Drashya Shah
Alinna Hou
prerak patel
Alisa Lanza
Harrison Zhang
Rutgers Business School
Joe Markert
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By promoting “organic and non-genetically modified products,” Dr-Cow's innovation improves the health of Dr.Cow’s consumers. This is because it promotes dairy-free, soy-free, gluten-free, egg-free, vegan, organic and non-genetically modified products, that are suitable for people with these allergies and intolerances. Additionally, being that Dr. Cow sells products that are dairy-free, soy-free, gluten-free, egg-free, vegan, organic and are not genetically modified, they are reducing their harmful environmental impact which attains to both goal twelve and thirteen of UN Sustainable Goals: Climate Action and Responsible Consumption and Production. By practicing responsible consumption and production, one is ultimately taking part in climate action. According to The Guardian’s article, “Avoiding Meat and Dairy is the ‘single biggest way’ to reduce your impact on Earth”, taking part in a vegan diet does not just reduce the emission of greenhouse gasses and one’s carbon footprint, but also reduces global acidification, eutrophication, land use, and water. A study was conducted and published in the journal “Science” that was based upon data of around 40,000 responses in 119 countries. Creating an animal-free diet not only positively impacts one’s dietary well-being, which was Dr. Cow’s original goal, but it goes beyond that. The more people who create and use animal-free products, the fewer animal farms there are, which means fewer greenhouse gases and carbon emissions released when maintaining the land, the reduction of water use to keep the soil healthy, and ultimately a reduction in farm size. All this leads to a more sustainable environment. All in all, Dr. Cow promoting these animal-free products impacts the environment positively and creates a better earth.
Both Veronica Schwartz and her husband and partner in the Dr-Cow company, Pablo Castro, have a background in food, as pastry chefs. When Veronica received an offer for a position as a raw food chef, this piqued her interest to further research this diet along with Pablo and tried it for themselves. This movement towards a fresh food diet, along with their motivation to fuel people’s body with food that tastes delicious, without harming the health of others, inspired the couple to begin their research on producing their innovation, vegan nut cheese. When they first started researching their innovation, there were no similar products on the market; at the time, there were only one or two stores that sold one or two raw products. This was mainly because the raw food lifestyle was not as well-known or mainstream as it is today.
The only people involved in her innovation were Veronica Schwartz and her husband. They came up with the idea when they were both in Argentina, and once the pair thought of it, it was the only thing that they could talk about with each other. They decided that they would have more opportunities to pursue their dreams if they moved, and as a result, the couple moved from Argentina to Brooklyn about 17 years ago. Coming here, all Veronica had were her savings which she used to invest in buying a building for her innovation. They do not have any other internal or external stakeholders, and their company only houses four employees, excluding themselves. Interestingly, Veronica and Pablo were unaware of the UN Sustainable Goals, and so they did not link these goals to their business. However, their motivation to promote and provide the community with food that is good for their health has achieved multiple UN Sustainable Goals.
While our team was conducting the interview, it was clear that the amount of passion behind Veronica’s words was immense. When talking about how she came up with the idea of vegan, dairy-free cheese, she said her source of inspiration for this product came from wanting to create something with more natural ingredients. When she “found out what different types of food can do to your body,” she immediately shifted her focus and decided that she “wanted to do something good, not bad.” Thus, her change in beliefs is what inspired her to remove the element of processing form her innovation, and she knows it's the right job for her because when she finishes her work every day, “we [her team] feel good about it.”
Veronica Schwartz used to be a pastry chef, but she switched over to being a plant-based chef. She shared her emotional change over by stating that “As soon as I understood the harm of many of the foods I was using as a pastry chef, I had to make the change. There was no choice for me. I couldn’t do it and ignore the guilty feeling I had about the effect the ingredients would have on others’ health. That is not who I am.”
In the short term, Dr-Cow would like to continue to produce and maintain the high quality of their products and continue their positive impact in regard to contributing to the vegan lifestyle and community in the United States. In the long term, Dr-Cow would like to expand their business to more suppliers, while still maintaining their standards of quality. Dr-Cow would also like to continue to uphold their business reputation, as well as increase societal awareness for consumption of healthy foods. Veronica and Pablo do not have a desire to expand their business or to distribute internationally, as they want to be able to maintain control over the quality of their products. Maintaining and having control over the high quality of their products is something that the couple highly regard and do not want to compromise on. For them, it is more important than simply making money and profits. Therefore, they would like to preserve the business similar to its current size.
