Interview - Megan Messenger - Notzarella

Posted on Wednesday 7th September 2022 for Notzarella

Notzarella

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When your customers come in asking for dairy-free cheeses, you want to be ready with a great quality, great tasting dairy alternative. We chatted with Megan Messenger, Chief Cheese Taste Tester and Cheesemaker at Notzarella and discovered that their plant-based ‘mozzarella’ performs just like the real thing!

FFW: Who is behind Notzarella?

NOTZARELLA: Notzarella is made with love by a small but seismic team of cheese lovers. Co-owners, me and my partner in cheese, JP, adopted the idea and recipe of the best-tasting, plant-based cheese in Australia (that actually melts!) and are thrilled to bring a dairy-free/vegan alternative to cheese lovers across the country.

FFW: What inspired you to create your business?

NOTZARELLA: Our vision is to create a delicious, salty, melty experience for those who do not want to give up their cheesy treats, and who, like us, align to the idea that new, innovative foods can be delicious, made from pure ingredients, free of preservatives, colours and flavouring, and made from local producers where possible. Notzarella by Greengrove Foods has an inner compass that guides our work to be ‚good for people, good for society and good for the environment‘.

FFW: What product do you offer and in which formats for retail and foodservice?

NOTZARELLA: We have our ‘original recipe' available three ways:

1kg blocks for foodservice, available in boxes x 12
240gm blocks for retail, available in boxes x 12
500gm shred, available in boxes x 8

FFW: Is Notzarella ‘vegan-friendly’ or 100% plant-based?

NOTZARELLA: Yes! This is our magic! Notzarella is 100% plant-based/vegan. Our core ingredient is organic soybean, sourced within 200km of our Brisbane kitchen.

FFW: Do you use local ingredients in your plant-based mozzarella alternative?

NOTZARELLA: Yes! As far as humanly possible; our soybeans are sourced from the Queensland Scenic Rim to the Byron Bay Hinterland, other key ingredients are from ‘down south’ of the country and there are only a couple of ingredients that are not readily available in Australia, and so we must source these further afield.

FFW: What are Notzarella’s health and quality virtues?

NOTZARELLA: This is one of the many reasons we love making Notzarella! It is made from only five pure, wholesome ingredients. Notzarella has no artificial flavours, colours or preservatives, no added sugar and of course, no animal proteins or fats.

FFW: Is Notzarella gluten free?

NOTZARELLA: Yes, being soybean-based, Notzarella is 100% gluten-free (whilst being high in plant proteins, bonus!)

FFW: What would you say is your brand’s positioning?

NOTZARELLA: Notzarella is a premium quality product, positioned to be accessible and affordable for high volume use in restaurants, pizza kitchens and wherever commercial consumption levels are required. In our retail space, Notzarella sits comfortably in the affordable mid-range of vegan cheese, including nut-based board cheeses.

FFW: What makes your products stand out in a crowded marketplace of vegan dairy alternatives?

NOTZARELLA: Notzarella melts! And it gives the customer a beautiful, cheesy, creamy experience of dairy cheese. It’s also free of all the nasties that can be prevalent in other non-dairy cheese. It’s also been around for quite a while and has a firm fan base.

FFW: Does Notzarella melt like dairy mozzarella cheese? What else can you tell us about its performance?

NOTZARELLA: Yes! Our biggest claim to fame is it melts into delicious ponds of luscious, salty cheese goodness.

FFW: How far afield do you deliver?

NOTZARELLA: We deliver Australia-wide. You can always get your hands on some.

FFW: What are some of the benefits for retailers and foodservice businesses for offering your products to their customers?

NOTZARELLA: Notzarella offers retailers and foodservice businesses a unique product to meet the ever growing and wide range of their customers’ taste and dietary demands. It offers a delicious cheese experience to those who make choices in alignment with their ideals and values in relation to animals, health and the environment, and also to those whose diets don’t allow for lactose and other dairy intolerances.

FFW: What sorts of retailers are selling your product?

NOTZARELLA: We are very grateful for and proud of the partnerships that we have with our retailers. They are as wide and diverse as the people who eat our cheese. Our retailers range from gourmet and specialty grocery stores, both online and instore, delis, independent grocery stores, health food stores and in-house stores within restaurants. We’re even found in pharmacies next to the refrigerated probiotics products.

FFW: And what kinds of foodservice businesses would you like to see offering Notzarella to their customers?

NOTZARELLA: Our cheese loves pizza, and pizza loves our cheese, so more pizzerias! However, we’d love to supply more restaurants, cafes, delis, hotels, universities and vegan cooking schools and see more people enjoying our cheese. Where you find dairy cheese, we’d love to be the natural choice for a plant-based alternative.

FFW: What would you say is Notzarella’s personality?

NOTZARELLA: The name and tagline says it all. We are fun, funny and friendly, with a kind heart and kind message. ‘Notzarella’ embodies our penchant for a good food pun, and our tagline “tested on animals, they all loved it”, still makes us both laugh and smile at the same time.

FFW: What quality and customer service virtues does Notzarella promote as part of the company’s high standards?

NOTZARELLA: We offer pure, quality ingredients, with no icky stuff. Our focus on customer satisfaction sees fast responses to filling orders from the large orders, on a pallet onto the interstate refrigerated truck, through to the odd dash from the kitchen cold room to a restaurant door when a customer is in a tight spot for the weekend lunch rush. We are open doors and open minds types. We love asking chefs for feedback on how the cheese performs in various ovens and in various dishes and have adapted recipes to further improve the experience from these conversations. We like to keep things simple, including the ordering process. Contact us directly via email, and depending on your location and order, we’ll either deliver directly or connect you with a distributor. We have a fantastic commercial kitchen that can produce up to one pallet (540kg) in one week, whilst also catering to the needs of our independent, smaller order customers of one box at a time.

FFW: What’s your favourite way to enjoy Notzarella?

NOTZARELLA: Oh man, tough. I am a pizza lover, so that’s the ultimate application of Notzarella for me. I’m getting close to nailing my pizza dough, but I’d love to get my hands on some of my customers' secret dough recipes and to have their skills.

FFW: As a boutique vegan food producer, are you aware of other small food producers that you admire and can tell us about?

NOTZARELLA: We love Pure N Free Yoghurt, by Chris and his team - the focus, passion, resilience and dedication to perfection in each and every batch of his divine coconut yoghurt, is a true inspiration for us.