Gut Check #11: sooo...Beny needs a new name 🫠

Welcome to Gut Check by Beny Yogurt 👋 We’re on a mission to heal America’s gut, starting with a probiotic organic greek yogurt. Gut Check is our way of keeping family and friends in the loop – if you’re new here, you can check out previous editions on our site anytime :)

We’re going through a renaming process, and in full Beny fashion, taking you with us. Many of you have already been incredibly helpful brainstorming new names: 

So What Happened?

Basically a few weeks ago we got a legal letter from an energy drink company named “Benny” who filed the trademark literally 24 hours before we did 🤯. While they are 1) a different spelling than “Beny” and 2) a different category than dairy yogurt, ultimately we share the same pronunciation (phonetically the same) and share the same distribution channel (the grocery store), which will give rise to trademark conflict down the line. To give you an example, if your friend told you to “grab some Beny from the store” and you were expecting yogurt but they brought back an energy drink, it would be pretty confusing for all parties. 

So we had to make a decision - do we hang on to our name and fight for the trademark, incurring thousands of dollars of legal fees, or do we bite the bullet now and find an even better name while we’re still pre-launch and flexible enough to make a change like this.

We decided to go for the latter.

What Happens Next? 

To prevent further launch delays we’re hoping to narrow in on a name in the next few weeks. This, unfortunately, is not something we can sit down for a few hours and bang out. It requires a ton of creativity, time, and brainstorming to land on a name that we feel is a good representation of our brand. We’re also hoping that the hundreds of brains who read this newsletter and the thousands who have been supporting us from day 1 might be able to help us speed up the process :) 

Naming Frameworks 

We’d love your input on what Beny’s new name should be. To get the juices flowing, here’s a few frameworks for how we’re thinking about naming:

Rules

1. Easy to remember 

2. Easy to pronounce and spell 

3. Sounds good phonetically 

4. (Ideally) short - 2-3 syllables 

Frameworks 

There’s a few directions we can go:

1. Short and Sweet: Personified names that are almost character-like. They might they tie back to the food they represent, sound like the food itself, or just be a random cute word. A few examples: – Seed, Graza, Poppi, Oatly.  

   Think: Beny 

2. Functional: Conveying the mission or description of the food. With Impossible Foods you’re expecting it to not taste as good as normal meat so they are “doing the impossible”, with Liquid IV you immediately understand what it does (drinkable hydration like an IV). A few more examples include Vitamin Water, Unreal Candy, and Skinny Pop. 

   Think: Probiotic Yogurt

3. Shock Factor: Names that make you do a double take and can feel edgy or slightly controversial but help the brand stand out on the shelf and speak to the consumer. Examples include Liquid Death, Rotten Candy, Fishwife, Danger Coffee. 

   Think: Spoilt Milk

We’d love your ideas in any of these three categories (or outside of them) - feel free to reply directly to this email! 

Top of Mind

Aside from trying to find a new name, here’s a few other things we’re thinking about:

🧀 Curds & Chords: Join us this Saturday, May 3rd, 5-9pm for all-you-can-eat cheese with all our fellow dairy lovers. Grab tickets here. 

🍅 Tomato Yogurt: We discovered one of our new favorite ways to eat yogurt, it’s high protein and made with tomatoes. Check it out here.

👀 15% off Merch: One day our “Lactose Tolerant” Beny sweatshirts will be a collector’s item on eBay. Last chance to grab our OG Beny sweatshirt for 15% off with code: ceaseandpersist .

Excited to hear your naming ideas!

Elan and Kiki (The Yogurt Girls)