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Vida Verde
 
Main Business Activity: Smoothie drinks production

 

Sector: Drinks production

 

Knowledgebase Organisation: London South Bank University 

 

“Ken’s proved it wasn’t just a case of the money. He didn’t say ‘we’ve done X, Y and Z for you; see you later’. I feel like I’ve built an on-going network of support there. That for me is the difference from working on one of those other schemes”.

 

“I can ring Ken and say something has come up and they’ll help.  They’ve been very flexible and fitted me in when I could make it - it’s been really good for me to have them understand that. The whole project – the money and the support – has been great.  I couldn’t have done it without them”.

 

  • Supplying to a busy café in Victoria Park, Hackney,
  • Plans to take on her own premises,
  • Already looking into extending the product shelf life so she can supply customer outside of London.

Main Business Activity - Smoothie drinks production and sales

Project Outline - Using fresh ideas to establish a substantial business and create a brand to successfully penetrate a highly competitive and rapidly growing sector

 

Julie Dias founder of Vida Verde aspired to build her part time juice bar business into a full venture in the competitive smoothie drinks market. Thanks to the Knowledgebase Collaboration project Julie's vision is well on the way to becoming a reality.  

Julie a young entrepreneur from London has been running her juice bar at London’s Brick Lane Sunday Market for the past three years. Inspired by the runaway success of brands like Innocent and the insatiable demand from her customers for her freshly made fruit smoothies, she decided she wanted to fulfill her ambition of making the business a full time venture. 

 

Julie faced a familiar challenge, how to make the transition from a stable full time job to running your own business venture, with all the risks and uncertainties a leap like that presents. In search of help and support Julie applied for the Knowledgebase Collaboration project, she was successful in her application and was able to start developing her product and business vision from there. 

 

The main support Julie required was in the form of fresh ideas about how to establish a substantial business and create a brand that could penetrate a highly competitive and rapidly growing sector.  She was put in touch with Dr Ken Spears, Senior Lecturer at London South Bank University and a fellow of the Institute of Food Science and Technology. Dr Spears became Julie's mentor throughout the programme and he helped her to answer some of the fundamental questions she had about her product, including how long it’s shelf life was. Julie says  “I had a product but I didn’t know if it would be safe after three or four days.” 

 

Dr Spears lead Julie through the steps required to implement HACCP (Hazard Analysis Critical Control Point), an internationally recognised system of food safety management. They also worked together to develop a detailed product and process specification for each recipe, as well as label design and nutritional information. Dias is full of praise for Dr Spears and his team saying, “Ken’s really helped me get the project on the go”. 

 

Thanks to the help Julie received from her Knowledgebase Collaboration she is now the supplier to a busy café in Victoria Park. However, she is sure she wants to grow her client base slowly, “I'd rather walk before I can run – it’s a very competitive business and that would be recipe for disaster”.  Although she is pacing herself Julie is still ambitious and hopes to have her own retail unit in the Truman Brewery by the end of 2008. This will allow her to produce and bottle larger volumes of smoothies. She will also have the option of using a pasteurising facility, which could give her smoothies a shelf life of up to two weeks, vital if she wants to supply to customers outside London. When asked about the future Julie simply said “ask me again in a few months, I’m just at a turning point”.