With our milking shed now fully completed, as well as having all of our processing equipment in place for the pasteurisation and bottling of our products at Kingsmeade, we decided it was time to go full steam ahead – no turning back now. Into full production we went.
It was super exciting to get into the swing of things, and most importantly to be able to share our great products with our friends, family and the wider community. We started at a very small scale milking around 150 ewes and only producing about 125L worth of milk per flavour (choc, vanilla & coffee) and we were processing just one flavour every 3 days. Despite the small start though, we were determined to expand our reach as soon as we could so that every New Zealander would have a chance to try it for themselves – that was a key aim for us at this point.
Initially, without yet having a specific market to sell to, we did a lot of giveaways and promotions, especially at local sports events including community fun runs and summer sport tournaments as we began building our brand. We knew people would love what we were doing, it was now just a matter of getting ourselves out there. Slowly, but surely, we got our products into a lot of local cafes and stores, including The Old Bakehouse and Landsdown Sammies, and sold the odd box of 12 to friends and new sheep milk fans from around the wider region. Getting into the main supermarket chains was our next step though, but we soon realised that was going to take some time, plus just a little bit of paperwork…