Plant-Based Cheese Company Experiences Growth That’s Nuttin’ Ordinary

Above: Josh Velasquez, left, and Adam Hamilton, co-founders. Left: A package of Nuttin’ Ordinary ravioli, launching this year. Courtesy photos.

There’s nothing cheesy about the success story of Nuttin’ Ordinary, a manufacturer of cashew-based soft cheese with a proprietary probiotic blend.

The company, co-founded by Josh Velasquez and Adam Hamilton, raised just under $1 million from local angel investors in 2018. By the end of that year, they opened an 8,000-square-foot, gluten-free facility in Peterborough. Spurred by the success of Beyond Meat, the plant-based food market exploded in 2019, and Nuttin’ Ordinary, which has six employees, was well positioned to capitalize on it. The company added Wegmans supermarkets and Market Basket to its roster of clients, which includes Whole Foods, Fresh Direct, Fairway and local cooperatives in the Northeast.

Despite the pandemic, Hamilton says 2020 was Nuttin’ Ordinary’s best year as ecommerce spiked. “We went through our reserves,” Hamilton says of their inventory of four types of cheese as well as a ravioli offering.

In January 2021, the duo hired an advisor with experience growing consumer product companies and the advisor worked with them for nine months. Now executing on those recommendations, Hamilton says, “We are expanding,” and looking to double sales in 2022. He adds they expect to hit $10 million by 2026.

The company launched in 2014 after months of research and development to create a plant-based cheese that tastes good. And it’s launching a crowd funding campaign to finance an expansion of its sales force, Hamilton says. Nuttin’ Ordinary now has 115 accounts and continues to expand its wholesale market.

For more information, visit nuttinordinary.com.