Little Oak owner Elke Pascoe risked everything to start her own business but wanted to offer babies an alternative to formula milk
A busy mother of two children described how she became a major player in formula milk after her children had severe reactions to cow’s milk products.
Little Oak owner Elke Pascoe risked everything to start her own business after discovering that goat’s milk is more like breast milk and less likely to cause painful reactions in babies.
The 41-year-old single mom told FEMAIL she wanted to bet and put all her savings, time and energy into work, but she had to do it “for the kids.”
Not only for children who benefit from the goat’s milk range and knowledge about milk allergies, but also for those who will continue to suffer.
“I wanted to make a difference for children and their parents so they don’t have to face pain and discomfort every day because they don’t have access to good food.
“Good nutrition shouldn’t just be for wealthy families in the eastern suburbs,” he said.
Its first product hit the shelves in 2018 and it couldn’t be more proud.
“My lifelong dream is to ensure that no child goes to bed hungry,” he said.
That passion drove him to make the best product possible, cut margins, and stay inactive when people said he could make millions by adding cow’s milk formula to his product line.
The mother of two worked in pharmacy and health care, but went to see what was in it until both of her children started to react to the formula.
It now sells 200 tons of baby food a year and is praised by parents for helping many people feed their babies without worrying about the painful side effects they experience with dairy.
“People are constantly trying to tell me to go after the money offered in cow’s milk formula, but I’m not doing it for my share of those billions, I want to do something that I want to give to my children.”
“Of course we don’t make hundreds of millions of dollars, but we’re proud of our product and after all, we’re talking about babies and toddlers and they deserve our best.”
He relied on previous careers in the healthcare, pharmaceutical and consulting industries to start the business, investing his salary in his recruiting business, and using his field contacts to make sure he was doing everything right.
“This is a tightly regulated industry, so I had to make sure I followed all the rules and still made a new product that could make a difference,” he said.
The company’s baby food currently costs six times its competitors, but retails for the same price.
“It’s not about margins, we’re feeding the most vulnerable people in society, so the financial loss is a conscious choice for us as we don’t compromise on quality,” he said.
“For me it’s vital that everyone looks after food for their children, I don’t want to put a high price on my product so that people who need it don’t buy it,” he said.
His son, Charlie, suffered from skin conditions as a child, watching what he ate after despairing over the dozen creams the doctors had recommended him use.
The young man’s face is now clear – and according to Elke, the family avoids cow’s milk and related products and drinks goat’s milk at home.
He now owns his own goat farm in New Zealand, has about 8,000 goats on two properties, and produces over 200 tons of baby food per year.
And her parents are constantly approaching her, thanking her for helping her baby deal with skin reactions and digestive issues at the source.
“People will share photos of their babies with eczema, saggy belly and dull eyes.” said.
After three weeks, continue with a happy, healthy photo with clear eyes. And when things get tough, it reminds us who we’re doing it for.”
It took almost two years to find the formula that was as “rough” as possible.
This adds to Elke’s years of research into why children often react to market-saturating formulas.
“We chose goat’s milk to differentiate the formula because we wanted something infinitely better, and the fats and proteins it contains are more like ours, so there’s no need for much processing,” he said.
Elke decided that the best way to ensure she had long-lasting, high-quality goat’s milk was to grow it. These are some of the 8,000 goats in New Zealand.
“For example, taurine, which is important for brain development, is found naturally in goat’s milk, where the additive they add to cow formula is most closely related to Red Bull,” he said.
“I was shocked when I first found out.”
The company’s seeds were planted by Elke’s eldest daughter, who switched to a basic goat’s milk variety after struggling to digest regular formula.
“He had constant cramps and stomach pain and diarrhea, it was horrible,” he said.
However, it wasn’t until her second child was 18 months old that the mother really began investigating the cause of her painful skin condition and general discomfort.
“I was constantly at the pharmacy or the doctors and was told to get more products to rub into her skin to help her,” she said.
“When I realized I had to watch what he ate, I shouldn’t have added a new cream every time there was a new reaction.”
And she was shocked when she looked at the ingredients in the baby food.
“From palm oil to multidxtrin, it was packed with ingredients I didn’t want to give my son. And it’s not just one formula, it’s every formula on the market,” he said.
Seeing your sweet baby suffer changed everything.
“We only have goat’s milk in the house now, and that made a huge difference,” he says.
“If children stay elsewhere and drink cow’s milk, they complain of itching or even bursting,” he said.
The mother explained that people have been drinking goat’s milk for millennia, and cow’s milk has become more and more popular in the last hundred years.
“The truth is, we have a hard time digesting it. “Studies show that eight out of ten Asian children are lactose intolerant.”
“We also know that breast milk is different for every animal. We have human-scale milk, then polar bear milk, whale milk, and goat milk – on the other hand, cow’s milk,” he said.
Elke and her team now produce 200 tons of formula per year
Little Oak is now growing “on the same trajectory” as Elke’s kids, and age-appropriate snacks like cheese sticks and yogurt were added to the assortment as soon as they landed on their kids’ radar.
But the way to run a successful business, to compete with big pharmaceutical companies, was not an easy one.
“Things have been very tight financially for a while,” he said.
“I divorced my husband before I started, so finances were a big consideration.
But Elke knew she had a chance to make the world a better place and end the suffering of millions of children.
So he worked full time, prioritizing putting food on the table and paying the bills before pouring the rest of his money into Little Oak.
Sydney’s mother says she dreams of a world where no child goes to bed hungry and families don’t have to sacrifice quality food due to financial constraints.
He spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on the company and “worked with little sleep” to make his vision a reality.
“Parenting has helped me in many ways, but mostly because you’ve learned to live with very little sleep,” she said.
Now that her children are grown, she quit her other job to focus on her job and is facing a new set of challenges: stakeholders.
“I wouldn’t do anything else, but hats off to all working single parents, it’s a difficult role to fill,” she said.
Source: Daily Mail
