We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Melissa Torre a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Melissa, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Let’s start with the story of your mission. What should we know?

I was a chef prior to starting my skincare business. I owned a small bakery cafe, and we were known for using local and organic ingredients before it was something that was as widespread as it is now. I also worked as a private chef, where nutrition and food sustainability were my focus. I myself had struggled with an auto immune condition, misdiagnosed over the years as Lyme, Hashimotos, and MS, and found that the right diet could work wonders on reducing symptoms. One of the most persistent symptoms I had was psoriasis, which I could never seem to fully kick. A few years into opening Cookie Confidential, I discovered the main instigator of the majority of my symptoms was wheat…literally the bread and butter of my bakery! Its how I made my dough (please excuse my bakery jokes!). Prior to making this discovery I had started using an old family recipe of homemade lard soap and tallow balm to soothe my psoriasis flares, and it amazingly worked better than anything doctors had prescribed over the pervious two decades of suffering. Long story short, after a few years of contending with a wheat allergy while working in a bakery every day, I sold my shop and started Vellum Street…a soap and skincare company that used lard and tallow to make gentle, biocompatable skincare for folks who were struggling to find a solution to their skin issues. As in my work as a chef, nutrition and food sustainability were still important to me. I started to wonder why you would put things on your skin that you would never put into your mouth, and strove to formulate products using only food grade ingredients. I also made sure to incorporate food sustainability into our business model, sourcing ingredients that would have otherwise gone to waste from local butcher shops, farms, and incorporate. These are all ingredients that have incredible benefits for the skin, such as citrus peels, previously steeped tea and coffee, and shelf expired oats. Over 80% of our ingredients and packaging are sourced locally (within 100 miles of out studio). All of our glass packaging is post consumer glass, coming to us via a local non profit who collects glass from the community and processes it to sell to businesses to us, rather than it going to landfill. Salsa, yogurt, spice, and baby food jars serve as our packaging. At Vellum Street we not only strive to make incredibly gently and nourishing products, but to show that immense value that is often left behind in the daily items we so readily discard.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I was never a skin care person. I used whatever soap or lotion was available, never giving it much thought. As a tomboy, makeup and facial cleansing routines were never of any interest to me. It wasn’t until I started having issues with my skin that I gave it any thought at all. We make products that are actually natural-nothing synthetic, nothing harsh, just gentle and nourishing-things that our ancestors would have used on their skin going back generations and generations. Tallow and lard were the main thing that was used on the skin before the 1930s when the industrialization of seed oils began-seed oils tending to be rancid and harshly extracted. When my ancestors hunted deer, every single part of that animal was used, the meat, the hide, the organs, and the fat, which was used not only to cook, but as a salve for dry, cracked, burned, or otherwise irritated skin. This is the tradition that I want to carry on, the practice of utilizing what it is that we have already, rather than always feeling the need to synthesize or create something new. Living lightly on the land in this way is not only better for the environment, and all of the plants and animals within it, but better for our own well being also. When we learn to see the value in every bit of all that surrounds us, it adds an intrinsic value to our own lives. When I started this brand most natural products all looked the same, they tended to be a little bland looking; muted colors, kraft paper packaging, “eco” green writing, I wanted to do something different. Our colors all come from plants and clays, so not only are they natural, but fun and playful as well. I wanted to appeal not only to folks who already were eco minded, but to those who weren’t. I knew that by offering a product that was not only truly natural, but aesthetically pleasing, and absolutely effective we could get more folks thinking about what they spent their dollars on. When I began Vellum Street, almost no one was commercially marketing tallow or lard skincare, even though it is one of the most biocompatable substances we can use on our skin. I wanted to show that it wasn’t just an old hillbilly or indigenous practice, it was something we could ethically and effectively continue with today.

What else should we know about how you took your side hustle and scaled it up into what it is today?

I started baking fun and unique cookies, which is what led to me opening my first business Cookie Confidential, while I was a bartender/bar manager. It was a fun side hustle, and for me, a great way to use my creativity to make some extra money. As a high school drop out there weren’t too many industries outside of the bar/restaurants world where someone like me had the chance of rising to a managerial position, but, there wasn’t much creativity in that world either. Baking and cooking let me express that creative side. When I first opened my bakery, I did it with money I’d saved over a year of bartending double shifts, and a credit card with (I think) a $3000 limit. It wasn’t much, and it was bare bones and basic, but it was what I had and I made it work. Over the 5 years I had that business, I continued to work as a bartender so that I could put every dollar the shop made back into growing it. When I sold Cookie Confidential in 2015, I was fortunate to have accumulated a decent amount of equipment, which left me with a nice bit of capital to start Vellum Street. Vellum Street itself was a side hustle for the first 5 years of its life, until I finally quit my full time in October of 2020 to give it my full attention.

Any insights you can share with us about how you built up your social media presence?

Social media is a trip! Instagram launched the same month as I opened my first business, and it wasn’t nearly what it is today. We used it occasionally, but back then it didn’t really have the power to drive business like it does now. For Vellum Street, IG is really important for our growth. New customers find us regularly via that platform. I fount the best strategy has been consistency and honesty. We never do the hard sell, I don’t like to be “sold” to, and I don’t thing our customer does either. I try to offer our followers informative and light hearted posts, and let my personality shine through. I think it has helped build the trust that my customers have in me, and gotten them to take a risk on a product from a small brand that they may not have tried otherwise.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://vellumstsoapcompany.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/vellumstreet/