Would landing on the shelves of Woolworths be a dream come true for you? For Sarah Leung, it was – and it still wasn’t enough to keep her in the business.
Sarah is the founder of Umei Foods, a modern Asian condiment brand known for its plant-based mayo range in flavours like yuzu and gochugaru. Before Umei, she spent six years building Alg Seaweed, a dietitian-led seaweed brand that scaled fast – including 200+ new Woolworths stores in eight weeks. By any outside measure, it was working.
But growth and rightness aren’t the same thing.
Sarah still hasn’t fully let go of Alg Seaweed. She still owns the domain, still uses the email, still has product sitting in her warehouse. As she puts it, “I’m the seaweed girl – if I’m not the seaweed girl, who am I?”
Then came Umei. Working a part-time job to fund it, markets and tastings most weekends, two young kids at home – by the end of last year she’d hit a wall. Her words: “I’m done.”
In episode 171 of Foodpreneur with Chelsea Ford, you’ll hear the part of building a brand that rarely makes the highlight reel: the exhaustion, the self-doubt, and the question every founder eventually has to sit with – at what cost?
You’ll hear:
🌊 Why Sarah still hasn’t fully let go of her first brand
😮💨 Hitting a wall in Umei’s first six months, and what she did next
🧠 Why she started seeing a therapist
🥢 Why she’s keeping Umei deliberately small this time round
Season 18 is brought to you by NFTC, a mid-tier ingredient supplier specialising in natural wholefoods like nuts, dried fruits, herbs, spices, seeds and more for emerging food and beverage brands.
