COMPANY: UnMoo
ESTABLISHED: 2018
OWNER: Josh Kadrich
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Josh Kadrich
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UnMoo’s vegan cheese
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Taylor Holden (left) and Jonathan Lewis during cheese production
In less than a year, Josh Kadrich, founder of UnMoo, has gone from making cheese in a friend’s Fan kitchen to receiving a call from a local investor checking on his search for a new, almost 10,000-square-foot production facility.
“This was my depression medication, starting UnMoo,” says Kadrich, 30. “I didn’t feel like I was contributing a lot of value or living up to my potential. The opportunity to be smart and work hard for myself has been so empowering.”
Kadrich grew up in the suburbs of Lynchburg. He was the neighbor kid who caught grass snakes, had poison dart frogs as pets and dreamed of saving the rainforest or becoming the next Steve Irwin. “I was never the best at anything,” he says, “except for science.” He studied biology at VCU for three years and then began working as a quality manager at Biotech Services.
Kadrich, who says, “I love cheese, but it doesn’t love me back,” would watch as his boyfriend, Taylor Holden, filled their fridge with goat cheese from the farmers market. Unhappy with his corporate lab job, in the summer of 2017 Kadrich began experimenting with making cheese from cow’s milk before trying cashew milk, which he could digest more easily. He describes the first trials as slimy, off-putting and malodorous. But he was determined to figure it out.
Kadrich dove into the world of lactic acids, bacteria and chemical composition, often waking up on the couch cuddling a stack of science journals and artisan cheesemaking books. “I’m pretty crunchy in a lot of ways but willing to put on my lab suit and play with beakers,” he says. “This is equal parts science and technology.”
His goal was to create a vegan product that could provide the same sensory experience as cheese. In early 2018, after six months of experimentation, he was finally successful, creating a meltable, shreddable, tears-of-joy-inducing nondairy mozzarella-like cheese that vegans have been waiting for.
UnMoo and its first product, “Notz,” were born.
At the time, there were no regulations for vegan cheese production in Virginia. Kadrich approached VDACS with 65 pages of proposed operating procedures. Together, he and a state food scientist determined how the cheese would be regulated.
In July 2018, UnMoo signed a lease at Grindstone Kitchen in the Museum District, and a few weeks later, the company passed VDACS inspection. In early August, Kadrich sold Notz for the first time at the Williamsburg Farmers Market. His product line eventually expanded to include Notz in peppercorn and lemon-lavender flavors, a cheese dubbed Habby Jak, and a vegan butter called Nutter.
Idle Hands Bakery owner Jay Metzler, who has a number of loyal vegan customers, discovered Nutter on Instagram. He soon began making vegan croissants with Nutter, and UnMoo’s first local partnership was born.
“It’s the best vegan butter I’ve ever tasted. … It’s basically magic,” Metzler says.
Soon UnMoo was in stores like Union Market and Ellwood Thompson’s, on food trucks like Zorch Pizza and in restaurants such as Pupatella. Then came a call from a local investor, Dan Phipps, offering life-changing capital to UnMoo. Other investors followed.
UnMoo has quickly become a Richmond name. But will it be known nationally?
By October 2018, Kadrich had hired multiple part-time employees, along with a trio of full-timers who abandoned stable jobs to help UnMoo succeed, including his best friend, Jonathan Lewis, along with Tanesia Thompson, a college friend and former sous chef at the plant-based eatery Little Pine in Los Angeles. Now UnMoo’s head of production, Thompson recalls a conversation she had with Kadrich before returning to Virginia: “I said to him, ‘You know what would change the world? Vegan cheese.’ ”
Kadrich’s boyfriend, Holden, recently left his job at an engineering firm to join UnMoo. “I told my boss, ‘This is our life at this point, we are putting everything we have into trying to build this,’ ” he says.
As the business has grown, Kadrich has evolved from the sole producer and gatekeeper of knowledge to thoughtfully directing his team, building relationships with markets and restaurants, raising money, and systematizing the business. “That’s what I have to do in order to … turn us from a hobby to a national company,” he says.
The UnMoo team envisions an entire line of potential value-added products distributed across the country — ready-to-bake pizza, brie and blue cheeses, ravioli, cheesecake, and cream cheese.
Since March, the team has been scouting properties for a kitchen to call their own, which will help significantly to extend the shelf life of their products. “It’s been hard to imagine what is even possible because we’ve been bottlenecked by this facility, and what we’ve been able to put out here has been pretty impressive,” Kadrich says. “The nature of having a high-growth, volatile startup is that you build your company around conquering hurdles. … I wouldn’t trade it for anything.”
Encounter the Cashew
- The Hop, 1600 W. Cary St. Pickle Back pizza: White sesame-seed crust, house red sauce, cashew-based cheese Notz, dill pickle chips, soy chorizo and a hot-pepper relish swirl
- Heritage, 1627 W. Main St. Impossible Burger: bibb lettuce, onion jam, tomato, Notz and smoked tomato aioli on a brioche bun
- Idle Hands Bread Co., 407 Strawberry St. Croissant: vegan croissant made with Nutter instead of butter
- Lamplighter Coffee Roasters, 26 N. Morris St. and 116 S. Addison St. locations 17 1/2: hot pressed sandwich with marinated tofu, Notz, balsamic glazed onions and jerk-spiced Vegenaise
