‘Dairy without the cow’

As the patriarch of the family-owned sustainable nutrition business, Dennis Cohlmia spent decades chasing what’s now the culmination of a virtuous pursuit: milk without a cow, a wholesome proposition the grandfather touts as good for both people and the planet.

Vegan-friendly “Strive FREEMILK” — based on fermented whey, an alternative protein — checks most boxes for a nutrition-savvy consumer. There’s no lactose and half the sugar of traditional milk, with the kick of 10 grams of protein per serving and nine essential amino acids. Each ingredient is natural, and it's free of cholesterol, preservatives, hormones, antibiotics and artificial flavors. It’s also shelf stable, meaning it has months of staying power without refrigeration until opened.

And in a world of escalating climate change concerns, it’s environmentally conscious and supremely sustainable. Compared to conventional dairy farming, Cohlmia says his creation accounts for 97% less planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions while needing 99% less water and as much as 60% less non-renewable energy.

To Cohlmia and his plucky Strive Nutrition startup, this is their moment. After what Cohlmia calls the “struggle” to get the animal-free milk to the masses, Strive FREEMILK is making its long-fought foray into select Kansas City-area supermarkets and coffee shops, kickstarted by mentoring help from Black & Veatch’s IgniteX startup-empowering program.

FREEMILK has been available only in New York City and online — marketing that gave Cohlmia and his Strive team insights into who their consumers are and how to best reach them. Now with a new, bigger bottle for the refrigerated cooler, Strive believes it can finally meet all of the needs of the alt-milk shopper — and win over more consumer hearts and minds.

“You’ve got to tell people, ‘This is dairy without the cow.’ What does that mean?” said Cohlmia, Strive Nutrition’s CEO with four decades of expertise in aseptic food processing and packaging for both the dairy and plant-based food industries. “You’ve got to make them understand what alternative proteins are and what it can do for you and the world, and how it can change things.”

The ‘whey’ forward

While proteins are foundational to healthy diets and weight management, Cohlmia says not all are created equal. Many plants produce lesser-quality proteins lacking essential amino acids a healthy body needs. And because plant proteins aren’t digested as well as animal ones, getting the minimum daily requirement of the plant-based variety means gobbling up more of them, upping the caloric intake.

Enter Strive FREEMILK’s animal-free whey protein, nutritionally identical to the protein found in cow’s milk without the downsides of large, conventional dairy operations — namely the odious bodily functions of livestock that emit methane, a greenhouse gas emission that contributes to climate change.

Central to Cohlmia’s product is whey protein crafted through proven precision fermentation techniques by partner Perfect Day, which essentially converts plant sugars from a special natural microflora — microscopic organisms — into pure dairy protein.

Perfect Day’s animal-free protein, touted as the world’s first milk protein bio-identical to the protein in cow’s milk, has been confirmed as “generally recognized as safe” and has received a “no-objections” letter from the U.S. Food & Drug Administration.

Winning over consumers to Strive’s FREEMILK will require an education push that’s one part biology, one part science to swat down any misconceptions it’s “lab grown.”

“A cow is a little mini bioreactor with feed inputs, and they’re producing milk for their offspring,” Cohlmia said. “We produce whey protein in a large bioreactor, filter it out and make sure that it is pure, has no toxicity, no antibiotics — all the things you want from pure foods. It’s hard to get people to understand that, but it’s getting better because younger people are digging this.

“They’re saying this is new science. This is the future.”

Mastering Aseptic Production

Black & Veatch helped Strive propel its process development and scaling efforts while getting a better handle on all that goes into launching an aseptic production facility. In essence, it was a game plan, lining out everything from utility and equipment requirements to process optimization, evaluation of fermenter-related capital costs and even guidance on the production site’s ideal size.

“From front to back, (Black & Veatch has) people who completely understand every segment of how to build that plant, whether it’s incoming water or wastewater or energy equipment installation and the actual science of how we produce those proteins and take them to a finished product,” Cohlmia said.

“It’s a pretty amazing company,” he added, gobsmacked by Black & Veatch’s breadth and depth of in-house expertise, including even the nuances of fermentation. “From the food and ag side, every discipline is covered. Normally, you’d have to go to five firms to get that kind of expertise and bring it all together, and invariably that always gets screwed up somehow. But when you can handle everything internally, it was always far more efficient and much smarter.”

And now comes a moment of truth for Cohlmia and his family’s dream to make cows a little less consequential.

“If you look at the future of dairy, no one’s ever going to eliminate all the dairy cows,” he admits. “But I’ve been part of the development of hundreds of products over my career, and I’m most proud of this very product we put together.”

Call him an entrepreneur who’s savored the journey toward finally muscling into supermarkets and java shops, no matter how fluid it’s been.

“Nothing happens with the snap of a finger. It takes time. Our tagline is dairy without the cow. The most important part now is getting people to taste it.

“Kansas City, here we come.”