Simon Long and Philip Benson are two young university graduate entrepreneurs, who while spending a year in America as part of their degree, discovered the Juice Bar concept and decided to bring it to the UK.
After graduating, they pair formed a company called Xing Health, and introduced the healthy smoothie to universities, schools and health clubs via their Smoothie Roadshow.
Now Long and Benson are looking for schools to team up with the company to create on site smoothie stations. They plan on encouraging pupils to run the franchises in order to promote healthy eating as well as business and maths skills.
They are also making a case to the government, for scrapping VAT on health food and drinks, and in doing so have won the support of Health Secretary Alan Johnson and his colleague Ed Balls.
As Simon Long pointed out, “The 17.5% VAT rate applied to smoothies and other healthy eating options is an obvious disincentive for people to eat well,” said Long. “Especially when some unhealthy foods, such as the infamous Turkey Twizzlers, have 0% added!”
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2 comments so far
1 » SME Gets Ministers Backing On Zero VAT For Health Drinks // Apr 15, 2008 at 12:18 pm
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2 THE SMALL BUSINESS BLOG » Blog Archive » UK/Ireland Small Business News Round-up - 18/04/2008 // Apr 18, 2008 at 11:36 am
[...] SME Gets Ministers Backing On Zero VAT For Health Drinks: Simon Long and Philip Benson are two young university graduate entrepreneurs, who while spending a year in America as part of their degree, discovered the Juice Bar concept and decided to bring it to the UK. [...]