Welcome to the beginning of a sauce revolution - or should we say evolution! And we would love you to get on board to help show Aussies that they can have their sauce & eat it too!

The best thing is that our sauces won't leave you feeling guilty, but instead feeling great knowing you are doing the right thing for you and your family. 

Most commercial sauces today are full of ingredients that are not only hard to pronounce - but are we sure that they are safe to eat at all. 

And thats a problem!

In 2013, my husband Paul, and I were fed up with seeing more artificial ingredients than real food in the sauces available, thats if there is any real food in them at all.

We where also discouraged when ingredients like sugar or water etc were listed before tomatoes in a tomato sauce - Really? 

So, we decided to take matters into our own hands - literally! And we embarked on a journey to bring whole foods free of added sugar, gluten, preservatives and all those nasties that we find in so many products these days back into peoples lives. 

Together we spent hours, days, weeks and months in the kitchen, chopping, blending & boiling in order to develop a new range of sauces: this was the beginning of Oksana's Kitchen. 

We spent all of 2014, nagging our family, friends and well anyone who was interested with samples of our latest creation for them to try and give us feedback on.

We took all the support, concerns and suggestions on board and refined our recipe's to bring us to where we are now. 

2015 was about placing our sauces into a couple of select retailers to see the market's reaction, while also developing the business and branding.

The response has been wonderful with a new brand created mid year and many faithful customers returning time and time again. 2015 was a year of great excitement with orders being shipped from Cairns to Melbourne and across to Perth and almost everywhere in-between. 

The end of 2015 saw us take on our first supermarket being Ritchies IGA. We saw our sauces in 3 Paleo Cafe's and 4 Ritchies IGA stores and a continuation of online sales all over Australia. 

Now, we find ourselves with a desire to service more retailers and provide our range of sauces to as much of Australia as possible without having our valued customers order online and wait for the courier to arrive. With the support of as many people as we possible our goal is to build a network of 300 plus retailers in 2016 and the first half of 2017, and this is where you all come in. 

So whats in a name?

Oksana's Kitchen was the name we chose for our brand in honour of my grandmother (Oksana) who had a passion for life but an even bigger passion for good quality food.

As a Polish immigrant during WWII, Oksana embraced her new country and home through community involvement and helping others where she could.

Oksana was a lady who even though she had suffered so much terror and pain through her time in concentration camps she saw the good in everyone she met, showing them how important they are to all around them. 

We have embraced Oksana's love for everyone and put that into every batch of sauce we cook. Our thoughts are if Oksana wouldn't give a batch of sauce to anyone we won't either. We strive to provide the best possible sauce in each and every batch. 

  Where is your investment in Oksana's Kitchen going to be used. 

We have several levels of investment that will achieve different things within the business. The more supporters we receive the better the outcome for all. We have set our minimum goal at $5,000.00 however we can utilise anything from $5,000.00 to $500,000.00. Below is what each level of support will allow us to do. 

$5,000.00 (minimum needed) 

This money will be used to purchase a bottle filling machine to allow us to speed up the filling process and also to ensure all bottles are filled to the exact level required. This machine fills the bottles from the bottom up which removes the chance of air bubbles within the product, that reduce the final fill level ever so slightly during the reboil of our bottles. Being able to fill quicker and more effectively will allow us more cooking time to produce more stock in the same period of time. 

- Unifiller - universal 1000i food filling machine

$17,000.00

Reaching a goal of $17,000.00 will provide us with the funding to purchase the new bottle filling machine plus the addition of a commercial dicing machine that is better for our finished product. Currently we use a dicer that slices ingredients then pushes them through a grid of blades to finish the dicing process.

This can be problematic with tomatoes due to their make-up with many tomatoes end up as mush. This prevents us from cooking our salsa's with tomatoes that may be a little riper than others. With the purchase of a commercial dicer that works on a three blade system we can dice any produce regardless without the inherent problems we have at the moment. 

- Unifiller - universal 1000i food filling machine
- Model CD-800 CE Dicer

$55,000.00

What will we all get for $55,000.00, We will see the opportunity to take the business to the next level. Additional to the purchase of the above equipment in the previous stages we will be able to also purchase a commercial steam jacketed cooker capable of cooking 500 bottles of sauce in one cooking session.

With the addition of this machine we would have the capacity to cook enough sauce to supply up to 250 stores. The ultimate goal is to take our range of sauces to the masses. Long-term goals include supplying New Zealand, Asia, the UK and the USA. 

While the above gets us pretty well on track to achieve huge things we have two more stages that would see Oksana's Kitchen take Australia by storm and begin taking on the world market.  

- Unifiller - universal 1000i food filling machine
- Model CD-800 CE Dicer
- IOPAK - Steam Jacket 250ltr cooking module

$250,000.00 

With access to $250,000.00 Oksana's Kitchen will be able to set up a full factory situation even on a smaller scale, this would include all the equipment in the above options.

Additionally we would be in the position to put in a more commercial bottle filling and capping machine with the addition of a pasteuriser, followed by a packaging line to put all our product into the desired boxes.

This more complete plant will allow us to produce up to 6000 bottles of sauce a week and ship those quantities as well. Boosting our retailer base to between 400 and 600 retailers. 

- Model CD-800 CE Dicer
- IOPAK - Steam Jacket 250ltr cooking module
- IOPAK - bottle washing / sterilising plant
- IOPAK - 4 head filling plant
- IOPAK - capper 
- IOPAK - steam Pasteuriser
- Ancillary conveyors and boxing stations

$500,000.00 

A bigger dream is a full scale plant that would allow the production of up to 30000 bottles of sauce a week with the basics of upscaling the plant and equipment from the previous options.

Some of the equipment would still be relevant with only the major equipment needing upscaling. For example the bottling and the cooking line would need upgrading while everything else will remain constant. We can then produce 30000 bottles of sauce a week and supply just over 2000 retailers and or begin shipping product overseas. 

- IOPAK - Vegetable Washing plant
- IOPAK - Onion top & Talier / Peeler
- IOPAK - apple corer / slicer
- Model CD-800 CE Dicer
- IOPAK - Steam Jacket 2 / 500ltr cooking module
- IOPAK - bottle washing / sterilising plant
- IOPAK - 4 head filling plant
- IOPAK - capper
- IOPAK - steam Pasteuriser
- Ancillary conveyors and boxing stations

                                                                       

The biggest challenge we face in gaining support for Oksana's Kitchen becoming a known brand is education. We find the biggest struggle is the stigma that sauces are not good for you and are considered unhealthy. 

We are changing that, Oksana's Kitchen sauces are possibly the healthiest part of many meals. 

We are slowly but surely changing this mindset through tasting days at retailers, where we gain an opportunity to talk to the people (our valued customers) and show them how healthy and real our sauces are. 

The more retailers we gain the easier this education will be due to an increase in revenue we can provide education through advertising and marketing at a higher level. 

The best advertiser for our brand and the benefits of Oksana's Kitchen is you our amazing supporters. As we grow so can our support of the community and our supporters. 

That brings us to another area within the Oksana's Kitchen banner. We have an Oksana's Bursary where 5% of our revenue goes into a fund to support the arts, why the arts? Oksana was a huge supporter of the arts and loved theatre and dance. The Oksana's bursary will work with all areas of the arts, visual, vocal, dance and theatre by helping young up and coming talent work towards their dream.