School mates Jesse Bate and Luis Evitt launched Nowhey ready-to-drink protein water to the UK market just six weeks ago, with 1,380 presold units to get the business rolling.
Their vision was to create “the world’s best protein brand”, which would meet the needs of anyone and everyone looking to boost their protein intake.
“Jesse and I have very different training and nutrition needs,” said Evitt, 27, co-founder, sales director and marketing lead. “I’m a 105kg rugby player and Jesse is an 80kg super bike rider who has to keep his calorie intake and weight down to improve his track time.
“We know whey is the best source of protein for BCAA content and I’ve taken whey protein all my life but it’s always messed with my stomach and I don’t like to consume it after a workout. I want something refreshing and easy to drink.”
It was during Bate’s efforts to bring his weight down in preparation for a race that he found himself searching for a low calorie, high-quality protein water.
“The ready-to-drink protein waters on the market are made with collagen,” explained the 24-year-old co-founder and operations director. “While these have benefits for skin, hair and nails, they lack the leucine needed for muscle repair and growth.”
He added that many of the RTDs already on the market came in 500ml bottles and he felt it must be possible to get 20g of protein into a smaller volume of liquid.
With Evitt’s experience as CMO of his own marketing firm and Bate’s background working as sales and marketing exec within his family’s successful coffee company, the pair pooled their resources and developed 330ml drinks with 20g of pea protein, natural ingredients, no added sugar or preservatives, with around 80 calories a can.
The drinks are available in berry or mango, with a grapefruit and pineapple flavour waiting in the wings.
Thanks to the zero sugar and low calorie benefits, Evitt said the drinks strike a chord with a diverse demographic of consumers, from athletes and weight lifters, through to Pilates goers and every day weight watchers.
No way to avoid challenges
The partners are open – they have even vlogged on YouTube – about the many challenges and complexities involved in setting up a functional drink brand.
In developing their recipe, they quickly realised why no-one else had developed this products yet – flavour and cost.
“The flavour developer was saying we needed to add fruit juices and flavour maskers to mask the bitter pea protein taste and costs were going up,” said Evitt, “when we said we needed to keep the cost down they were suggesting putting half the amount of protein in.”
Using their networks to source lower cost ingredients, they eventually reached the taste and nutrition profile they were after.
“What I’ve found with this business is by solving one problem, another ten are created sometimes. I can see why the barrier for entry is so high with this market in terms of the knowledge as well as the logistics and costs involved,” Evitt said.
One costly and time-consuming hiccup was when they discovered the flavour of their water changed significantly after two weeks in the can.
“I tried a drink two weeks after it had been canned, and it tasted completely sour,” said Bate.
“We had to go back to the recipe makers to see what had happened. We now know the natural flavourings oxidise in the can within those first two weeks. They use the phrase ‘rounding off’. But after that two-weeks the flavour stabilises.”
Being marketing savvy businessmen wishing to be as transparent as possible, they have filmed a ‘docuseries’ of the development of Nowhey titled ‘Building the world’s best protein brand’, which is available to watch on YouTube.
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