Buddha bowl made with Sunfed's Chicken Free Chicken
Buddha bowl made with Sunfed's Chicken Free Chicken
Auckland-based enterprising former software engineer, Shama Sukul Lee has stepped up to join the global movement for plant-based meat protein with her Sunfed Chicken Free Chicken, launched in 2017. Sukul Lee’s aim is to provide New Zealanders and the global market with good clean food.
The entrepreneur is currently bringingin the yellow peas at the heart of this plant-based meat alternative from Europe, but is hoping to grow these in New Zealand once she is selling the product on a sufficiently large scale. The company expanded to Australia earlier this year after finding success in New Zealand selling in New World and Countdown stores.
“Chicken Free Chicken is a natural progression in chicken consumption, moving from factory to free range to antibiotic chicken to Sunfed,” says Sukul Lee.
While the entrepreneur is keen to please consumers, often they don’t know what they want until it’s put in front of them, she argues. If Henry Ford had asked consumers, they would have asked for faster horses, rather than an automobile.
The majority of consumers are flexitarians, says the Sunfed founder.
What the entrepreneur, who used to like and enjoy meat has tried to do is give the meat analogue a real fleshy meaty feel with long fibres.
Being able to provide consumers with a “meaty experience” is really huge, says the software engineer turned hardware engineer.
Sukul Lee wanted the Sunfed product to be “cleanly minimal,” she says.
“I’m a big clean eater, I don’t like chemicals or E numbers, I’m really strict. We are very conscious that this is food,” she says.
“Being a New Zealand brand, it’s in our DNA that we are making food as cleanly as possible.
“For it to work in the world, it’s a meaty experience, and clean and healthy and it’s not compromised in any way. The meat is very nutrient dense and bio-absorbed so that health part, we don’t ignore,” she says.
After success in New Zealand, the product is selling in Australia through Coles and it has gone better than they expected, says Sukul Lee.
Next year, Sunfed will be launching bacon and beef alternative products.
The company, which has backing from investors including Sir Stephen Tindall and international investors, is now in its next phase of expansion, and this time it’s global.
Sukul Lee is seeing demand from the US, Canada, the UK, Europe and Asia. In parallel, she is exploring how to set up an infrastructure in New Zealand, talking to farmers about growing yellow peas here.
The beauty of growing yellow peas is they are regenerative and leave the soil in a better state than when they arrive, she says. They are the most environmentally sustainable of pulses, she says.
The Aucklander likes the idea of offering farmers an alternative from meat and dairy, giving farmers a regular income on growing yellow peas. They may be grown on a large scale overseas but she doesn’t see why they can’t be grown here.
New Zealand is still so focused on meat and dairy, this is going to be good for everyone, she says.
“We can build a company that is good for soil, water, animals, human beings and it remains good as it scales,” she says.
