Bree Gaudette & Matthew Ronalds

Hi Bree and Matthew, thank you for doing this. Ive actually just watched your film clip on the website, so I feel like I know you already.

Bree: Now you get to meet the real, unscripted us.

Its beautifully shot, I was watching it, wondering why I hadnt eaten your cheese yet. That cheese sauce, oh my goodness, it looks like the best kind of cheese sauce possible, amazing.

B: Its our personal favourite product; its what we eat the most of.

And the slicing into the mozzarella, it had that squeakiness, I could tell. Anyway, Bree and Matthew, thank you for being on Conversation with a chef. Its a bit of a different chat, I suppose today. Bree you did do some chef work to prepare for making cheese

B: Honestly yes and no. Id been in front of house hospitality since I was 12 years old and never really enjoyed cooking; I love baking, but cooking has never really been a big passion of mine. And then it was sort of before and during my cheese journey, where I thought I would try my hand at back of house and see what I can learn and even pick up some basic knife skillsanything from a proper chef. It was perfect timing and nothing that I had planned.

Thats exactly it; when I watch chefs doing things, they are always so practical in the way they do things, even the way they put a tea towel under the chopping board to keep it from slippingall these things that you would think would be obvious, to me arent always obvious. So its a good point, and maybe its learning too about what things go together and all that kind of stuff. Ive read your story and it is such a great story, but maybe Matthew or Bree, tell me how Hello Friend Foods came about.

Matthew: Well the story started before my part in the story. Bree had been working on some experiments in the kitchen with different cheese prototypes for her friends

B: I couldnt find what I wanted, basically, so I decided to make my own, give it a crack. Why not just try and who knows? I really didnt think it would get this big and I didnt think it would be this good. But my problem was that I didnt know how to turn it into a business, because I had never done a food business like that before. Thats when I met this guy.

M: Yeah. I was driving an Uber for a while in between jobs and picked this one up and we had a good chat and we became friends and she told me about her business idea and I said, yeah, you should turn that it into a business. Id always wanted to start a business and get behind something ethical and do something good. I also went vegan not long after meeting Bree; she convinced me to go vegan. I had already been vegetarian for five years. But that convinced me. And then eventually I convinced her that we could turn it into something good.

B: Yeah, and so thats what happened. We just decided, you know, we/re two kinda crazy kids and we just decided to see if this thing works.

Still, going from a conversation in an Uber and then to what youre doing nowI find that so impressive. The business side of it, absolutely, but making cheese is a science. Where did you start? Did you look up recipes, did you see what other people were doing? What was the starting point for cheese?

B: All of the above. Whatever I could get my hands on; I researched dairy cheese making, vegan cheese making. I just ate information for breakfast, lunch and dinner, but then the real changes came in actually experimenting. The recipes are great, but its what other people have done and we didnt want to do that. Matthew is really excellent with that sciency mind. Ill say, oh I want to make it creamier, lets figure out how to do that and hell come up with an idea and say, well, what if we tweaked this? What if we added this in and pulled this from the fire a bit sooner. The two of us, combined, its a good recipe. Ha!

Whats your background, Matthew?

M: Nothing to do with food. I was a lighting technician for 10 to 15 years and I worked in hospitality, bartending and bussing. I never really worked with food. When I was growing up, my step-dad was good with food; both my dads cooked. Thats about it. I just like problem-solving. I learn how it works and I learn how to tweak it and I learn more about it. I learn how to look up certain things.

B: It was a learning experience and it still is.

Thats really interesting to me as a teacher; kids in school and they are made to learn certain things and thats good, but often its not until later when they become really passionate about something and then they learn everything about it and do what they need to do. Obviously teachers are still useful but I think its amazing that necessity and passion are such great teachers and that seems to be the case here. And your connection coming together does seem incredible.

B: Its like fate had a hand in it; it was a perfect storm of creativity and positivity.

Absolutely. Now I made a faux pas when I was speaking to Michael Craig from Red Sparrow. I asked if he made his own vegan cheese and he quite rightly asked if I asked whether chefs in non-vegan restaurants made their own cheese and I dont and I have taken that on board and I get my mistake. Obviously there is a niche for excellent vegan cheese and I think it has only been recently that excellent vegan cheese has been around, but even then you found a gap. So youre doing fresh mozzarella, halloumi and cheese sauce. Theyre your three products?

B: Yes, thats right. Those are our three core products. We also came out with two limited edition products, which were a brie in puff pastry and a herbed Havarti that we created as well. But those were always meant to be limited edition and people are still so sad they are gone now. Were thinking about bringing them back seasonally perhaps.

How much cheese do you make in a week?

M: It varies. We do 10 kilo batches at the moment. It is still quite small what we can do.

B: Its all handmade. We make it all ourselves. We have one casual employee, but otherwise we have been doing it ourselves for two years.

M: I like stirring; stirring very thick cheese by hand.

B: Matthews poor shoulders are really suffering.

Well it saves on gym membership if youre doing that level of manual labour.

B: Thats what I keep reminding him: this is like working out, its fine.

So from start to finish, say with the mozzarella, how long is that process? With dairy cheese, it has to be cultured and cured and rested. Do you have to do that same sort of thing or is it a dofferent process?

