Tallow skincare company uses locally-sourced ingredients to make sustainable soaps

The internet’s latest viral skincare ingredient might surprise you. Many are raving about the many potential skin benefits of using soaps and moisturizers made from beef tallow — yes, rendered cow fat. While the popularity of these products has been on the rise since about 2022, one Philadelphia-based soap company was years ahead of the tallow trend.

Melissa Torre, owner and founder of Vellum St. Soap Company, says that tallow skincare isn’t a fad; it marks a return to the skincare of ancient human history.

“Humans were using animal fats for their skin for eons,” says Torre. “It’s only since about the 1930s and 1940s that we started using synthetic oils.”

Tallow is the rendered suet – raw, solid fat – of beef, deer, goat or mutton. Once the fat is melted and rendered into tallow, it can be used immediately as a moisturizer or blended with other ingredients to make balms, soaps, candles, and many other products.

The lipid profile of animal fats makes them effective at moisturizing human skin, Torre says. Not only is tallow a rich, thick substance, its fatty acids are more like the oils produced by our skin than the plant oils commonly used in skincare products, like coconut and palm oils. Their similar molecular size and structure make tallow’s lipids more easily absorbed by our skin.

Torre herself had been a user of coconut oil-based moisturizers for years. But after suffering for over a decade with chronic eczema caused by a wheat allergy, she turned to her grandmother, who was the one to suggest that she try using animal fats to moisturize her skin.

“My little hillbilly Nana looked at me like I was an idiot and she said, ‘just put some bacon fat on it.’ And Nana’s always right, so I did, and it worked – literally within two days. And within two weeks, I had basically no sign of it left,” says Torre.

Using leftover bacon grease and other food scraps from her bakery, Cookie Confidential — which dealt in unique flavor combinations like chocolate and bacon — Torre began making soaps and salves for herself and friends in 2015. Soon, a friend who worked at Whole Foods encouraged Torre to pitch her product to the grocery chain, and she built a logo, name and brand for the business overnight.

Humans were using animal fats for their skin for eons.”

— Melissa Torre, Vellum St. Soap Company

Vellum St.’s name is an homage to Fight Club: Paper St. Soap Company is the fictional soap company set up by the main character. And fittingly, vellum is a material made from calfskin that was historically used to wrap bars of soap.

Once Vellum St. hit the shelves of Whole Foods, Torre could no longer rely on food scraps from the bakery to source her animal fats. When local chefs and butchers with surpluses of stored tallow asked Torre if she could use it, she answered the call to save the tallow from going to waste. There were even plans for Torre to begin using the suet from Whole Foods’ in-house butcher department, but Amazon took over the company less than a year later.

“I decided to pull my product from their shelves. And in hindsight, it was the best thing that I ever did,” says Torre.

A decade later, Vellum St. has grown to a company of three, is sold in stores across the region, and even ships internationally. Their product line includes a wide range of both tallow- and lard-based skincare products, including soaps, solid lotions, lip balms, and salves across a range of scents. Their flagship scent, Fat Marshmallow, is completely free of essential oils.

“Fat Marshmallow is by far the product that I recommend to everyone. And if it were up to me, it’s the only thing that we would sell,” says Torre. “We slow-infuse the tallow over days with real vanilla beans and marshmallow root.”

The vanilla in Fat Marshmallow is sourced from Singing Dog Vanilla in Phoenixville. Vellum St. also works with Bottle Underground in South Philly to secure upcycled glass for 80% of their product pack-aging. Most of Vellum St.’s ingredients, including the tallow itself, are also sourced locally.

“I prefer 150 miles or less,” says Torre. “But if there’s a farm that’s 500 miles away that is delivering to this area anyway, and I like their farming practices, it seems kind of silly not to utilize that.”

Over the years, Torre has moved away from using buzzwords to label her products, like “grass-fed,” “organic,” and even “sustainable.” Especially as the tallow market has grown, Torre feels that these labels have lost meaning, so she hopes the stories of her ingredients speak for themselves. Above all, she believes in sourcing as thoughtfully and ethically as possible.

“No matter what it is — I don’t care if it’s a tomato or if it’s a cow — if you’re sourcing from a farm that is not taking the whole of its environment into consideration, what you’re doing is bad for the environment,” says Torre.

Vellum St. Soap Company products are available at all locations of Kimberton Whole Foods. “They completely catapulted our business. Being in their stores has made us so much busier and gave us such a huge new audience.”