINS, Painterlands Sisters more than doubled its sales compared to the same time last year. “That’s what made us overlook our typical cold chain resistance,” Stuart says.

And while a three-dollar cup of yogurt would typically lean more to natural grocer shoppers in big cities, the wide appeal of Painterland Sisters in all pockets of the country creates an appetite to spend more than usual. “We need to have higher-priced dairy products that reflect all the good of keeping the nutrients in the milk, but also what that means for going down the supply chain for the farmer,” Stephanie says. Its due to the comprehensive business that she and Hayley have created, but also the purely irresistible yogurt itself that’s never had a presence on a mainstream American shelves which makes customers from all backgrounds stock up every time they head to the store.

“It’s mind-blowing,” Stuart says. “You take your first bite and you’re like, ‘this is unlike any yogurt I’ve ever had.’ And the authenticity comes through when you meet the sisters…they’re intoxicating.”

Stuart adds, “investors tried the yogurt, then turned a $10k check into a 20k check, truly doubling down on their investment, which has never happened in the 120 companies that we’ve invested in.”

The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania has also provided another grant to Painterland Sisters for an additional ultra-filtration machine as they ramp up production.

“So many people are just rallying behind this brand,” Stuart says. “I think [Stephanie and Hayley] are going to become celebrities.”

A Regenerative Mindset

Creating a market to sell a product that supports farmers is an aspect of regenerative farming that Stephanie and Hayley have excelled at. In fact, they are confident that the uptick in dairy products in recent years is in part due to their work of showing how nutrient-dense and incredibly delicious dairy products can be.

Chris Costagli, Nielsen IQ Vice President, says in a recent report about lactose free dairy being ‘back in the spotlight,’ that, “consumers are making a bold statement–they are choosing lactose-free dairy milk for reasons beyond the price.” The report shows that while milk sales in total are down more than 2% in the past year (including plant-based milks, which are down more than 5%), lactose-free dairy milk sales are up more than 12%. That increase stands despite lactose-free dairy’s 5% increase in price in the past year.

More specifically, yogurt is booming, as described in the NIQ report, “Yogurt’s Moment To Shine In the Fridge Is Now.” The US yogurt market has surpassed $11 billion, up more than 8% in the past year. It largely credits yogurt being a convenient, high-protein breakfast item, both of which consumers are now hungry for.

Painterland Sisters is the first brand to become PA Preferred Organic, of which Stephanie and Hayley are now board members. They are also on the board of Team PA. But what holds the most impact is that they’re at the forefront of their state’s movement to become the top producer of organic products in the country, which is currently trailing only California.

Stephanie and Hayley pride themselves, their company and their farm on the regenerative system they have created. Generally, regenerative CPG brands will source ingredients from regenerative farms. But Painterland Sisters has created the entire supply chain from milking cows themselves to marketing the product on shelves. “What makes this a regenerative ecosystem is the energy that goes literally through the soil, through the land, through the animals, through the people, through who we partner with,” Stephanie says.

While the term ‘regenerative’ may be a way of explaining certain agricultural practices today, for the Painter family, that’s simply the natural way of farming. “If you just harness nature, she does her thing,” Stephanie says.

“We want to show people who their farmer is so they can feel connected to their food,” she adds. ”Look at what dairy farmers are doing for our environment, and look at what the nutrients are doing for our bodies and for Mother Earth for generations.”