Sophie Carew

Carew Kitchen produces handmade raw, fresh unpasturised almond milk

What: Handmade almond milk in two flavours, sweetened and unsweetened.

Who: Auckland health enthusiast Sophie Carew launched Carew Kitchen in July 2014, wanting to create an alternative to dairy with no additives, sugars, or preservatives.

How it’s going: Carew Kitchen now supplies Farro Fresh, specialty stores such as IE Produce and Wise Cicada, and 20 cafes across the Auckland region, including Espresso Workshop, Odette’s and Ortolana.

You make the milk with your Mum – do you think bringing in family members is a good idea when you’re a start-up? My family has always been involved with the business but when the orders started increasing rapidly Mum became a full-time employee. We are now officially a family business and I love that. We work really well together and I couldn’t imagine the business without her. She handles all of the accounts and administration for Carew Kitchen as well as production. There’s already trust there with family members.

Is it hard to being a newbie food business? I think the food industry in New Zealand is extremely supportive of people starting out. I was overwhelmed with the advice and support offered by other business owners, like Coffee Supreme and Kokako, and I love that we can help support each other.

Your product has a very short life shelf – how does this impact your business?

The shelf life is six days for our almond milk, because it’s raw, fresh and unpasteurised. This means currently we can only supply Auckland, but we would love to be able to cold-pasteurise our milk eventually and supply all of New Zealand – even the export market. We are looking into ways to do so but sustain the nutrient value.

Record number of bottles sold in a week?

We only rent our commercial kitchen for two days a week and all our milk is made by hand by the two of us. But in late June we rolled out 350 litres – our largest volume to date.

What’s Carew Kitchen’s next big move?

We have plans to diversify with the release of two new products. I originally started making sugar-free, gluten-free natural treats for my family and have always entertained the notion of producing those again.

Biggest stuff up: I bought 3000 bottles off Trade Me for $200; I thought it was too good a deal to pass by so I bought them. However they ended up being on a super tall pallet that didn’t fit in my storage area, so I had to buy a lock up at Storage King, which ended up costing me more than the bottles themselves. Now I wait and think things through carefully before making any decisions on the spot. Motivated by: I’m motivated by people who have overcome hardship – such as Rebecca Wadey, a breast cancer survivor who now owns Kingsland yoga studio The Centre.

I’m motivated by people who have overcome hardship – such as Rebecca Wadey, a breast cancer survivor who now owns Kingsland yoga

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