We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Dina DiCenso And Joshua Katcher. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Dina DiCenso below.
Dina DiCenso, appreciate you joining us today. Can you talk to us about your team building process? How did you recruit and train your team and knowing what you know now would you have done anything differently?
When Dina began experimenting with vegan cheesemaking in 2015, she was looking to fill a void: there simply weren’t any good vegan cheeses on the market, and seven years after adopting a vegan lifestyle, she became interested in making it herself. Once Joshua and I became acquainted, two things galvanized our relationship: our interest in making a high quality, aged, French-style vegan cheese that we could share with others and our commitment to veganism.
The RIND team is small and passionate about what we do. Our commitment to animal welfare and veganism is what sets us apart from our competitors. Joshua has been vegan for more than 25 years and brought entrepreneurial experience in the vegan space to RIND as founder and owner of Brave Gentleman fashion and footwear company. Dina also had the experience of founding and running the vegan tattoo shop and art gallery Gristle as well as Brooklyn NP, a vegan medical clinic.
For the first five years of RIND, starting in 2017, we both wore many hats and handled production, marketing, sales and all of the other aspects of operating a small startup. In the summer of 2022, when the company’s profile had risen and we had around 100 accounts and several significant industry awards to our name, we had the opportunity to bring Greg Langel on board to help with marketing and sales. Like Joshua, Greg has been vegan for more than 25 years, and has 20 years’ experience in marketing and communications. Because we have all been vegan for a long time, we’re dedicated and united in our goals of taking the harm out of the food system, improving options in the vegan cheese realm and making our product accessible to everyone, including non-vegans. Our dedication to our values is reflected in our history of donating to animal rescues in the NY and NJ area, and we plan to continue and expand this activity as we grow.
We wouldn’t have grown any differently if we were starting to build a team from scratch today.
Dina DiCenso, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?
Founded in 2017 by Dina DiCenso and Joshua Katcher, RIND by Dina & Joshua is a WBENC-certified, multi sofi™ award-winning brand that has quickly raised the bar on plant-based cheese with soft-ripened, French-style cheese. The company’s state-of-the-art cheese cave in the historic Brooklyn Army Terminal is New York City’s only dedicated vegan cheese cave. RIND’s aged cheese is the first and only vegan cheese to be sold in Whole Foods artisanal dairy cheese cases in New York City (currently in 7 locations). In addition to cave-aged vegan cheeses, RIND offers rich and creamy spreads and introduced the world’s first carrot-based cheese slices in 2022, which won a sofi™ Best New Product award. RIND is currently expanding the veggie cheese line under the Veggie Underground brand with new parsnip and red bell pepper varieties to complement the carrot cheese coming to market this year. In addition to slices, all three veggie varieties will be available in shredded and cream cheese formats.
What do you think helped you build your reputation within your market?
RIND’s reputation has been established by the numerous industry awards we’ve received, namely the Specialty sofi™ Gold awards for our Cambleu (2020) and Lapsang aged cheese (2022), and a sofi™ Best New Product award for our Carrot Cheese slices (2022). Our reputation has also been bolstered by positive press and distinctions awarded by media outlets. In 2022, Cook’s Illustrated named our bleu Best Vegan Bleu, and we’ve received positive, high-profile coverage in The Boston Globe and VegNews
In addition to the awards and positive press, our commitment to veganism and using 100% vegan ingredients and processes has strengthened our reputation. Even with vegan cultures available, you’ll see other companies offering aged “vegan’” cheeses that are being inoculated with cultures grown on dairy. In contrast, all of our cultures are certified vegan. We partnered with a biotech company to develop our own custom cultures. We also created our own aging cave, as all the aging caves in the NYC area are geared for dairy cheese, which presents issues for cross-contamination.
Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?
We were just getting off the ground when Covid happened and the lockdown started in March 2020. Fortunately, as food producers we were considered essential workers and were able to forge ahead and continue making cheese. The company made big steps in development during the pandemic as we ramped up production and distribution. It became clear that there was a need and demand in the market for our aged vegan cheese. Covid helped people realize that their food choices are contributing to diseases that are spread between people and animals, as well as pandemics. Social consciousness about the food supply chain increased. And because the food supply chain was squeezed, small companies had an opportunity to get their products into the market. Things took off for us and we were able to purchase new equipment and move into a production facility five times larger than our former space. As our product became increasingly popular and we gained market recognition for quality, we made big strides between 2020-2022.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.rind.nyc/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/rind.cheese/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/rind.vegan.cheese
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/rind/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/RIND_CHEESE
Image Credits
All photos by Joshua Katcher