Tammie Wharton

Soul Organics produces fresh organic vegetable and fruit juices

IN SEPTEMBER 2014, ‘Soul Organics’ was Tammie Wharton at a small juice stand inside a Whakatane grocery shop. Less than a year later, the company has three business partners, a raw food café and juicery, two mobile juice vans and over 40 stores and cafes stocking Soul’s juices.

If Tammie Wharton was one of her products, she’d be the beetroot-infused ‘Energiser Bunny’. Tall, bubbly, and excited about everything, she’s made a lot happen in a very short time.

How does a solo juice stand operator end up shipping bottled juices all over New Zealand in a matter of months?

“It’s been crazy! I was approached by one of my best customers at the juice stand; he was juicing himself back to wellness after a health scare and loved my juices, said they were the best he’d had.

“Turned out he was a business dude with money to invest; he wanted to help me grow Soul Organics into something big. I said yes, we brought more people into the team – and boom! Soul Organics was pumping.”

A regular plug-and-play juicer had worked fine for the stand, but Wharton quickly realised they’d need something bigger to supply all the stores who wanted to stock the range. Something a lot bigger.

“We needed to import a hydraulic cold press juicer from the States. It was a six figure investment, and takes up a lot of space – it’s the only one in New Zealand that we know of.”

After some dramas with shipping (the wrong juicer was loaded onto the cargo ship), the beast arrived and Soul Organics can now churn out 250 litres of juice an hour.

Short-shelf life was an issue for the company in the early stages. With a raw, preservativefree product, the juices needed to be consumed within 5-6 days.

“Shipping companies kept letting us down, forgetting our boxes at depots or taking too long to deliver. We ended up having to buy our own chilled delivery truck.”

However, these stresses are now a thing of the past; technology came to the rescue when Wharton discovered ‘HPP’ – high pressure process. “We found a company in Auckland which has an incredible HPP machine that can keep the juice alive for longer. It applies 600psi of pressure to the product, which is like diving down to the ocean floor... kills all the bugs without destroying the raw living goodness.”

The new three-week shelf life has made it much easier to get the product on café shelves, she says.

Not content with being a juice entrepreneur, Wharton is also bouncing into a new food arena – our furry friends.

“It sounds a little random, but at the moment we’re getting ready to launch a pet food brand. Organic food for dogs and cats made out of the left over fruit and veggie pulp, combined with wild game meat.”

Biggest stuff up: Putting the café helpers in charge of juice production one night. They forgot to clear out the pulp from the first juice batch before making the next. Our Energiser Bunny – usually bright purple from the beetroot – was muddy brown.

Motivated by: Bringing health to people. It makes a huge difference in people’s lives when they get the right nutrients.

It sounds a little random, but we’re getting ready to launch a pet food brand. Organic food for dogs and cats made out of the left over fruit and veggie pulp, combined with meat.” wild game