Page 10 - Food&Drink Business magazine September 2022

✷ RISING STAR
Finding ghee
A quest to improve her own health ended up putting Lisa Ormenyessy on a whole new career path. Her biodynamic and organic ghee brand OMGhee is the result. Pippa Haupt writes.
WHILE grappling with a high pressure job in business coaching and consulting, Lisa Ormenyessy became unwell. She saw a traditional Ayurvedic doctor, who recommended eating ghee as part of her healing process.
Used medicinally for thousands of years and in everyday eating across India and the South Asian region, ghee is considered a superfood.
Ghee is made by boiling butter at a very low temperature for several hours, resulting in a lactose-free product.
Ormenyessy says the first time she ate it, it was like taking medicine.
“It was disgusting. I went back to the doctor, who reassured me they would teach me how to make my own.
“When you make ghee, you can’t leave the pot when the butter's boiling, you have to be totally present. I'm a type-A personality, so for me, the process gives me what I like to call ‘great pause’,” she says.
She knew ghee would become an all-consuming passion when she found herself in the supermarket looking at all the different butter brands and asking herself how each would respond in the pan.
“That’s when I knew I was a goner, and that ghee was going to be a serious part of my life,” she recounts.
The ghee obsession came at a crossroads for Ormenyessy.
“I wanted to go into business on my own and was thinking it would be consulting like I had been doing for the past 20 years. But that felt really hard. I said to a friend that I just wished I could make ghee and ultimately, I granted my own wish,” she says.
“I knew nothing about retail. So, that has been a big shock, but I love it and wouldn't change it for the world.”
Making ghee is a simple, but long process, and doesn’t vary much between different types or brands of butter.
OMGhee uses biodynamic butter sourced from South Australian based Paris Creek
Farms, which is part of Maggie Beer Holdings. [See our May edition and the website for more on Paris Creek Farms Organic Dairy, its use of bio-dynamic organic farming practices, and how it achieved carbon neutrality.]
Ormenyessy says as she has learned more about ghee there are myths she wants to dispel.
“The biggest misconception is that ghee is clarified butter. I want to blow that myth out of the water.
“The other thing is that it’s not just ‘butter oil’ – during the heating process, the length of the fatty acid chains are transformed, so it is a completely different product. It’s not butter, it is ghee.”
FINDING A KITCHEN
Ormenyessy began with jars she bought from Kmart, labels printed at Officeworks, and batches cooked in her home kitchen, which she would then send to family and friends.
The business began to grow when Ormenyessy became a regular at farmers markets, but she soon realised there was a host of food safety and compliance regulations OMGhee would have to meet for commercial sales.
“Initially I was cooking the product at home. I thought I would just sell it through my website and farmer’s markets, but quickly realised it wasn’t that straightforward and I had to consider the dairy safe regulations. So, getting dairy production accreditation became the first priority.
“Then, if I wanted a retailer to stock my product, I needed a commercial kitchen,” Ormenyessy says.
The search for a commercial kitchen was arduous, with Ormenyessy saying there is a shortage of commercial kitchens for small businesses and start-ups.
“I called so many people. In the end, it was the fact I am a veteran that I found one.”
She is now using the “amazing” kitchen at her local RSL.
10 | Food&Drink business | September 2022 | www.foodanddrinkbusiness.com.au