Kate – “I grew up in Noosa and moved to Mooloolabah after school. I did my Chefs Apprenticeship and cried every night for 2 years. It was brutal back in the day with the old school mentality. It was very military….Well, abusive really. Even when I became a Chef it was just the accepted way humans dealt with each wasn’t always nice. I moved to Brisbane when I finished my apprenticeship where I stayed for a decade working myself into the ground in hatted and fine dining restaurants. A standard day was 12 hours. My whole life was just chefing… Your life revolves around the people you work with so it’s like a family you may not want to be in. I got to the point where I knew it couldn’t go on anymore and why should it? Why should anyone have to work 12, 14, 16 hour days?
I worked so hard at one stage I had a bit of a breakdown. I thought in order to change or see a change you actually have to change everything. Just another job wasn’t enough. I had to remove myself from the whole situation so I moved to Yamba. That was huge moving from the hectic city to a quiet beachside place. It’s quite a cliquey area. Most who live there grew up there, married their high school sweethearts so its hard to form new bonds. I lived there for 3 years on my own. I was head chef at a little place called Irons and Craig and my Aunt has a little restaurant called Sassafras in Yamba where I helped out as well. I basically chilled out, went to the beach everyday and got Kate back.
Cassie and I actually met 6 years ago when we were both living in Brisbane. We met in a nightclub… as you do. The next day Cassie messaged me saying we should catch up for a drink. I never saw that message. Five years later when I was living in Yamba I bought a new phone and it came up with a message request which I hadn’t seen before. It was her message 5 years later. I sat on it for a bit and one night I wrote a message saying …Is five years too late for that drink? She said No, it’s not. Sheer coincidence that Cass had moved to Lismore and I was in Yamba. It was very bizarre. We could have been anywhere but we were only an hour apart. That was last year. We got married after being together 8 weeks on August the 5th and here we are. I always had this romantic idea that when you met the right one you would know but as you get older you think..What a load of rubbish! But it really was. The moment we saw each other 5 years later it was …Yep, this is it!”
Cassandre – “I grew up in Caloundra. We were both born in 1981 and we both grew up on The Sunshine Coast. I left school, went to Uni and realised it wasn’t me. I’m a creative person but I started working as a financial advisor. I got married and had a son Hudson. I left his Dad when Hudson was 3. I had a small catering business and realised my love was food and people. I was trying to look for my career but it was right in front of me. I always had dinner parties and people over. I started my catering business and through word of mouth I ended up really busy. I came back from overseas and opened a little coffee shop, then from there I ran a school tuck shop which I turned into a financially viable workplace, I won awards, I entered Masterchef and I got in the top 50. I won $10,000 in a cooking competition. I worked in a community kitchen for aged care and provided them with awesome food. They were getting frozen rubbish food and I asked them what their favourite thing was to cook. They were the home makers and they were not getting looked after with food. I stayed there for 2 years and provided them with nutritious, delicious food.
I had a dream of moving to the Northern Rivers, I don’t know why. When Hudson finished Primary School we moved here with my girlfriend at the time. Three months later we split up. We bought a house together. I met Kate a month later, got married a month after that. It sounds cliche but I finally am living by my heart. We’ve always talked about having a cafe. We bought a food van and, sold that. Just weeks ago, Kate was working as a Head Chef and I was working as Front of House Manager. We both decided it was absolutely essential to our wellbeing to not only surround yourself with your own tribe (or herd) outside of work but to build that within your workplace. We came to the conclusion that we needed to create this for ourselves so we resigned from our jobs. Our goal was to work together so that’s where we are now. Within days we found the perfect space in Summerland Arcade and after meeting with Darcy (owner of The Bircher Bar) we knew what we had to do.
Kate has always done amazing sandwiches. She puts a chef twist on it. It’s refined and detailed and delicious. It’s a healthy option to a burger and we focus on really good local, house-made ingredients. I love food. The fact I met Kate who’s a Chef and I get to eat her food is awesome. Kate and I love the menu we have created. We make everything in house (well except for the chilli sauce as we cant compete with The Chile Banditos)! And all the produce is locally sourced. We collect our fruit and veg from the Lismore market ourselves. The Butcher (Hutleys) has been amazing and worked with us to create our own spiced pastrami and the baker (Henrys) has worked with us to create a lighter and grainier sourdough, which really compliments our menu. We are a forever evolving humans and The Pickled Herd will continue to evolve too.
We were looking at names and originally thought the Herd but it’s a band name. Kate’s song she likes is called Unpredictable and the lyrics say…No-one in the herd controls the herd. We make the best pickles too so The Pickled Herd it is. We want to grow this business to provide catering as well. It was going to be Pepper Sprout because we got married in a fever, hotter than a pepper sprout. Setting this up in 3 weeks has been huge. We put all our money into it, my best friend helped. We’ve had so many good friends that we could not have done this without. They came over in the first week and helped us make the pickles and the syrups. Kate’s always been stuck in the kitchen and I feel like this will be great for her to be the face as well and make her own community. It feels like our home because all the furniture is from our home (laughs). The support has been incredible. Our goal is to build genuine and open relationships with all our suppliers and our customers and create our own ‘pickled’ herd. I love it here. Lismore is where I’m meant to be.”