It was in 2014 that Mary and Éric Jähnke launched the Jay & Joy brand with the promise of offering a vegan alternative to cheese. These products, aimed at lactose-intolerant people or those who want a product that is more respectful of the environment and animal welfare, try to be as close as possible to classic cheeses.

Mary and Éric Jähnke trained with master ripeners and master cheesemakers to carry out the same fermentation and ripening process, but using almond, cashew or coconut milk.

A pioneer in the field, the startup rapidly expanded to other European countries such as Germany, England, Belgium, Spain, Italy, the Netherlands and Portugal. It was a magnificent success story... until that day in January 2023, when a massive recall of Jay & Joy products was issued after several cases of listeria caused premature delivery in several women.

After spending five years with McKinsey working on business transformation and climate strategy, César Augier became the company's CEO. In a personal capacity, he was a customer of the Jay & Joy brand, whose products he was particularly fond of. When he read about the brand's difficulties in the press, he quickly approached the startup's founders, investors and the court-appointed administrator: "I immediately put together a file to take over the company, save the jobs and the industrial site.

The takeover has just been made official, allowing César Augier to share his plans for Jay & Joy to rise from the ashes.

To start with, it has just raised 2 million euros from High Flyers Capital (a fund specializing in the future of food), as well as business angels such as Jean-Baptiste Rudelle (founder of Criteo), Charles-César D'Amat, Bertrand Altmayer, Pierre-Emmanuel Bercegeay, Jack Habra, Rémi Douchet, and Guillaume Dubois and Cédric Meston (co-founders of HappyVore).

It was quite easy to convince these investors," shares César Augier. It's a very buoyant market, and one that's very much in tune with the times. This is a company which, if it hadn't gone through the quality crisis it did, could claim to be the French leader in this sector.

Now that César Augier is officially at the helm of Jay & Joy, his number-one priority remains to reassure consumers, suppliers and buyers, in addition to their investors, that the quality crisis that plunged the company into turmoil cannot happen again. Mistakes were made," he says. Without minimizing for a moment, because it's terrible what happened, listeria remains a fairly classic problem in the food industry, and particularly in cheese. And when you have the right people around you, and put the right measures in place, it's a problem that can be managed. We're currently working with a highly qualified quality team to implement all these measures... because with a sufficiently experienced quality team, these problems would never have arisen".

César Augier is therefore confident in his ability to resolve this quality issue before putting the brand's products back into consumers' hands over the summer. He doesn't give a precise date, but points out that he doesn't want to rush he doesn't want to rush the quality issue.

Initially, Jay & Joy will also be returning to a tighter product range with just five references: Joséphine, Jeanne, Jil, Jean-Jacques and Joy râpé (which are alternatives to camembert/brie, bleu/roquefort, goat's cheese, maroilles and grated cheese respectively). We're concentrating on the five products that work best," explains Jay & Joy's new CEO. We're not abandoning the other references... we'll pick them up when the business has stabilized.".

According to his plans, the company could return to profitability by early 2024. Then it's time to imagine a new round of fund-raising to develop exports. American distributors are interested," he confesses with a smile. But also in Asia, where 90% of the population is lactose intolerant. With our lactose-free French cheeses, it could be a big hit!