We decided our mission was to make the world's best muesli'

A LOT of entrepreneurs talk of starting a business from their kitchen table but Camilla Barnard actually did. First inspiration to set up her food business, Rude Health, struck while eating breakfast at it in 2005, then she spent months creating mueslis from the same table.

- Lucy Tobin

"I'd been eating cereal, and looked at the back of the box - a brand I had been eating for years and was really alarmed by the salt content; I felt conned," Barnard explains. "I had been eating it as the health food it was marketed as, and it just wasn't." At the time, Barnard had a toddler and a newborn baby with her now-husband - and now co-founder - Nick Barnard.

The pair had both been working as consultants on B&Q's line of books about DIY, but then came their muesli side hustle. "We decided to create a product that was straightforward about what it contained - it became our mission to make the world's best muesli, with 23 real ingredients." Fast forward 18 years, Rude Health now spans 60 foods and drinks, with bestselling almond and coconut drinks and "ultimate granola" bringing in £30 million annual turnover.

Food, says Barnard, who is now 52, has "always been my happy place: eating, cooking-averagely, I am not a brilliant cook - reading about it, shopping". She and Nick first met over a chance meal in Moro, the Exmouth Market restaurant, "so starting a food business together was, in hindsight, the obvious next step."