Sweet dreams are made of (cashew) cheese
By Cheryl Baehr
Rita Childers and Candi Haas can’t help but laugh at the very unhealthy lifestyle that served as the foundation of their friendship – a friendship that led them to start a company with the misison of encouraging healthful living.
“Rita and I met in college where the norm for us was not health,” laughs Haas. “We were living the super unhealthy college life – late nights, fast-food, booze. We were just partying because that’s apparently what you do.”
Childers and Haas have come a long way since those freewheeling college days at Southeast Missouri State University. As founders of the vegan cashew cheese sauce brand Core & Rind, the friends and business partners have dedicated their lives to creating products that use food to heal the body. Since 2014, they’ve been on this mission, beginning as a tiny operation out of their home kitchens and growing into a global, plant-based brand. For Childers and Haas, their success is proof that they have finally found their callings.
However, they weren’t always so certain about the direction they wanted to take. After graduating from college, Childers parlayed a journalism degree into marketing positions, while Haas worked at jobs not all that related to her business and marketing background. Around that time, Haas became interested in the power of food to heal that body after noticing the health needs of her own family. She enrolled in a nutrition course while traveling in Ireland and instantly felt that she had found her purpose. That experience led her to attend the Academy of Culinary Nutrition, where she received her certification. The program was life-changing.
“It was so inspiring and full of the knowledge I was craving,” Haas says. “It lit this flame … and that was exciting. Just to see the whole world in front of you and that you can use what you learned to literally help people with their lives was incredible. It was like a fire in the belly, and I remember thinking, ‘OK, now what do I do with this?’”
After finishing the program, Haas reconnected with Childers, who had also begun her own research into healthful living. A life-long vegetarian who grew up cooking her own food with her family before it was en vogue, Childers was looking to get back into that sort of lifestyle after her less-than-healthy college days. Haas’ experience with the Academy of Culinary Nutrition led her to enroll in the school as well, and the two friends became determined to use their knowledge to improve people’s lives, even if they did not have a clear picture of what that looked like.
They’d achieve that clarity while on a trip to the Dominican Republic. There, while attending a friend’s wedding, they had a lot of time to dive deeply into conversations about their mutual passions for plant-based nutrition. With Haas already a graduate of the culinary program and Childers about to begin, the friends made a pact that they were going to start a business together. Sealed with a jump – fully-clothed – into the hotel pool, the pair were determined to figure out what they wanted to do.
Pretty quickly, they settled on the idea of making vegan items that, at that time, could not be purchased at the store. Originally, they thought they’d sell sweet treats at area farmers’ markets, so they invited their friends over for dinner to test their wares. However, it was their personal cashew cheesy sauce served as the main course that caught everyone’s attention.
“We made a dairy-free mac and cheese, and our friends asked us why we weren’t selling that,” Childers says. “The feedback was so positive, that we knew we were on to something.”
Childers and Haas should have known that the cheesy sauce would be a roaring success. The pair had been tweaking their recipe for home use for quite some time and had spent hours brainstorming about what would make the perfect creamy texture and cheese flavor while still being healthful. No matter how many different ingredients they tried, they kept coming back to cashews and were pleased with the results – so pleased that after a season of selling sweets, Caesar dressing and other vegan items at farmers markets, they decided to go all-in on their cheesy sauce.
Though Childers and Haas had perfected their personal cheesy sauce recipe, it took them a year and a half to make the product shelf-stable without the chemical stabilizers typically used to do so. After seemingly endless trial and error, the pair felt confident that they had gotten it right and officially launched Core & Rind in 2017.
Core & Rind has seen an intense demand for their vegan cheesy sauce from the beginning, but Childers and Haas believe the interest is due to much more than just the fact that it is a plant-based dairy alternative. They’ve worked tirelessly to make the sauce a flavorful product that is simply delicious, vegan or not. Used as a sauce, condiment or dip, it’s available in three different varieties. The original, “Sharp & Tangy” is what they use for mac and cheese, but they also suggest it as a cheese dip, a topping for grain bowls or even a salad dressing. Their “Bold & Spicy,” laden with chile and chipotle powders, has a Tex-Mex-style chili-cheese-dip flavor that is excellent with tacos, enchiladas or nachos. For barbecue lovers, the brand also has a “Rich & Smoky” version; it’s smoked gouda-like flavor pairs perfectly with pasta or roasted vegetables, especially cauliflower, and can be used like a barbecue sauce.
The response to their products has been immensely heartening to Childers and Haas. In just a little over three years, Core & Rind has grown from a small product sold at local farmers markets into a brand available throughout the Midwest region and Canada. Childers and Haas are committed to growing the brand and feel that the sky is the limit when it comes to their products, and, in turn, their reach to help others live a healthy life, which is why they set out to build Core & Rind in the first place. Their success and continued drive are proof that, once they found their calling, there was no stopping them.
“We don’t always stop to think about it, because we are going, going, going, but the validation feels awesome,” Haas says. “We really did believe this could be a global brand. Now that it’s happening, it feels really great.”