Our Kickie New Roots vegan creamery invited us to a VIP tour as part of an open house day at their headquarters in Oberdiessbach (located at the entry to the famous Emmental -- you know the cheese ;).
The event was not only a great success, hosting hundreds of visitors but was a culinary highlight too. In addition to free tasting of all their existing products, they introduced a new line of yogurts and #drummroll a vegan Raclette. This not only tastes great (I am an incorruptible Swiss cheese lover), but also illustrates their strategy: They use traditional artisan cheese-making processes and ancestral know-how using vegan ingredients and they collaborate with local farmers.
Whereas their first products are based on cashew nuts (organic and sustainably sourced from Burkina Faso), they now begin experimenting with ingredients that are grown in Switzerland such as Lupine (in the case of raclette cheese) or Tapioca. A great vision!
Very insightful were the tours through their production facilities, where they explained many of their challenges in detail. Such as finding cheese cultures that work with vegan ingredients, why they can't produce blue cheese at the moment or how much attention logistics needs and how hard it is to automate with small quantities and large machines. A great event and thank you Alice and Freddy to make all this happen.
