The Cruelty Free Shop

The Cruelty Free Shop has opened a new brick-and-mortar shop on Brunswick Street in Fitzroy. It has some amazing products and is definitely worth a visit by dairy free Melburnians. 



The Cruelty Free Shop has been selling mail-order vegan products in Australia since 2001, but in the last couple of years they've opened shops first in Sydney and now in Melbourne. The Melbourne location is in the vegan paradise of Brunswick Street in Fitzroy, near other vegan staples such as Vegie Bar, Merry Cupcakes, Yong Green Food and Lord of the Fries. 

Vegan shops are of course fantastic for dairy free folk as all the products are dairy free. Chocolate, cheese, ice cream - all of these and more are dairy free at The Cruelty Free Shop!

The first section I always check out is the cheese section. I love cheese. The Cruelty Free Shop has a great selection - probably the best I've seen in Melbourne so far. All of my favourites are there, including Tofutti, Cheezly, Vegusto and Notzarella. I picked up the double pack of Vegusto No Moo Melty and I'll definitely be back to get the others. 

Just down from cheese was... ice cream! And what a fantastic selection. They have the old school and always amazing Tofutti Cuties, five flavours of So Delicious (both almond and coconut milk based), five flavours of the coconut Halfpint Vegan Dairy, three flavours of CoYo coconut ice cream and some So Delicious Minis that I hadn't seen before. I didn't pick up any ice cream today but I'm already scheduling in my next trip to get the So Delicious Chocolate Brownie Almond and Halfpint Dairy's Romancing the Comb. Come on, summer!

Chocolate was another strong point for the shop, with a wide range of chocolates I haven't seen elsewhere - Moo Free, Seed & Bean, Bonvita Rice Milk and Delicaseys among others. It will take me awhile to get through the whole selection. 

And finally, a treat I wasn't expecting - vegan sweetened condensed milk. I'd seen SoyMilke's vegan condensed milk at other shops before but it was a couple of bucks cheaper here, cheap enough that I decided to finally spring for a can. One of my family's favourite slice recipes calls for sweetened condensed milk so I'll give that a try and report back. 

The Cruelty Free Shop isn't new, but their shop in Brunswick is and it's certainly worth checking out. Not all of their online range is available here, but there's plenty to keep you busy. There's heaps more products available that I haven't mentioned and the prices are really reasonable. I'm already up in this neighbourhood regularly enough that this will become a local of mine, but even if you're from far away the CF Shop has enough interesting and unique stock to warrant a trip in.