Adding taste and fun to a healthy breakfast

JAC Chetland and Kit Gammell saw a gap in the market at breakfast time. "The cereal industry is the third-biggest in food and drink, but it hasn't changed in 100 years," say the duo, who met working at coconut drink business Vita Coco, where Chetland ran sales in Europe and Gammell oversaw marketing.

- Lucy Tobin

"It was the same companies, same recipes. Our friends all had this nostalgic love of cereal from childhood" Gammell's favourite was Coco Pops, Chetland's Frosties- "but as adults feel bad indulging it. Tasty cereals are full of sugar, healthy ones taste like cardboard. We wanted to change that."

The entrepreneurs had joined Vita Coco as its seventh and ninth UK employees and they pooled their cash from employee shares as part of its $700 million IPO as well as savings for a £30,000 pot to create a healthy and tasty cereal. "We spent three months creating test brands - different shapes, flavours and Nutritionals and then we used social media ads to see what people engaged with," Gammell says. "It quickly became clear high protein and zero sugar was a winning combo - so then we just had to make it. It turns out making a high protein, zero-sugar, gluten-free, plant based cereal that still tastes as good as the big boys is kind of tricky. But 98 recipes later, we think we've cracked it."