M: No, we dont have to do that. Its a much different process. If we had to rush a batch, it takes about

B: 12 hours Id say. To get it to ready to package. Which is almost nothing when you think about traditional cheeses. Thats what has been so great for us too; our ability to fill last minute orders when they come in. We are no strangers to pulling all-nighters for our customers. And I dont say that to talk ourselves up. I just think because we are so passionate and so committed to making sure people are happy that we are willing o do it. Were lucky that its a much shorter process. At least for now. Having said that, when we go back to our R & D mode, because we havent been creating recipes in a while and we have just been spending all of our time filling orders, we are both really excited to go back into R & D and start to look at cultures and looking at all those exciting options of what else we could make it from. Right now we use a soy base, but what other bases could we choose?

I was really interested to see that they are gluten free and nut-free. I know a lot of vegan cheeses use coconut oil or almonds and those kinds of things. Was that a conscious decision that you wanted to steer away from those to open it up to more people or is soy just a better product?

M: Both. We experimented with soy at the start because its a better product and we spoke about using other bases and we decided to stick with that because it there are less allergy problems, its a superior product.

B: Very little allergies; some people are allergic to soy. We do use coconut oil in our products, but its not a nut product. Coconuts arent technically nuts. Also to be super clear if there is anyone listening to this, we dont call ourselves gluten free or nut free at the moment, only because we produce int e same space as another business who handle gluten and nuts. Having said that, we dont include those things in our recipes but there could be traces.

Ok. Fair enough. I see that you have lots of places using your cheese in Victoria, but also New South Wales, Queensland and ACT; theres an IGA stocking your products.

B: That IGA is amazing. They have been with us for a long time. They are excellent cutomers.

M: And very engaged with us and what is going on.

B: Its a family-run business and they are super supportive of us and its so lovely. I wish it was easier to just go and meet these wonderful people, just hop on a plane. But were not doing that any time soon.

No, well thats right. I imagine when you have a really excellent product, a lot of it is word of mouth but how did you get the work out there in the first place? When did you launch?

B: April of 2018. It was all word of mouth, to be honest.

M: We werent meant to launch until May. We wanted to launch at the Big Vegan Market but a friend of ours found our not quite finished Facebook page that we had published byut not really out there and she ended up finding it, sharing it with everyone and orders started coming in

B: We werent ready at all.

M: and we thought we should jump on the hype. And we started taking orders immediately.

B: And the hype hasnt stopped. We kind of expected it to slow down. We didnt have to go and seek out sales or sell, basically, for about a year, a year and a half after we launched. People just kept coming to us. We had a waiting list. What a great problem to have. We were so excited to have such interest.

I was watching the video and you had all the beautiful recipes you were making with the cheesy bread and cheesy pasta and all of those and I really liked the way you talked about opening up food that is kind to more people and producing a product that is so delicious and so close to other food that people enjoy but want to steer away from food that is perhaps less kindcould you talk a little more about that?

M: One of the reasons we decided to push this as a businessat the start, we wondered whether we would do cheese or meats or something else. We chose cheese because when we talked to vegetarians who wanted to transition to veganism, they said they couldnt give up cheese.

B: We found that basically everyone we talked to, and this was my experience as well, cheese is the last thing to give up; its the last stand. I was vegetarian and I had given up everything except cheese for a full year before I thought, right, I need to get this done. And thats because cheese is chemically addictive. It is designed to have the calf coming back to its mum over and over again, so it makes sense why people have a lot of trouble dropping it. We dont judge anyone. It is really important for us that we dont judge people for what they choose to eat, but just to offer them an alternative if they choose to. A lot of our customers arent vegan but they are vegetarian or lactose intolerant. We just want to create a product that can be enjoyed by everyone and you can share with everyone. If youre having a dinner party and you have a vegan, a vegetarian, a lactose intolerant personshes nut free, this guy is gluten free, that they can come over and they can ALL enjoy it. We want to make it really easy for people and we also want to allow people to have easy access to more ethical options because changing over to a vegan lifestyle is a pretty big deal for a lot of people. There are a lot of changes you have to make if you want to go down that road. We understand thats not for everybody, and we dont expect it to be. Thats where we come from.

I guess increasingly people are trying it out or at least having a few vegan or meat-free days or having a largely plant-based diet. With all the talk around Sir David Attenborough and the 2040 documentary and it is a way that individuals can make a difference from home. Some of those environmental problems seem enormous but as you say, its about making ethical choice that can make a difference.

B: And to continue on from what you were just saying, thats it; a million individuals making a small shift is a huge shift. You dont have to make these massive sweeping changes; you can make a little change. You can pick the non-dairy cheese one time and even that once will make an impact. You are making a difference in the lives of people, cows, the planet.

And just to finish, it seems obvious to me from watching your video on your site and from talking to you now, where the name came from, because you both are embracing what for me is the ethos of hospitality, which is passion and sharing and looking out for other people, but can you just explain where the name, Hello Friend came from.

M: We were trying to work out what the name was, and we had a list of many awful names

B: Terrible. We knew they were wrong but we just had to brainstorm and get something eventually.

M: So we were walking around the block and trying to think of a name and a dog walked past and Bree does what she always does when she sees an animal she wants to touch or interact with or play with, she goes Hello Friend! And I said, thats it! Thats what we should call it.

B: As soon as he said it, I said, yes, thats it and it was that from then on. It was 100%. We knew it.

Wonderful. Thank you so much. It has been wonderful meeting you over Zoom and thank you for sharing your story.

Hello Friend Foods