Vellum Street
Vendor
As a chef interested in both nutrition and food sustainability, it wasn't long before Vellum St soap maker/mayhem slayer Melissa Lynn Torre started paying attention to not only what she put IN her body, but also ON it. So many commercially available soaps & skin care products today are formulated with ingredients you would never eat, so why slather them on your skin, which, like your digestive system, absorbs everything you put on it?! After a growing interest & extensive research, Melissa discovered a slew of ingredients, many of which were leftover/excess ingredients in her cafe Cookie Confidential's own kitchen, that held numerous benefits for the skin, most notable, tallow. Not long after, Melissa stepped away from the role of pastry & private chef, and into the role of skincare chef in the world of upcycled skincare. Creating products that are comprised of nothing that doesn't directly benefit skin health, along with being able to put to good use many food "scraps" that were once headed for the trash bin in many commercial kitchens, has led Melissa to an exciting new venture that combined her love of food & creating in the kitchen with her desire to improve nutrition and food sustainability.
Locally minded and sustainably focused, we source many ingredients that would generally be discarded from area restaurants, farms, and butcher shops, seeing their value and saving them from waste bins and trash streams. Approximately 80% of our ingredients and packaging come from less than 100 miles of our studio in the Wissahickon Valley of Philadelphia, all of our glass being post consumer, procured via non profit Bottle Underground.
Founded in 2016 by Melissa Lynn Torre, a chef interested in both nutrition and food sustainability, it wasn't long before Vellum Street soap maker/mayhem slayer Melissa Lynn Torre started paying attention to not only what she put IN her body, but also ON it. After battling an auto-immune disease for decades, and finding no releif via traditional channels, Melissa began to realize so many commercially available soaps & skin care products today are formulated with ingredients you would never eat, so why slather them on your skin, which, like your digestive system, absorbs everything you put on it?!
After a growing interest & extensive research, Melissa discovered a slew of ingredients, many of which were leftover/excess ingredients in her cafe Cookie Confidential's own kitchen, that held numerous benefits for the skin, most notably, tallow. Not long after, Melissa stepped away from the world of pastry and private cheffing, and into the world of upcycled skincare. Creating products that are comprised of nothing that doesn't directly benefit skin health, along with being able to put to good use many food "scraps" that were once headed for the trash bin in many commercial kitchens, led Melissa to an exciting new venture that combined her love of food & creating in the kitchen with her desire to improve nutrition and food sustainability for both her and those around her struggling with similar issues.
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