At Focused Nutrition, we are constantly looking for new ways to help people to stay fully fuelled as they go about their busy lives, whether it is athletes like Katherine Wood as she embarks on another epic run or one of us regular mortals as we set out on the school run. We are also well aware that as we move into the 2020s, more people than ever are choosing to follow a vegan diet, for a whole variety of reasons.

That’s why we are particularly excited to have helped launch a new vegan snack, the V02 Vegan. It’s the brainchild of our friend and business associate Matt, who is an avid runner, follows a vegan diet and has a passion for flapjacks. As far as we’re concerned at Focused Nutrition, that’s a match made in heaven, so it has been a genuine pleasure to work with him on getting this fabulous new product to market.

Wrong time, right place

Matt and his wife both take their running seriously, and that means putting just as much focus on how they fuel themselves as on the workouts themselves. Matt decided to get creative in the kitchen, inventing his very own vegan wholegrain bar with active beetroot. It really packs a punch and is just the thing after a serious run.

Matt was so pleased with his creation that he brought it to us at Focused Nutrition to explore the possibility of us scaling up production through our contract manufacturing service. This all happened in February of this year, so we had no idea of the added complications that were looming on the horizon.

We were as excited as Matt about his product and couldn’t wait to get started. As things turned out, it was just as well that we did not delay, as the first batch of V02 Vegan snacks was manufactured and ready for launch in the shops right at the beginning of April – a week after the nation had gone into lockdown.

Quality always shows through

Of course, there could not have been a worse time to launch a new product. But despite the incredibly difficult circumstances, the customers and retailers were as crazy about Matt’s V02 Vegan bars as we were. A second order has now been secured, and Matt’s product is going from strength to strength.

It is a testament to the product and also to the great working relationship we built up with Matt that the transition from kitchen experiment to commercial manufacture went so smoothly. As well as the product manufacturing itself, we were able to help Matt navigate the packaging process, which can often be a pain point with this sort of project. Matt was very pleased with how everything went, and was kind enough to say the following words:

I couldn’t be happier with Focused Nutrition. As a business start up, they not only produce outstanding food products but they provided me with invaluable help and support from the start. Levels of customer service could not have been higher as they have constantly gone above and beyond on every single occasion. Simply put, they are great people to do business with.

We can only say that the feeling is mutual, and we can’t wait to find out about the next idea to come out of Matt’s kitchen!