Dallas may be the land of the steakhouse — but it's also home to one of the biggest alt-milk companies in the U.S.: Mooala, founded with a mission to make outstanding organic dairy-free beverages including almond milk, oat milk, banana milk, and vanilla coffee creamer.
Their products are sold in about 7,000 stores nationwide, including HEB, Whole Foods, Costco, Sprouts, Walmart, and Target, in both shelf-stable and perishable versions. It can also be ordered online.
“We're going to sell that clean, organic product at a price that doesn't just exist in a high-price grocery store,” says CEO Jeff Richards. “We want to bring organic to everybody.”
In 2024, they added the Simple line, consisting of oat milk and almond millk, containing three ingredients: water, salt and either oats or almonds. (Vanilla Bean Almond Milk is also part of the Simple line, with vanilla added as a fourth ingredient.) These Simple milks have quickly become Mooala’s most popular product.
“Our Simple almond milk is the number four almond milk on Amazon right now,” Richards says. “Amazon charges a lot for it because we're basically shipping heavy water everywhere. The fact that it's number four just shows what the demand is.”
Richards got into alternative milks in 2012 out of necessity, after he developed a lactose intolerance while doing crossfit and following a dairy-free, paleo diet. At that time, the alt-milk market consisted mostly of soy milk and rice milk; almond milk had not yet become the juggernaut it is today, so he started making his own.
"The almond milk market was pretty new, and it was hard to find almond milk that wasn't full of gums and oils," he says.
MooalaMooala
After a couple years of making milk on nights and weekends, he left a 10-year career in investment banking and started sharing Mooala on a bigger scale.
He drove a refrigerated truck full of product to different stores for several months and eventually generated enough interest to employ a distributor. Sunflower Shoppe and Royal Blue Grocery (now closed) were early customers. Interest from bigger retailers like HEB, Costco, Central Market and Whole Foods helped Mooala take off.
Richards stays plugged in to the community, serving on the board of Seed Effect, a Dallas-based international microfinance nonprofit, and participating in events like the "Nutrition Stock Up" at Bonton Farms Wellness Center on May 30, when Mooala will distribute free samples from the Simple line.
The alternative dairy market has evolved since Mooala launched nine years ago. Countless brands have entered the scene with varying success, increasing accessibility to alternative dairy products and conversely impacting dairy sales.
“As much as [customers] are looking for dairy-free or whatever the diet trend or their preference is, they're even more focused on what's real as a priority,” Richards says.