After interviewing Veronica, we were informed that she cannot share any quantitative information about her suppliers, units sold, or how much her business has grown as they want that information to remain private. Also, since Dr-Cow is still a relatively new company, they do not have a public stock option available for buyers, which also prevents us from looking at how much they have expanded on the stock market. However, their website does provide information about Dr-Cow’s "stockists", which are companies and stores which hold and sell Dr-Cow products. Dr-Cow has three consumers in California including Peace Pies, Erewhon Natural Food Market, and Rainbow Grocery Food Coop. In Florida, Dr-Cow has a consumer called Christopher’s Kitchen and in Manhattan, New York, Dr-Cow has 10 consumers, including High Vibes, Live Live, Integral Yoga, and Natural Frontier Market. Finally in Brooklyn New York, Dr-Cow has 4 customers including Union Market, Riverdale, Park Slope Food Coop, and Perelandra Natural Food Center. In total, Dr-Cow distributes to 17 storefronts around the country and these facilitate Dr-Cow’s mission towards a healthier lifestyle through great tasting food. Furthermore, in the interview, Veronica explained that her innovation was one of the first of its kinds which meant that by opening Dr-Cow, she had also created a new market in the food industry for tree nut cheeses. After her founding, her company inspired many others to create their own vegan cheese company and now the market for organic, raw cheese is exploding.
During the interview, Veronica spoke highly of how proud she was of how far her company has come since their humble beginnings. She explained to us how “it was hard” when they first founded the business because they did not have much to go off of, however, as their business grew, today they “distribute to so many supermarkets and restaurants,” especially to many in New York. At one point in her business career, Veronica and her team even went as far as to ship across borders and into Canada, however, they had to put a stop to this distribution line because “customs became too expensive.” Additionally, in an interview we found online, Veronica said that her company started off in 1999 or 2000 by selling one product which was Granola and their main ingredients were quinoa and amaranth. Sadly, this product was not popular in Argentina at the time and so when they moved to Brooklyn, they decided to change. In the interview, her husband Pablo Castro explains that they started to make their product sin a completely “new way” and even after that, they “changed it completely again”. They began to dehydrate their ingredients instead of roasting them, stopped using sugar, started using agave, and began to do everything organic. By changing their recipes, Veronica’s company has grown immensely and today things have changed drastically for the better, as Veronica now sells over nine different types of tree nut cheeses and much more (https://www.dr-cow.com/news/ 1).
Dr-Cow has an immense impact on the environment. As the company promotes dairy-free products, it reduces the need for cows. Cows are animals which require intense care and farms to harvest their milk, but since Dr-Cow is vegan, there is no need for these resources. As a result, Dr-cow promotes a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions.
Furthermore, Dr-Cow benefits society by promoting healthy eating through their innovation; they encourage people to eat healthy by making sure all their ingredients are natural, and focusing on making their products taste delicious. However, the majority of society has yet to understand Dr-Cow’s product and according to Veronica Schwartz, the product needs more time to mature. Veronica Schwartz has worked a lot with chefs, and even for them, the organic aged vegan nut cheese is difficult to understand. Veronica is very proud of how far her company has come, and she's happy to be doing what she wants to every day. Though Dr-Cow does not operate at a large scale for society, to Veronica, the size of her company does not matter. Veronica pushes for quality, and going “big” means compromising things that she does not want to. Veronica says, “if ten people buy it, I'm happy, because I know I am doing the best for them.”
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Veronica Schwartz, Co-founder
Dr-Cow is the innovative market leader when it comes to the creation of organic raw aged nut cheeses to the marketplace. Their inspiration for this product stems from their belief that healthy eating should not equate to sacrificing delicious food, and till this date, they have been accomplishing just that. Amazingly, the innovation of this new product goes far beyond the walls of their companies and it has allowed other companies to jump on the bandwagon and follow suit ever since they were founded in 2004.