Vegan Cheese (That Melts!), BEC & The Secret History of Food
My interview with Stockeld's CEO on next-gen plant-based cheese, a New York classic turned (almost) animal-free, and a fun read on our relationship with food (#59).
💥 Breakthrough: Vegan Cheese (That Melts!)
This week, I sat down with Sorosh Tavakoli, Founder & CEO of Stockeld Dreamery, to discuss their latest innovation in vegan cheese: MELT.
Stockeld is a Sweden- and US-based start-up changing the plant-based cheese game. This is not Sorosh’s first company, as he also previously founded and sold Videoplaza in 2014.
Sorosh joined me wearing a shirt that read “Make Cheese or Die Trying,” so I knew I was in for a treat.
Here’s what we covered in our conversation:
Why we need more innovation in plant-based cheese
How fermentation will enable next-generation plant-based products
Stockeld’s new game-changing product, MELT
Why brands should drive with taste and credibility, not “free from” claims
Advice for founders & innovators in the plant-based space
I hope you enjoy the highlights of our discussion below.
1. Why we need more innovation in plant-based cheese
There are over 100 million consumers of dairy-free alternatives in the US (McKinsey, 2022). Most of this is for plant-based milk, which has seen tremendous growth from 5% to 16% US market share in a decade.
But dairy-free cheese still has a long way to go. The taste, creaminess, and functionality is nostalgic and so far unmatched. “It became very obvious that vegan cheese was just terrible. It is consistently the number one reason people feel they can't go fully vegan,” Sorosh says.
Making 1kg of cheese requires 10kg of milk, which has its associated amounts of high land use 🌾, water consumption 💧, and carbon emissions 💨. We need to offer consumers more quality, sustainable options.
Many consumers are starting to feel ‘plant fatigue’ with products that have overpromised and underdelivered. “What would it take to make better cheese?” he asks. “In that journey, I met my co-founder with a food science background and we hit it off.” And thus Stockeld was born in Sweden 5 years ago, entering the $12B sliced cheese space where only 1.2% of options are plant-based.
2. How fermentation will enable next-generation plant-based products
According to Sorosh, there have been 3 waves of non-dairy cheese:
1st Wave: “Homemade” Nut Cheeses: before the plant-based market existed, most cheese alternatives were artisanal and nut-based. These often fell short on texture and creaminess.
2nd Wave: Starch & Fat Industrial Scale Cheeses: as the category took off, market leaders came out with starch & fat products that brought plant-based cheese sales to 1-2% share. There are indicators this wave could be peaking.
3rd Wave: Naturally Cultured Nutritious Cheeses: inspired from the age-old fermentation process to make dairy cheese, legume milk can be cultured to generate more of the flavor, aromas, and functionality that consumers are looking for.
Stockeld is turning to legumes like chickpeas and lentils to deliver the protein content and meltability that consumers expect from cheese. “We've been focused on fermentation and on legumes from day one,” Sorosh explains.
Stockeld currently offers 3 cream cheeses (original, garlic & herbs, and smoked paprika & chili – the latter is my favorite) and the recently launched MELT cultured cheese slices.
Fermentation brings more authentic flavor to cheese, giving cleaner ingredient lists and increased health benefits. And it’s just the start for Stockeld.
3. Stockeld’s new game-changing product, MELT
Melting is a notorious functional challenge for plant-based cheeses because they lack caseins, the proteins that enable this in cheese.
After 4 years of R&D, Stockeld developed a game-changing cheese that melts twice as fast as other dairy-free cheeses – hence the name.
Here’s a bit about how it’s made: “We first make a legume milk and ferment it over quite a long period. In a different facility, it's then left to rest and age, and then it's sliced.” Sorosh remains tight-lipped on how they achieve the melting functionality so well.
Making cheese slices wasn’t Stockeld’s original objective, however: “We initially wanted to make a pizza cheese. That's the biggest market for cheese, but it's also extremely difficult, because on a pizza you put your teeth into the cheese first. One of the challenges with vegan cheese is that it can be quite sticky.”
Developing pizza cheese took up their first 3 years of R&D. The team then discovered their demo products showed excellent functionality and received rave reviews from chefs as cheese slices.
I am impressed at how well it melts as well, as you can see in this week’s recipe below.
4. Why brands should drive with taste and credibility, not “free from” claims
Sorosh is committed to building a new reputable cheese category. “We want to be respected as yet another cheese that stands on its own feet, not necessarily on how well it can copy other cheeses.”
Many companies try to imitate current products such that they are indistinguishable from their animal-based counterparts. It’s as if companies are saying: “It's almost as good as the real thing, right? In the best case, you won't notice my product was even there.”
