Sarah’s speaking from her oat cheese factory in Waterloo. Yes, oat cheese factory.
For the last year she’s been working full-time on Compassion Creamery, the business she started during lockdown that’s making the world’s first creme cheese made from oats.
“Do you remember when we had curfews?” she says. “You’d go out and grab a coffee in your one-hour time slot. There were a lot of people not remotely plant-based or vegan but would rave about oat milk lattes. All of a sudden I began to think about oat cheese.”
Sarah herself has been vegan for about eight years, but the food industry is relatively new to her. After completing her degree in chemical engineering, she moved into the corporate world (“I sold my soul for a few years”) as a management consultant.
Once she identified the gap in the market, she worked at home on her startup’s R&D process and eventually came up with a minimum viable creme cheese product. She tested it at nearby cafes (Newtown’s Buddha Bowl and Glebe’s Oh My Days) and it proved so popular that customers started coming back for more. The pilot plant she works from now is aimed at helping her scale-up the process and producing the quantity that would be required for a viable business.
And while chemical engineers aren’t famed for their cheese-making, Sarah’s degree has certainly given her some advantages along the way.
“What a chemical engineer does is figure out how to turn raw materials into final products,” she explains. “Anything that requires a manufacturing process follows the same questions and steps. While it’s not necessarily related to chemistry, it’s been helpful to articulate my needs to engineers who have helped set up the equipment for the pilot plant.”
Sarah admits that the scale-up is a slow, and at times painful, process, but she also knows the importance of getting the production right. Besides, it won’t be too long before her creme cheese reaches Sydney’s supermarket shelves and cafe counters.
“I’m actually from New Zealand and I’m going back home for Christmas. I’m hoping to be able to give my family a pot of creme cheese made from the factory.”
“You could possibly classify it as a main. It’s the fish and dill noodle soup from Vina Vegan. They’re a Vietnamese restaurant on King Street. It’s a tomato-based soup with faux fish and dill. I just think that dill is such an underrated herb. It’s slightly tangy and so comforting. Whenever I have a slightly long day at the factory, this is the place I hit up. It’s comfort food at its best.”
“I wouldn’t say it’s a non-negotiable, but it’s just an accepted fact that when I go to Tian Ci I’m getting their steamed fish. God, now I’m sounding like a complete fish fanatic, but I’m really not. It’s a vegan fish - they make it from tofu and tofu skin and seaweed on the top. You actually get quite a fishy flavour. With steamed fish in Chinese restaurants they served it with a soy sauce base, julienne ginger and sesame. It just works. As a vegan you don’t have a lot of steamed options. You can’t really mask it behind stuff and it’s quite hard to get right.”
“My parents are both Shanghai Chinese, and one of the most famous dishes in Shanghai is Hong Shao Rou, basically braised pork in a dark soy sauce. Tian Ci even has a vegan version of that… but I still prefer their steamed fish.”
“The thing that I love for dessert is tofu pudding with ginger syrup. It’s not really one that people are too familiar with but it’s a very traditional Asian dessert. It’s basically a soft, silky smooth tofu with ginger syrup over the top.”
“There’s a place in Belmore, Hoa Hung Tofu, that does every kind of tofu you can imagine, and they make fresh tofu pudding in-house. Sometimes it’s still warm in the bowl. It’s slightly thicker than a custard pudding and holds its shape better. It’s sweet but not overly sweet. It’s a really light dessert and you walk away not wanting to roll home into a food coma.”
“Honestly, I’m a really boring person when it comes to beverages. I pretty much only drink water. I don’t really drink coffee or alcohol - although funnily enough my fourth year project at university was to design a wine-making manufacturing plant.”
“When I do go out, I do enjoy a good chai. I’m quite picky though, it needs to be a loose leaf kind, not the powdered kind. There’s a place on Enmore Road called Buddha Bowl Café that does a really good chai.”
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