GUTS AND GLORY

If fortune favors the bold, it should be no surprise that Lifeway Foods CEO Julie Smolyansky finds herself in her 22nd year at the helm of the leading kefir company in America. The path that led her family from an embattled Kyiv to the suburbs of Skokie to the height of business success has been anything but easy or ordinary.

It is worth surveying some highlights of her story as the breadth and depth of it are worthy of a book: Her great-grandparents were murdered in the 1941 Babi Yar massacre perpetrated by the Nazis. Somehow, her grandma managed to survive the rest of the war before marrying in 1946 and giving birth to Smolyansky’s father, Michael, in 1947. In 1976, he and Smolyansky’s mom arrived in Chicago with 1-year-old Julie.

While she was too young to remember, she’s told they landed here on a blistering summer day. They came with one suitcase packed with a few belongings including a “little pan to make farina and kasha.” Her dad was wearing a black leather jacket in the sweltering heat, holding fast to his Eastern European past but looking optimistically toward the future.

They settled at Morse and Greenview and wasted no time before getting to work. Smolyansky’s mom opened the first Russian deli in Rogers Park. Amid a five-location expansion of the deli business, in 1985 her parents attended a trade show in Cologne where her dad took a swig of kefir and suddenly realized “America has everything, but it doesn’t have kefir.” Her mom said, “Well, you’re an engineer. Why don’t you design a plant, start making it, and I’ll sell it through my distribution network?” And with that brief exchange, a groundbreaking company was born.

Lifeway Foods was launched in 1986 during perestroika when thousands of Soviets immigrated to the United States. They formed a built-in customer base for the 2,000-year-old cultured milk drink from the Caucasus Mountains. “They didn’t need marketing and advertising campaigns to consume kefir or farmer’s cheese,” Smolyansky says. “They grew up on it. It was nostalgic for them, and they were buying it like crazy. So, this became our bread and butter.” (Fun fact: At the height of the Cold War, to illustrate the effect of the Soviet “brain drain,” President Ronald Reagan brought a case to a meeting with Mikhail Gorbachev.)

Fast forward a few years. Flavors were added after a fortuitous meeting with the buyers at Dominick’s; distribution exploded and the company grew rapidly. Her dad, who was never formally schooled in business, visited the Skokie Library to research how to take the company public. In 1988, he became the first former Soviet immigrant to undertake an IPO.

“I remember trying the very first batches that my dad made in our basement in Skokie,” Smolyansky says. “I went to my very first demo at Treasure Island when I was 11 years old and attended my very first convention and trade show when I was 12 years old.”

Little did Smolyansky know, but the stars were aligning for her to take the reins of the family business. Smolyansky studied psychology at the University of Illinois Chicago, but ultimately fate intervened and propelled her back to Lifeway. “I came into my dad’s office and just said, ‘I need a break from mental health stuff, and I’m going to work in your office in data entry.’ And he said, ‘Sure, I’ve been waiting for this. Come on in.’”

Her father had focused on the Russian-speaking community, but Smolyansky saw an opportunity for a new audience. “I thought, ‘Kefir is so healthy. All of my friends should be drinking it. Why aren’t teenagers drinking this? Why aren’t yoga enthusiasts or runners drinking this?’” Following this opportunity, she led an expansion into California where the health food craze was on its strongest footing. This move led to nationwide distribution, consistent growth, and international expansion.

Tragically, in 2002 at age 55, her father had a sudden heart attack and passed away. A battle for control of Lifeway ensued, with some believing a twenty-something woman couldn’t lead the company.

“Of course, I was really angry and that gave me fuel for my fire. It sparked protectiveness. All the things that my dad taught me came out in that moment.”

An emergency meeting was held and the board elevated 27-year-old Smolyansky to CEO. She became the youngest woman ever to helm a publicly traded company, echoing the stock market milestone her father had achieved 14 years earlier.

“My warrior spirit came out, and I said failure is not an option. I brought the company from $6 million in revenue to almost $200 million today. And, in a category we pioneered, we’re the 95 percent category leader.”

Her pride is palpable when she lists some of the company’s accomplishments.

“We were the first company to launch a pouch product for kids in 2007. Now, 50 percent of baby food originates from a pouch product. Products made in Chicago are exported to Mexico, South Africa, and recently we announced a new distribution deal in UAE and Dubai, which is really exciting because of the people migrating to these countries from Russia and Ukraine. These migration patterns are creating a massive influx of people who know this product and don’t need much marketing.”

The health benefits of kefir, a probiotic, for mood, memory, and skin health are increasingly supported by science. Awareness of the “gut-brain connection” is growing. In fact, Smolyansky says, “During the filming of the movie Barbie, they hired a nutritionist on set, and she recommended kefir to all the actors and actresses to help them get beautiful glowing skin.”

These are the tailwinds that companies dream of. Against a backdrop of market excitement, Lifeway recently launched single- serve bottles of unique flavors like pistachio, matcha latte, and pink dragon fruit. They’re distributing Farmer’s Cheese, a low-calorie, small-batch, soft cheese (now popping up on TikTok), in 1,400 more stores and launching a new collagen smoothie product.

“We have a long runway and a playbook on how to get there. We’re very excited. We have improved shareholder value in the last five years by almost 1,200 percent. We increased our gross profit by 115 percent. Our revenue has almost doubled in size,” she shares.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the plot twists haven’t stopped. At press time, current shareholder Danone had come bidding for the company, but the board quickly rejected two of the French giant’s offers, considering them undervalued.

Considering the battles she’s faced, Smolyansky brushes off this latest pursuit as par for the course. Thinking back to those early days as CEO, she recalls, “Everything was kind of crumbling underneath my feet, and I had no choice. You either sink or swim. And I decided to swim against the current, against all odds, against everybody laughing at me, saying you can’t do it. You can’t do it. I just said, ‘Watch me’ and I persevered.”

With all the emphasis on the business, one is left to wonder what else this CEO does to unwind. She’s a mentor (who acknowledges her own debt to Chicago trailblazers Oprah and Christie Hefner), author (The Kefir Cookbook), music fan (100 Pearl Jam shows and counting), runner (13 marathons), filmmaker (including The Hunting Ground, which covered the incidence of sexual assault on college campuses and October H8te about October 7 and how rape is used as a weapon of war), and founder of Test400K, a nonprofit working to resolve the backlog of 400,000 untested rape kits in the U.S. and end violence against women both domestically and globally.

For a leader in the health food space, it’s a track record that begs the question of sleep. “Honestly, I don’t watch TV,” she says with a laugh. “The last show I saw was a Sex and the City episode 25 years ago. But I’m proud of how I have used my time. I’ve been a social justice advocate all my life and have found ways to weave activism into both the nonprofit and for-profit realms of my life.”

For more information, visit lifewaykefir.com.