Kitchen Conversations

The business of artisan vegan cheese; sourcing ingredients, certification, reaching customers and online marketing

In February, we had to pause our Kitchen Conversations emails due to tight schedules caused by our cross-countries moves. With all the preparations, we lacked the time to produce proper, quality writing, and we felt it wasn't fair to our paid subscribers to share average work. Now more settled in our new lives, we are excited to return to publishing these essays, a candid approach to navigating life in a poly-crisis context, with a formula adapted to our new long-distance set-up. Trace and I might not be talking from the same kitchen anymore, but we still have fruitful discussions!

So first, thank you for your patience and for keeping up with us, dear paid subscribers. For this month of restart, we have a special edition focused on vegan cheese (and not only that), a follow-up from last month's interview with Helena Teichrib from Sonntag, with additional unpublished insights where we discussed raw food sourcing, certifications and reaching potential customers as a newly launched food business.

For context and for those who have yet to read the interview, Helena Teichrib is an artisan-vegan cheese maker from Germany who lives in Aotearoa, New Zealand. She launched her brand, Sonntag, in 2021 amid the Covid-19 outbreak. The Sonntag cheese range is now available at two weekly farmers markets in Tāmaki Makaurau, Auckland and multiple delicatessen shops across both North and South islands.

The interview was a substantial and passionate conversation, where we covered her motivation to start making vegan cheese, her professional upbringing and why she loved being an independent entrepreneur, but also the difficulties behind her position and how she developed and is scaling her independent, woman-owned small food business. It was a dive into alternative foods and sustainability in business. However, it wasn't all of it! I had to remove some parts, as the interview was quite long. There are still insightful parts and something to learn from, which I share below.

Musing about vegan cheese

I am currently reading No Meat Required: The Cultural History and Culinary Future of Plant-Based Eating by my favourite food writer, Alicia Kennedy, and this week, I reached the chapter "Non-dairy dairy", where she covered the evolution and success of alternative milk and vegan cheese. Through the book, I've learned that non-dairy cheeses can be divided into three types—process, quality, flavour, and texture. That is something I didn't realise much. I used to divide vegan cheese between tasteful and untasteful!