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Posted: Thu 25th Jun 2026
11 min read
When Ineke Nugteren began making coconut macaroons in her kitchen in 2015, she had no grand business plan. What she did have was a conviction that real food should be medicine, not marketing.
The New Zealand-born nurse, who had spent years working everywhere from African clinics to intensive care units, began to question the health advice patients were being given.
She recalled:
"The messaging we were telling patients was the opposite of what was happening. We were saying 'don't have this, don't have that,' and my patients were becoming more overweight with compounding medical conditions. It just didn't make sense."
Her own childhood struggles with food intolerances had led her to eliminate gluten, with excellent results. But the 'free-from' alternatives available were, in her words, "horrendous" – packed with artificial ingredients to compensate for what had been removed. It was a classic case of solving one problem whilst creating another.
What began as a hobby – creating treats for herself and her four-year-old daughter – Nourish quickly gathered momentum when friends and colleagues began clamouring for more.
"I really wish I could say I had this amazing idea and the rest is history," she laughed. "It was not the case. I was pushed into entrepreneurship in a way."
That gentle push led her to approach her local health food store, Inside Out in Reigate. When they agreed to stock her products, something clicked. Within months, she'd pitched to Selfridges – and won. The dominoes began falling: Daylesford, Whole Foods, Planet Organic. By 2017, Nourish had won a Great Taste award for its passionfruit macaroons.
Every Nourish product is gluten-free, dairy-free, refined sugar-free, and made from 100% natural ingredients. More importantly, they taste delicious and can be enjoyed by everyone.
The UK healthy snack market is on a steady upward trajectory, according to market insight firm Grand View Horizon. It’s expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 5.6% between now and 2033 and exceed £7 billion in revenue.
The trajectory sounds effortless, but the reality was anything but. Ineke was juggling intensive care nursing shifts, navigating a challenging fertility journey, and running an exploding business from increasingly cramped kitchens.
"I made [products] for about a year in my own kitchen, then moved to an office that we converted into a kitchen space," she explained. That space lasted two to three years before Nourish outgrew it entirely.
Around five years ago, with her youngest child aged three, Ineke enrolled in a functional medicine course through the Institute for Functional Medicine in the United States.
"If you go to the doctor, they look at your symptoms," she explained. "Functional medicine is like a tree. People have symptoms, but we go down to the roots. So why do you even have symptoms in the first place?"
This holistic approach revolutionised her thinking about Nourish's products.
"Supplements are fantastic, but food should be one of the places where we get the most nutrition possible to fuel our bodies," she said. "It's something we often don't look at in medicine, we just give people pills instead."
The philosophy permeates every product decision. Take cacao, a cornerstone ingredient.
Ineke said:
"Really good forms of cacao are incredibly high in magnesium and iron. All these things that people think or forget when they're eating chocolate, how much good chocolate is actually nourishing their body. People don't need loads and loads of supplements."
Ineke doesn't mince words about why genuinely healthy alternatives remain scarce.:
"It's the food industry's fault in reality. Sugar drives people to want more. It's addictive, so they come back for more and more. The food industry can make it cheap because it contains poor quality ingredients. So, food can be made cheap and addictive, and then people are unwell.
"Some of the world's largest investment firms hold significant stakes in both food and pharmaceutical companies. I know it's against the grain to talk about it, but we all need to be talking about it more."
Today, Nourish operates from a Safe and Local Supplier Approval (SALSA) accredited production kitchen in Reigate, employing nine people. The company has expanded beyond its original macaroons into raw slices, gut health brownies featuring functional ingredients, and, most recently, coconut matcha cookies. Nourish has moved into frozen products alongside its ambient range, now stocked across eight lines in Ocado after seven years with the retailer.
The growth hasn't been without challenges. Brexit created immediate complications for an organic food business. Then came COVID, followed by the spiralling costs of the current economic climate.
"My team has never been so expensive," Ineke admitted candidly. "Rates have gone up. Everything has gone up in the last 12 months."
International shipping through the Straits of Hormuz ground to a halt. Export plans to the UAE, Switzerland, and Ireland required constant recalibration.
"You have to anticipate the unexpected, because there is always going to be something unexpected thrown on your doorstep," she continued.
One lesser-known aspect of Nourish's business model is white labelling for retailers like Daylesford, one of its longest-standing stockists.
"It's not something we shout about loads," Ineke said, "but it does give us a lot of flexibility in what we can do."
This flexibility extends to co-manufacturing arrangements for their volume-driven brownie bars, whilst keeping core organic products in-house. Nourish has even launched miniature versions of its gut health bars for airlines – a project that's "looking pretty positive" for expansion to additional carriers.
Unlike many food start-ups that raise millions in venture capital, Nourish has grown more conservatively. Ineke initially raised funds through Seedrs, the crowdfunding platform now rebranded as Europe Republic, followed by private investment. She retains approximately 80% ownership, a deliberate choice informed by watching peers raise 10 times more capital, only to see their companies fold under the pressure.
"There's always this question about how much risk do you take," she mused. "I've always struggled with that because I'm slightly risk-averse."
Nourish's ambitions remain firmly grounded in the mainstream. Within the next 12 months, Ineke hopes to see its multipack format land in Waitrose, Sainsbury's, and Tesco.
She hoped:
"That's where I want to see the volume-driven products that can make a difference to people's choices, but are also affordable because it's a multipack version, a 30-gram bar."
Beyond supermarkets, she's eyeing café chains – "not just in London, but in airports" where rushed travellers default to whatever's available. Making genuinely nourishing options accessible in those moments could shift consumption patterns at scale, she said.
There's also the launch of Nourishing Lives, her monthly podcast exploring food, health, and wellbeing with experts and fellow founders. It's an extension of the educational mission that's always underpinned Nourish: empowering people to understand that food can be medicine.
Perhaps the most telling measure of Nourish's success is the longevity of their partnership with Daylesford, the premium organic brand. What began with shelf space has evolved into white-labelling "a couple of lines" – validation from a retailer synonymous with uncompromising quality.
It's a relationship built on shared values, not just transactional efficiency. When your stockists include Selfridges, Whole Foods, Planet Organic, and Daylesford, you don't need to explain why real ingredients matter. The customers already know.
As Britain wakes up to the connection between diet and health, with NHS budgets straining under the weight of preventable conditions, Nourish represents something quietly revolutionary: proof that you don't need to compromise taste for nutrition, or scale for integrity.
Ineke said:
"I really do believe, after working in the medical profession, that this simple pleasure of eating real food could alleviate and prevent so many conditions we're seeing in our healthcare system today.
"That's the why behind the Nourish story."
From that first batch of coconut macaroons to supplying airlines and major retailers, Ineke Nugteren has built something that transcends typical start-up metrics. She's created a business that operates exactly as she believes the food system should: with transparency, real ingredients, and genuine nourishment at its core.
Not bad for an accidental entrepreneur who just wanted a decent snack.