Sorosh is leading Stockeld in a different approach: “We don’t like ‘free from.’ What is it full of? We’re made from cultured chickpeas and lentils.”
As a food science nerd myself, I asked Sorosh how they communicate their fermentation innovation in a way that resonates with consumers. Here’s his response:
“We try to lead with taste. You can't say it's delicious: you have to show it, right? You have to walk the walk. So we do a lot of samplings and reaction videos. We have a lot of people endorsing the product.”
5. Advice for founders & innovators in the plant-based space
Sorosh has 3 pieces of advice for other innovators developing new food products:
The best place for new brands to start is food service:
“It’s faster to start with food service and then you can build your whole pyramid of the credibility pyramid of starting with more credible places. If you can do that branded, then you can then create a bit of awareness. By the time you get to retail people actually know who you are.”
Dream for a big future, but stay focused on the present:
“Don’t get ahead of yourself. It’s easy to get too visionary. Don't already start thinking about: ‘but what happens when we're a global company, and we have 18 offices, and what are we going to do then?’ Just think about tomorrow and go from there.”
Don’t just aspire to build a great company, but to drive the entire category forward:
“I would love to have a business that is around another 100 years, but I'm humble enough to know that very few companies get to do that. The impact is achieved by us, but also by every person we help to inspire, whether to start another company or to put more plant based options on their menu. Even if it’s creating FOMO for competition and making them be better.”
At the end of the day, it’s important to focus on what we can control and be kinder to ourselves than necessary. “Building a company is just very hard,” Sorosh concludes. What makes it worthwhile? “The team: the company culture we have and how we work together. We're on a very ambitious, very unpredictable journey with some big, hairy goals.” I wish the Stockeld team lots of gooey success.
Want to try Stockeld’s cheeses? If you live in NYC or Philly, their products are available in more than 50 bagel shops and restaurants. Locate them here: Stockeld Cheese Finder.
Thank you again for the conversation and your insights, Sorosh.
🥘 Recipe: BEC
If you’re new to New York jargon, a BEC is a bacon, egg & cheese sandwich, popularly served on a bagel. Spot anything different about the one below?
Hint: no cows or pigs were involved in making it.
I made this one with Stockeld’s MELT cultured cheese slices (look at that melt!) 🧀 and MyForest Food’s mushroom bacon 🥓. I soft scrambled eggs here, though you can easily swap for JustEgg or scrambled tofu for a vegan option.
Animal-free alternatives are improving quickly, with more delicious and clean label options I’m excited to experiment with. If there are any I should try, let me know in the comments!
📚 Book: The Secret History of Food
I love fun food facts – and this book is full of them. Here are a few:
🥖 “Companionship” stems from Latin roots meaning “exchange of bread,” from the Latin com (“together”) and panis (“bread”).
🧂 Our salt cravings are largely determined by electrolyte levels in amniotic fluids during pregnancy.
🥧 The American Revolution might have failed without apple pie.
🍨 And ice cream helped the Allies defeat the Nazis?
The Secret History of Food by Matt Siegel is a reflection of our relationship with food over time. This book is less concerned with the climate impacts of our food system, which is also refreshing from my other readings.
The author dives into the fascinating ways food is intertwined with history, culture, sex, tradition, and science. A fun read for all the foodies out there.
Some favorite quotes as food for thought:
“It’s tempting to picture these early foragers as savage and uncivilized, because they were too ignorant to, say, live in overcrowded cities, fill oceans with single-use plastic containers, and breed animals in dark, crowded cages amid their own feces after cutting off their beaks, horns, and testicles without anesthetics.”
“Corn is right up there with fire in terms of anthropological game changers. Yet while the domestication of fire turned out to be a lucky break, whether the domestication of corn has been a good thing is up for debate, as it’s a relatively modern invention. And to call corn an invention is entirely accurate.”
Thank you for reading – BRB next week ✌️
🥘 Recipe: BEC
Ingredients (1 Sandwich)
1 bagel of choice
2 eggs (or the JustEgg or tofu equivalent)
1 slice MELT by Stockeld
2 slices MyBacon by MyForest Foods
Instructions (15 minutes)
Slice and optionally toast your bagel. Cook the mushroom bacon to package instructions. Soft scramble the eggs (or JustEgg or tofu).
Assemble and enjoy with your besties :)
About Me
Hi there! My name is Nathan Paumier – I’m an avid reader, food enthusiast, and climate optimist.
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Lots of great insight in the interview with Sorosh Tavakoli!