Yea Cheese

Cheesemakers, David Wareham and Kelly McLeish celebrating the recent awards won by Yea Brand Cheese. Photo Sam Hicks.

By Carol Hopkins

Tucked away in a quiet backstreet in Yea is a small cheese factory that, for many years, has been scooping up big awards in state and national competitions. Just this year, the Yea Brand Dairy took out gold medals in the Dairy Industry Association of Australia Awards for Excellence with their crème fraiche, mascarpone and vintage cheese products. And it wasn’t the first time. Since 2013, the company has been steadily accruing a host of gold and silver medals for their products. In 2014, they topped these achievements when their crème fraiche was crowned Champion Cream Product in the Australian Grand Dairy Awards, a national competition that celebrates quality, excellence and innovation in dairy produce. This was an incredibly significant achievement, especially for a company that only has two regular employees. As Andrew Kirk, Manager of Yea Brand Dairy, explains, “Out of all the cream, any type of cream, the Yea Brand Dairy was crowned the best in Australia.” In 2019 the company was runner-up for this award. When asked for the secret of his company’s success, Andrew has no

Above: the crème fraiche and mascarpone lines which are favourites with the restaurant trade. Photo Sam Hicks. Left: Yea Brand Dairy Mature Club Cheddar won the highest scoring club cheese in the 2019 DIAA Victorian Dairy Product Competition.

hesitation in naming his cheesemakers, David Wareham and Kelly McLeish. “They have an excellent work ethic, really high standards and churn out consistent product. The people that you employ to do the job are the most important part of the business. And once you’ve tasted a bit of success, there’s pride, and everyone is working to the same end.” Amazingly, both David and Kelly learnt their craft on the job at the Yea factory. David was employed in sawmills before starting at the factory and Kelly was originally a cleaner at the premises before working her way up through the production ranks to become a cheesemaker. The outstanding success of the brand is testimony to the skill and dedication of these employees who take great pride in the fact that they only use “old school” artisan methods in the production process. Of course, the raw materials used in their products are another critical part of their success. The company sources the cream for their crème fraiche and mascarpone lines from only two first-rate suppliers – one near Kyabram and the other near Warrnambool. Interestingly, their cheddar cheeses are not made from scratch in the factory. Instead, they carefully select cheddar cheese from other Australian producers and use their own special methods to produce the smooth, creamy, rounded, wax-wrapped cheeses that we see on supermarket shelves.

At the moment, the company is producing five products: crème fraiche, mascarpone, and vintage, mature and mildclub cheddars. There are plans to expand this range in 2022 with the addition of flavours to the club cheddars. The team is particularly excited about including pepper berry, an Australian bush food, in the range, as well as producing a chipotle (smoked jalapeño chilli) and a standard chilli variety. The company also produces crème fraiche and mascarpone for a private label, Wattle Valley. The Yea Brand Dairy was established in 1989 by Andrew’s father, Bill Kirk, who was previously involved in creating the

Liz Newman from DIAA presents Andrew Kirk, Manager of Yea Brand Dairy, with the Victorian award for highest scoring club cheddar at a ceremony in Melbourne recently.

King Island Dairy brand. After moving from King Island, he was looking for a new business opportunity and stumbled across a little one-room cheese factory in Yea. Originally a partnership of three families, the company is now solely owned by the Kirk family. The company began by supplying the restaurant trade. At the time, top chefs were struggling to source products such as crème fraiche, mascarpone and clotted cream in Australia. Yea Brand Dairy decided to fill this gap, and as chefs came to recognise the quality of their products, demand grew. “Even before we started getting awards, we knew we were making the right product because we’d get good feedback from chefs,” Andrew says. About fifteen years ago, in response to increasing demand, the company expanded the factory, effectively tripling the size of the footprint of the building. However, it was not until the advent of the MasterChef program on TV that things really took off in the retail sector. “When MasterChef kicked off, the public started to see more obscure products such as crème fraiche and mascarpone being used in recipes and that pushed demand in the retail setting. It lifted the profile of these products to the point where they have now become mainstream,” Andrew says. Andrew is now planning to boost distribution into the retail sector, particularly in Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne. COVID lockdowns in two of the company’s biggest markets – Melbourne and Sydney – have seen sales to restaurants fall to 10% of original figures and Andrew acknowledges that this sector will take some time to fully recover. One advantage of running a small, efficient company is that it can scale up or down very quickly. When demand increases for the spring racing carnival or the festive season it is quite easy to ramp up production. While cheesemakers David and Kelly virtually run the whole operation on their own most of the time, casual staff are employed for peak periods. As Andrew says, “We have a great little facility here. It’s got plenty of potential to scale up and we are only limited by what we can innovate.”

Although Yea Brand Dairy doesn’t sell directly to the public, there are a number of outlets where residents of the Murrindindi Shire can purchase their products including Yea FoodWorks, Yarck Meat and Produce, and Mansfield FoodWorks and IGA. However, Andrew stresses that it is very easy for any FoodWorks or IGA store to obtain their products. All customers need to do is to ask their local store to get them in. The Yea Dairy Brand is always looking for new outlets. If you are a business that would like to stock their award-winning products you can contact Andrew Kirk on 0411 199 804 or email arkirk@ kirkfood.com.au.

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