Calm Your Fears - The Yogurt's Fine

A couple of weeks ago, I happened to notice that someone on Twitter had retweeted about a contest that Chobani was having where the winner(s) could get a case of free yogurt. All a person had to do was follow Chobani on Twitter and retweet the contest - and the person was entered. Simple enough. I clicked the "Follow" button on their profile and retweeted about the contest. Boom. Entered.

An hour or two later I got a direct message from the folks at Chobani letting me know that I had won and to please email them at the address provided with my mailing address and my favorite flavor of Chobani. Sweet!

Excited because that's about $12 worth of my favorite Greek-style yogurt for free - I immediately emailed them with my address, let them know that I love the pomegranate (which has full seeds in it, delicious) and that the blueberry is a close second favorite. Then I asked them a very important question... How the heck do you ship yogurt?

They emailed me back to let me know they'd send me a case of yogurt with both flavors (score!) and to rest easy - they ship yogurt all the time. It would ship out on January 5 and arrive at my house on January 6. I knew I would be working that day from home, so I felt better knowing that a case of yogurt wouldn't be hanging out on my front porch all day getting gross. What I didn't know is that there was no way in heck that yogurt would have gone bad. The box arrived today as promised... and what I found made me realize that yes, the fine folks at Chobani know exactly what they're doing when it comes to shipping yogurt.

The box that arrived on my doorstep was significantly larger than I was expecting and contained a styrofoam cooler that was equally as large.

Picture taken next to fridge for a bit of perspective on the size of the box.

Now... we've all eaten yogurt. 12 containers of yogurt is not that large. I went ahead and opened the cooler and inside that I discovered how exactly it is that Chobani keeps their yogurt cold when they ship it to you overnight. Every ounce of empty space was loaded with styrofoam packing peanuts, and there were 8 reusable long-lasting ice packs inside as well. I could definitely feel the cold air emanating from the cooler as I removed the packing material to get to the yogurt that I knew had to be buried in there somewhere.

I felt like the dad in "A Christmas Story" digging through this box. My very own "Major Award".

8 ice packs - totally reusable, I might add. These will come in handy.

Once I finally was able to dig through and remove all of the ice packs from the cooler, I laid my hands on the case of yogurt that was buried deep inside. The case contained 6 blueberry and 6 pomegranate yogurts - all nice and cold and waiting to be placed in their temporary home in my refrigerator. Temporary because at some point these are all going to end up in an Athanas stomach.

There were so many packing peanuts they got inside the case too. Packing peanuts everywhere.

So if you ever find yourself in a situation where a company is going to overnight ship you something rather perishable and they reassure you that they know what they're doing - there's a good chance that they do. I think that's the bottom line. That, and I have 12 of my favorite yogurts in my fridge that I'm super pumped about. Because they're going to be yummy. And they were free.



**Disclaimer: I was in no way compensated to write this post. I am writing this of my own volition because I was seriously impressed with the way Chobani shipped this yogurt. They are not paying me in any form - money, more free yogurt, lawn care, etc. - for writing this post. If they had shipped it terribly, I would have told you about that too. Consumer education and all.