Sarah Qian - Compassion Creamery

It took former chemical engineering student and management consultant, Sarah Qian, 18 months and 250 trials to create a product she was proud of.

Born in the land of milk and honey, a.k.a. New Zealand, it’s hard to believe that Sarah Qian owns a vegan business selling oat-based cream cheese. She makes the oat milk from scratch and then curdles and ferments it with traditional dairy cheese-making methods. The product is Compassion Creamery.

True to its name, this business was born out of compassion. Feeling burnt out and unaligned working in the corporate world, Sarah took a leave of absence to prioritise her mental health. She was passionate about the plant-based space, so she began experimenting with vegan cheeses and testing them out on friends.

“Overall, I probably did 250 iterations,” she says. “At around the 200 mark, I started seeing more consistency and I was kind of happy with it. Then the last 50, I was really hammering it home.”

Product Market Fit

Sarah launched into the vegan cheese market when there was an influx in demand for adequate tasting and readily available cheese substitutes. Unlike other vegan cheese alternatives, Compassion Creamery doesn’t use coconut oil, starches, nuts or soy.

“Finding product-market fit is important because you want to know that your hard work will be fruitful,” Sarah says.

"Before you invest too much time, money or resources, really figure out if this is truly something that people would want. Family and friends are only going to get you so far. You need to push it out into people who are for instance, with me interested in plant-based foods.”

Passion is a Double-Edged Sword

Businesses born out of passion are the most successful. However, this doesn’t guarantee success.

“One side of the business is passion and that's really important; that's what's going to keep you going,” Sarah says. “But if you don't match that with feasibility, then you also don't have a business.”

Sarah’s Advice

1. Learn how to manage your time

As a solopreneur, Sarah handles everything from product testing and strategy to troubleshooting and formulation. Her biggest lesson was how to prioritise tasks and outsource those that took up too much valuable time and resources.

“Everything is down to you and if you don't do it, then it's not going to get done,” she says.

2. Get the product right first

“Without a good product, you don't have something to stand on,” Sarah explains.

She recommends allocating more time than expected for research and development, not only to get the product formulation right but to achieve consistency and quality control.

3. Passion pulls you through

“When you're truly convinced about your mission and what it stands for, that pushes you through,” Sarah says.

She’s using her unique skill set to create a kinder, more sustainable and ethically transparent food system for our environment, the animals and humans.

“It's very different from waking up in my old job and having to look at this architecture service diagram,” she laughs. “I get to do something that hopefully will have a really big impact using my very niche skill set.”

Once Compassion Creamery’s pilot plant is up and running, Sarah will scale up production and hopefully expand into retail stores, as well as overseas markets. Good luck Sarah, we’ll be taking n-oats. 

https://compassioncreamery.com.au/

https://www.instagram.com/compassion.creamery/

By Melissa Woodley