"The first thing that came to mind is why are chefs buying imported butter to serve at restaurants?"says Issa."Their answer to us was that Australian butter tasted like salt and water. We went from there."
The pair started off selling their butter at Sydney's Carriageworks market and still regularly man a stall there even though Pepe Saya has grown to a turnover of $5.5 million last financial year and produces 10,000 kilos of butter a week.
Pepe Saya's creamy rich butter is loved by Australia's top chefs after Altman cold-called top restaurants in Melbourne and Sydney,eventually securing chef Neil Perry as one of Pepe Saya's first customers.
It wasn't an easy process and Altman says"there were tears on the couch"along with plenty of knock-backs.
"You would go to a hatted restaurant and do a sales pitch,"Issa says."They'd say'The butter tastes great,but why would I take off French butter and put on Australian?'This was before the wave of support for local produce and interest in provenance."
A turning point came when Qantas selected Pepe Saya's butter to serve on its flights.
"That pretty much was really legitimising for us that this is a business we could definitely go somewhere with having Qantas give us that stamp of approval and put us on a plane,"Issa says."It snowballed for us and we picked up a lot of customers,no question."