Kate Khazour and her husband Younes co-founded Asterisk Kitchen in 2012, beginning with him working in their home kitchen overlooking the Yarra River in Warrandyte.
Today, Asterisk Kitchen has moved well beyond just its founders on staff, with three in the office and from four to six in the warehouse, depending upon volumes.
In addition to cake and meringue, the company’s product range has grown to include Belgian cookies, French biscuit rose, and gluten free massepain almond biscuits. Its savoury Lavosh range comes in three flavours – Fenne & Thyme, Charcoal and Beetroot.
To widen its range, Asterisk Kitchen began taking on distributorship of select products that complement its clean, green and pure philosophy about food.
Alongside its own 27 SKUs, along with 23 SKUs in foodservice, it distributes five SKUs of organic, vegan and gluten-free products that it imports from France.
“We took on the other products to spread out our offerings, but over the last 18 months we’ve seen that making our own products here in Australia – with our ‘clean and green’ reputation and competitive Aussie dollar – is paramount to the growth of the business,” Younes says.
Local produce is also important.
“We definitely go for Australian wherever we can, so 98 per cent of our ingredients are Australian. The only thing we can’t find, for example, is activated coconut charcoal, which comes from Fiji.”
The other things that are paramount to the business are the Khazours’ deep respect for nature and caring for the planet.
All these aspects are part of their fun, passionate, “no rules” approach to food.
