Over our 15 years in business we've had advice and support from some wonderful organizations with incredible networks - Kea NZ for example! Lovely to be featured on their website.

In 2004 Alice Shopland adopted a vegan lifestyle and in 2006 she started importing vegan cheese from the UK.

For several years she and her husband Colin Woods struggled to develop their own vegan cheese recipe.

But today Alice’s dream of seeing their product sit on mainstream supermarket shelves has been realized.

She spoke to Kea about her incredible journey and why it pays to sometimes put everything on the line.

“A friend called me “pathologically optimistic” and I think that’s probably true. I had a ‘how hard could it be?’ attitude.

And it turned out to be very very hard. You’re creating a dairy-like product that contains no dairy and it has to be flowable during manufacturing and then firm enough when set, to be sliced or grated and then after that it needs to melt again when the customer cooks it. The texture is the biggest challenge.”

Angel Food started in Alice’s kitchen and for a while she and her husband tinkered around with different recipes before admitting defeat and hiring a food technologist to help out.

After a few years of perfecting the recipe they began working with fast food chain Hell Pizza, using their pizza ovens to test the performance of the cheese. 

“I still remember the day our final product went on the menu at Hell Pizza. I ordered a vegan pizza to our house and the delivery boy saw our business logo on the gate and on the pizza box and he did a double take. That experience was really special.”

Alice’s journey to construct the perfect dairy-free cheese came from a desire to create a more sustainable food ecosystem not just for herself but for anyone who was interested. 

“One of the things people always said to me was, ‘good on you for going vegan but I could never give up cheese.’ I realised that one way I could make a difference was to help people make better food choices, ones that have less of an environmental footprint.

Although veganism isn’t just about food, food is important. We’re choosing options three times a day so we can have a massive impact.”

Even though Angel Food is a success story these days, it was a long hard journey for Alice and her husband who put everything they had into the business.

Alice says she has learnt a lot of hard and sometimes expensive lessons along the way and there were definitely times she was ready to give up…

Check out the full article here.