Page 14 - Food&Drink Business magazine October 2022

✷ RISING STAR
Wonder crop
makes for a
creamy treat
Having worked in product innovation for
food and beverage multinationals like Mondelez, Kraft Foods, Mars, and Asahi Beverages, SuperSeed founder Susie White knew how to tap into an emerging food trend. Pippa Haupt writes.
AS Covid lockdowns continued into 2021, and with a fresh diagnosis as a coeliac, food and beverage innovation specialist Susie White was prompted to reassess her eating habits.
Also aware of the growing popularity of the plant-based food movement, White began
experimenting at home, to create a gluten-free, vegan ‘ice cream’.
Over 12 months of trial and error, White bootstrapped her way to building a dedicated allergen-free kitchen in the Yarra Ranges, completed training to become a gelatiere chef, and worked alongside a food technician to perfect the creamy, vegan and allergen- friendly recipe that became SuperSeed ice creme.
White says she owes her love of creating things to a youth spent on her family’s vineyard, growing up in a ‘making products’ environment.
ABOVE: SuperSeed founder Susie White.
LEFT: The hemp ice creme is the result of more than 12 months R&D.
“I grew up on a family vineyard in north east of Victoria in Yakandandah. No one knew where that was, but my parents were pretty much the first entrepreneurs I knew.
“My early years were spent working on the winery in the vineyard. I remember every harvest time we’d be putting on labels, heat sealing, and corking the bottles.
“Seeing people enjoy and have appreciation for the final product made me love creating things,” says White.
From there, White attended Monash University, completing a double degree in business and arts, with majors in marketing and psychology.
“I knew that the motivation of people buying products and what people found attractive about food was really motivating to me, and that launched me into a corporate career,” White says.
White embarked on a career with a series of multinational food and beverage companies, developing skills in identifying future trends, product development and taking
products to market. Her true passion was for all the whole process; product development, manufacturing, supply chain, branding, advertising, and launching products into market.
Prior to her exit from the corporate world, White saw first hand the impending rise of the plant-based movement.
“It was the biggest and the most persuasive trend. I saw it really changing entire landscapes across multiple categories – every category was impacted by it,” says White.
White tapped into the trend even further after her diagnosis. “After I had been diagnosed
with coeliac and during the Covid lockdowns, I looked further into gluten and could not believe what it was in.
“The fact that it is in ice cream is kind of a crime; it is in there because it’s the cheapest thickener and sweetener. That is why it is used as a base for a lot of sauces,” says White.
A turning point came during Melbourne’s first bout of Covid lockdowns, when she was rummaging through the freezer, trying to find suitable
14 | Food&Drink business | October 2022 | www.foodanddrinkbusiness.com.au