Cruz Creme's offers vegan-friendly ponche de creme

In Trinidad and Tobago, ponche de creme is a traditional Christmas drink, and one brand, Cruz Creme, is gaining popularity for its vegan-friendly varieties.

Cruz Creme is named after Santa Cruz, where the brand started operations under its parent company, The Secret Kitchen, which Shayndel Ayala Lutchmedial owns. Cruz Creme was founded in 2020, during the pandemic.

The businesswoman recalled that the idea came to her and her boyfriend/business partner Jelani Serrette one night while driving. Cash-strapped and with many restrictions in effect at the time, they wanted to find a way to earn income. That night, while on the road, the couple began brainstorming and decided on making ponche de creme.

"However, we wanted a challenging experience, and so to make it interesting, we chose to take a traditional dairy-based drink and wanted to make it vegan. The drinks are eggless, and we use plant-based milk like soy and coconut," she said.

"We experimented with a series of flavours in the beginning like plantain, coconut, soursop, barbadine, pumpkin and vanilla."

They felt the vegan market was a bit under-represented regarding food and beverages. To try to fix this, they thought what a great opportunity to "bring their sweet hands into the mix."

"Eventually, we felt that the product was worth sharing with our friends, and we put that to the test. We shared samples at a house lime, and it was not received well...at all," Lutchmedial said.

"Some people did not even want to try the second flavour and others refused to give feedback. It did not faze us. Rather, we took their feedback and lack thereof and experimented with the recipe for about a year. We went through a steady process of trial and error to get the recipe right."

In late August 2021, they finally had a recipe they were happy with.

"It was exciting. We took our new samples and shared them with our friends again. This time, they loved it," Lutchmedial said.

"It was at this point we felt confident enough to put our product on the market for sale, so plans were underway."

They settled on three flavours – pumpkin spice, coconut cream and vanilla classic.

Lutchmedial, who holds a bachelor's degree in business management from SBCS Global Learning Institute Ltd, recalled she and Serrette spent countless hours and efforts trying to perfect the beverages.

Now, friends give raving reviews, and even people who are not vegans say they enjoy the three flavours.

Lutchmedial said, "Intense research went into this venture since we are not actually vegan. We looked for dairy substitutes and were forced to make our own vegan condensed milk, something we had never done before.

"This is a diverse drink. We have alcoholic and non-alcoholic flavour. People can put it in their cereal, coffee, yogurt, or ice-cream, for instance."

A coffee shop in Port of Spain, Full Bloom Coffee Roasters, now offers Cruz Creme's pumpkin spice as a part of its seasonal cold brew special. The coconut cream flavour was added to the menu in December.

As people got more familiar with the Cruz Creme brand, another business, Half Moon Vegan Ice Cream, expressed interest in a collaboration with pumpkin spice ponche de creme and their locally-made vegan ice cream.

"We were excited and jumped at the opportunity, which has since formed solid business relationships and a few new friendships. Our ponche de creme is available from mid-September to early January for personal orders, events, retail and wholesale," Lutchmedial said.

The products were sold out at a recent up market event held at Lions Cultural Centre in Port of Spain. A bottle costs between $120 and $140.

For more info: visit Cruz Creme's Instagram page @thesecretkitchen868 or e-mail thesecretkitchen868@gmail.com.