MATTHEW SADE, CEO, Lyrical Foods (Kite Hill): We’re on a growth trajectory that is very uncommon
We begin our gallery with Matthew Sade, CEO of Lyrical Foods, the San Francisco-based firm behind Kite Hill, one of the most exciting new brands in plant-based foods, which is using traditional cheese-making techniques to culture nut milks.
According to Sade: “We’re using completely new to the world technology married with age-old cheese-making techniques and equipment you’d find in any artisanal French cheese maker. It’s really a huge leap forward.
“We’re not using nut pastes; we’re making almondmilk and then we’re actually culturing the milk using proprietary cultures and enzymes [devised by Lyrical Foods co-founder and acclaimed biochemist Dr Pat Brown] to separate it out into curds and whey.
“So the solids come from the cross linking of proteins, just like in [dairy] cheese. The ingredients are water, almonds, salt, enzymes and cultures, that’s it.”
Bold ambitions
While vegan cheese – albeit of the artisanal variety – might seem like a fairly niche opportunity, Kite Hill has bigger, bolder, cross-category ambitions and some heavyweight VC backing in the form of Khosla Ventures (which has also invested in Hampton Creek and Instacart), says Sade.
“We want to change the entire dairy landscape, and we’re building a whole platform of plant-based products that will completely change how people view categories from entrees to cheesecake. Artisan cheese will be a very small part of what this company will become in the next couple of years.”
Its products (almond milk cheeses, cream-cheese-style cheeses, chilled ravioli, and shortly, cheesecakes) are in Whole Foods stores nationwide, plus several restaurants, and set to roll out to a wider customer base next year as Kite Hill ramps up its capacity to meet surging demand.
Click HERE to read more about Kite Hill.