Sometimes a great idea just comes to an entrepreneur, and sometimes it takes a health scare to invent a wonderful alternative. Patience Arinaitwe-Mugadu has created a company called Vegesentials. These are healthy smoothies that are now on the shelves at Waitrose, Boots and Whole Foods.
It all began in 2010, when Patience went for a routine visit to her local GP. They told her that she needed a brain tumor scan. As she explained after this experience, “On my way back home, I was literally numb from the weight of worry on my shoulders and I remember making a conscious decision to do all I possibly could to better my health and this started with radically changing my dietary lifestyle that very day.”
She started juicing, and soon found herself developing all sorts of nutritious drinks. Now, she uses HPP Technology, which is a process that squeezes fresh fruit and vegetables in cold temperatures to retain their raw properties. She uses no pre-packaged purees, heat treatments, added sugars, water, additives, powders or concentrates.
She turned her hobby into a business when she noticed a gap in the market for raw fruit and vegetable drinks. As she said, “Taking my business to the next level took a lot of faith in terms of believing I was up to the challenge and a drastic change from being a housewife to entrepreneur. I have received incredible 24/7 support from husband, Andrew, from the minute we decided to start Vegesentials. We worked together day and night creating a vision for the brand from a basic idea.”
She continued, “We also spent a lot of time reading and researching the technology that was capable of replicating what I had been doing in my own kitchen on a much larger scale – in order to attain the same home-made quality of our drinks.”