A Plant-Based Alternative to Conventional Queso
By Lorrie Baumann
Core & Rind Cashew Cheesy Sauce is a clean-label, vegan alternative to the kinds of shelf-stable cheese sauces in jars that are often sold in the snack aisle next to the tortilla chips. “It’s great for people who are on specific diets, who are plant-based, who are keto, who are vegan, but it’s also for those who are looking for more plants on the plate or just looking to cut out the junk,” said Core & Rind co-Founder Rita Childers. “It’s versatile in that way, that it’s not for one specific vegan customer. It fits into a lot of diets.”
The cheesy sauce is made from simple kitchen ingredients by Childers and her co-Founder, Candi Haas, who met in college at Southeast Missouri State University in Cape Giraradeau, where Childers was studying journalism and Haas was studying business marketing. “We were your typical unhealthy college students,” Childers said. “It’s hard just having a busy lifestyle – you want to grab something that’s easy.” The two lost touch with each other after college, but they reconnected after Childers had decided to discard the careless eating habits she’d developed as a young adult and return to the vegetarian lifestyle of her childhood. “I was interested in figuring out different ways to support my health,” she said.
When she met Haas again, her friend invited her to participate in a presentation that she was preparing as a final requirement for a culinary nutrition program offered by the Academy of Culinary Nutrition. As soon as she saw the kitchen where Haas was recording her presentation, Childers knew she’d found a comrade-in-arms in her battle to improve the quality of her diet. “I’d never seen anyone’s kitchen look like this except for mine,” she said. “I’d felt like a weirdo with all the health foods, but then Candi took this program, and it ended up being very similar to what I was doing at the time, too.”
That inspired Childers to enroll in the same program, and when she’d completed it, the two started talking about how they were going to put what they’d learned into action. They decided that what they wanted to do was to develop some of the tasty vegetarian products they’d been preparing for their own consumption and turn them into packaged products they could sell to others with similar dietary goals. “We came up with 12 items just to test out if people wanted these things the way we wanted these things,” Childers said. Then they took their products to a farmers market in St. Louis, Missouri. “We had a great reaction, but people really went crazy for our cheesy sauce,” she said. “They just loved the flavors and couldn’t believe that it wasn’t cheese.”
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After multiple markets produced the same enthusiastic reaction, Childers and Haas decided it was time to think about how to get their vegan cheesy sauce onto supermarket shelves. “It took a year and a half after going to the farmers market to make it shelf-stable,” Childers said. “We launched Cashew Cheesy Sauce in October, 2017.”
Core & Rind Cashew Cheesy Sauce is now available in three flavors. The shelf-stable original is called Sharp & Tangy Cashew Cheesy Sauce. Bold & Spicy launched in 2018, and the newest flavor is Rich & Smoky. “It’s a unique item because it’s a cheese alternative, but it’s also shelf-stable and clean label,” Childers said. “A lot of our competition is refrigerated, so we definitely wanted to differentiate ourselves in that way. It’s super-versatile, and you can keep it as a pantry staple, as a snack or a sauce on pasta…. Candi and I like to say that we just want to get more real food on people’s plates, and our flavor-packed sauces help people do that.”
The sauces contain no chemical additives, no preservatives, no gums and no fillers. “It’s just ingredients you can pull out of your own pantry and make a sauce at home with,” Childers said. “We’re not your average food entrepreneurs. We don’t have a background in food science. We do have a passion to create these products that people are asking for – that are more transparent and more health-focused, health-building…. I think we were just sick of picking up every sauce on the shelf and seeing ingredients that we didn’t want to put in our bodies, and we knew that other people felt the same way too. That’s been a big driver of ours.”
Core & Rind Cashew Cheesy Sauce is packaged in an 11-ounce glass jar for dipping that retails for $9.99. It’s vegan and gluten free. It’s available in the Midwest through Fortune Fish & Gourmet, and nationally through KeHE. Distribution is also available in Canada.