London Inc. Summer 2022 - 20

Upfront Food Processing
RIFFING ON A CLASSIC
Taking inspiration from a Canada's most
successful convenience food, a plant-based
cheese powder finds a receptive audience
TODAY'S MODERN GROCERY store is filled with more
and more vegan versions of classic products: there's the new
generation of plant-based meats, dairy-free ice cream treats
and an ever-expanding selection of high-end vegan cheeses
(including London's own Nuts For Cheese).
But sometimes, even the strictest and most idealistic
vegan wants something else: think that classic weeknight
mac-and-cheese option, complete with space-age powdered
cheese sauce.
Enter engineer and plant-based cook Andrew Zuk, creator
of Plantworthy Foods (www.plantworthyfood.com).
" We make a powdered, plant-based cheese, similar to
that orange powder that most kids grew up with, " says Zuk,
delicately tiptoeing around a simpler description: it's vegan
Kraft Dinner cheese powder.
Plantworthy Cheeze Sauce comes in four flavours - the
original, joined by a smokey cheddar flavour, a pesto flavour
and (Zuk's favourite) a chipotle flavour of cashew-based
cheese sauce.
" Ours is the only one that's made of cashews, " he says, the
base that most fans of plant-based cheese tend to prefer.
20|londonincmagazine.ca|SUMMER 2022
Plantworthy Foods founder Andrew Zuk
" That's what makes it different - I don't know if you eat
many cashews, but they're really high in fat. "
Plantworthy Foods the brand pre-dated the cheese
product, Zuk explains. He'd started it as a website where he
was posting recipes he created as he learned to cook plantbased
meals for his wife. He had perfected his own cashewbased
cheese sauce and used it frequently in his recipes. But
since it required a high-speed blender or a long soak for the
cashews, it was time- and equipment-intensive for a lot of
his audience.
" That's when I started thinking, how could I make a
product that people could make in a matter of minutes but
is still healthy? " he recalls. " People would say over and over
that they didn't have the high-speed blender, or they didn't
have the time to do it. And fair enough. When I was originally
making it, I didn't have any kids. Now I have two kids under
two - it's not going to happen. "
To turn his idea into a business, Zuk went the indie route,
http://www.plantworthyfood.com
London Inc. Summer 2022

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