Duo’s super healthy drinks brand is simply Well Fruited

The Food WorksSW reveals winners of its first ever competition, reports Martin Hesp

The unique South West food and drink innovation centre, The Food WorksSW – which we featured in these pages recently – has named the winners of its first ever competition.

A new company called Well Fruited won the unique contest and received a prize worth £3,000, which includes five days’ free use at the Food Works’ state-of-the-art development kitchens at the Weston-super-Mare hub, along with up to five days of technical support and a year’s free business membership.

The duo behind the super-healthy drinks brand, Alex Williams and Ben Kaye, are delighted by the win which they say will help them develop even more healthy fruit drinks.

“Until now, our products have all been developed in our kitchens at home, and we’ve only been selling locally at markets to get customer feedback. Now we’re looking forward to using the state-of-the-art equipment in The Drinks Kitchen and gaining experience in product development to further hone our flavours and improve our production methods.

“We’re aiming to get as much benefit as possible from the experience and the expertise available to us at the centre,” said Alex and Ben, who started Well Fruited so they could develop juice drinks which contain all of the edible parts of the fruit.

“We want our drinks to be the healthiest fruit drinks on the market,” said the pair, explaining that most commercial juice drinks and smoothies are falling short of the mark. “Well Fruited uses technology to capture nutrients that are not possible to extract through juicing or cold-pressing. Using existing methods, you are left with all the sugar, and very little of the actual benefits from the fruit.”

Not ideal, when you consider that experts actually recommend that we consume 10 portions of fruit and vegetables a day rather than the five which is generally the accepted figure.

“Fibre is especially important. It helps to regulate the absorption of sugar into your bloodstream, so even though there are natural sugars in our product, our high fibre content helps reduce the impact of these on the body. This is also an easy way to ensure you’re not one of the nine in 10 people not getting enough fibre!” said Alex and Ben. “Most fruit drinks contain little to no fibre.”

The Food WorksSW competition which we featured recently attracted 13 entries from businesses and individuals from across the UK. It was judged by a panel of experts, including the President of the Guild of Food Writers and author of the cookbook ‘Two’s Company: Simple’ Orlando Murrin, your own food writer Martin Hesp, and the centre’s new product development and innovation manager, Zoe Plant.

Orlando Murrin commented: “This was one of the most interesting competitions I have had the honour of judging, with so many entries showing flair and creativity. Whittling it down to a winner and two runners-up was a truly nail-biting challenge, and I’m looking forward to seeing the resulting products popping up in shops in the future.”

The runners-up included Jaz Sky, owner of Jivee, a Weston-superMare-based business that uses sea moss as a main ingredient to make jellies, fruit cider vinegar and sports drinks. Another runner-up was Gregory Davies, co-founder of Auntie’s, an Indian-inspired condiments company from the Midlands. Both received two days’ free use of a development kitchen, two days of technical support and a year’s free business membership.

Due to the high calibre of entries, The Food WorksSW also offered a year’s free business membership to Roly’s Fudge (Devon), Love Bug Foods (Shropshire), Eversfield Organic (Devon), Veg Life (Worcestershire) and Habits That Heal (Bristol).

Zoe Plant told us: “I thoroughly enjoyed judging the entries and was delighted to see such a wide variety of ideas. I’m very much looking forward to working closely with the passionate pair behind Well Fruited during their free five-day trial to help them develop their products further.”

The only centre of its kind in the South West, The Food WorksSW is based in the heart of the Weston-super-Mare Enterprise Area, less than 30 minutes from Bristol, and is in close proximity to Junction 21 of the M5 motorway. It has state-of-the-art facilities, including five product development kitchens which are available for flexible short-term contract hire for food and drink businesses of all sizes to test, develop and manufacture their products.