Opening a business is already risky, but opening one with just a few days to go before a global pandemic can seem almost irrational.
But that’s exactly what happened to Lohran Soares, founder and CEO of Milky Moo, a milkshake chain that now has hundreds of units, fans and is already one of the fastest growing brands in Brazilian food service.
The first store opened in March 2020. The world was about to stop.
“We founded the first store on March 2, 2020. Seventeen days before the lockdown”, says the entrepreneur in an interview with From Zero to Topa program that tells success stories.
What could have been the company’s early end ended up becoming the beginning of a story of accelerated growth. Today, the brand already has more than 800 units, both open and contracted, and plans to surpass a thousand stores.
“We will have our 1,000th store in Brazil this year,” says Soares.
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But the journey to this point began much earlier — and in a very different scenario.
From brigadeiro to milkshake
Lohran’s first contact with entrepreneurship came as a child.
“Milky Moo was born inside me when I was 10 years old, when I started selling brigadeiros at school”, he says. At that time, he remembers, the objective was simple: buy a football boot.
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“I really wanted Total 90. My mother was a banker, a single mother of three children, so there was no money left,” says Lohran.
Entrepreneurship continued in his youth, but his path was marked by financial difficulties. For years, the shoe business he created at age 18 barely generated any income.
“There were three years when I didn’t earn a cent. I wanted to drink an açaí for R$10 and I didn’t have any money”, recalls Soares.
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To supplement his income, Lohran even sold copies of the consumer protection code door to door. In a single day, it managed to sell 65 units.
Even after more than a decade in footwear retail, Lohran still felt that he had not found the right business. The turning point began to happen when he began to observe the functioning of food operations.
His experience as a waiter at Outback, an American chain of Australian-themed restaurants, helped change his outlook.
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“I arrived at Outback and there were a thousand people, five hundred in line. While in my store I hadn’t been able to sell even a pair of shoes. That’s when I got it into my head that one day I would open a food business”, recalls Lohran.
And so it happened. But the idea for Milky Moo came almost spontaneously. During a visit to a shopping mall in Goiânia, Lohran and a future partner (a loyal customer of the shoe store) passed by a milkshake store.
“We tried the product and liked it. A few days later we went back there, and there were always people buying it. Then Paulo looked at me and said: ‘Shall we open one for ourselves?’. And I just replied: Done deal! Our first unit was born there”, he remembers.
Even with the pandemic, Lohran Soares and Paulo Amin created the Milky Moo brand. A business that grew quickly and transformed a small store into a national chain, quickly gaining a loyal following.
Today, the chain has more than 800 units in Brazil, stores in the United States and plans to expand to more countries. like Paraguay. With creative campaigns, 30 different flavors, and a super charismatic mascot, the Moo kitty, the brand sells around 1.5 million milkshakes per month and already expects to close 2026 with revenue of around R$800 million.
To learn more details about Milky Moo’s success and strategy, watch the full episode on . The program is available in its podcast version on the main streaming platforms such as , , , and
About From Zero to Top
The Do Zero ao Topo podcast is a production of InfoMoney and brings, every week, the stories of prominent women and men in the Brazilian market to tell their story, sharing the biggest challenges faced along the way and the main strategies used in building the business.
