Allergy-friendly spread business Buddee lands $1 million deals with Coles and Woolworths

In the midst of Melbourne’s string of lockdowns, the classic Australian school lunchbox was revived. And now, the two dads behind the project have just scored deals with both Woolworths and Coles worth $1 million — before they’d even sold one of their products.

Buddee is Seong-Lee Ang and Rodney Chieng’s answer to the no-nut policy across Australian schools. With Ang’s two children bearing severe anaphylactic food allergies, the light bulb moment came after realising food allergies can be ‘pretty difficult at times’.

“When they were younger, it was a lot easier to manage. But going to school, it just became more of a concern. [Buddee] started off with me trying to create something for my children to safely eat at school,” Ang said.

After realising the shelves of every major supermarket lacked a no-nut and allergy-friendly spread alternative aside from Vegemite and jam, Ang and Chieng joined forces during the pandemic where they ‘had quite a bit of time to muck around’.

Experimenting over two years with around 60 renditions of the spread, the pair say their children tasted every single version of them.

“By version 30 or 40, they pretty much liked a lot of them — because who is going to turn away chocolate, right?” Chieng said.

Buddee is Seong-Lee Ang and Rodney Chieng’s answer to the no-nut policy across Australian schools. SOurce: supplied.

Throughout the process, the pair were focused on three main pillars that the perfect product had to have: it had to taste good, it had to be allergy-friendly, and it had to be healthier than most snacks already on the shelves.

“You know, we’re both dads, Rodney has three kids, I have two kids. And we care about what goes in our kids’ mouths. A lot of the spreads out there are really unhealthy, full of sugar and full of fat.

“We’re so proud of the health star ratings that we’ve got — we got five stars for the smooth and the crunchy spreads, and four and a half stars for the chocolate one,” Ang said.

Featuring roasted chickpeas as the centre flavour, the co-founders were confident everyone was already used to the humble legume — making it easier for die-hard peanut butter fans to venture out into the nut-free world.

“Everyone’s so used to chickpeas — there’s a lot of other chickpea products on the shelf,” Ang said.

And now, Buddee will join the likes of hummus and chickpea chips on the shelves across Australia’s supermarket giants.

“We actually hadn’t sold a single jar — the jars that Woolies ordered were the first we’d sold!

“We’d always dreamed of our product being on the shelf after release — I mean, every food brand would love that. Some try for years and never get on. We thought we’d try in a few years, but then we thought about the gap in the market right now,” Ang said.

So the pair jumped, and were quickly blown away when both supermarkets — in the same week — wanted them on the shelf.

“They absolutely loved it. And then everything just fit – and the next thing we knew, we were mass-producing jars. It’s been a crazy ride.” Ang said.

But despite the allergy-friendly spread catering to the humble school lunchbox, the co-founders have found fans in adults, too.

“We were trying to change the landscape of [spreads] being safe to eat in schools, but we found that adults really love it too. They eat it by the jar!” Rodney said.

So what’s next for this budding brand? While Seong-Lee and Rodney can’t reveal too much, they’re banking on expanding the Buddee brand into a whole range of products.

“Buddee spreads are just the beginning. We’ll have a range of future products and they’ll be in a similar vein: healthy and delicious!

We want to become a brand that people can trust and rely on. That’s part of why we’ve called it Buddee — we’re a friend you can rely on,” Seong-Lee said.