Inspiring female-founded businesses of 2017: Boa Vida

Founder: Stephanie Brooks
Launched: April 2017
Website: www.boavidaacai.com

Açai, the highly-nutritious berry with zero sugars, has gained significant column inches in recent years since its superfood qualities were discovered. And yet, while it’s easy to read about the berry’s benefits, in Britain it can be much harder to taste açai for yourself.

Enter Boa Vida.

Born out of Stephanie Brook’s love for the vibrant Brazilian culture and the Amazon rainforest, combined with her belief that the relationship between people and superfoods needed to be revised, Boa Vida makes it easy for you to add açai to your diet.

Created using premium-grade organic açai berries from wild açai groves in the Amazon rainforest, while simultaneously supporting families harvesting açai, Boa Vida creates frozen açai berry purée packs. These are then shipped to the UK and stocked with retailers such as Planet Organic.

Boa Vida, which means ‘good life’ in Portugese, started trading in April of this year after securing a loan from The Start Up Loans Company and a crowdfunding round to the tune of £10,000.

Over the last eight months, Brooks has scaled the superfood start-up dramatically with its puree packs sold as wholesale to a number of London cafes and restaurants. It is also stocked in eight other independent organic stories alongside Planet Organic.

The company also provides an online subscription service to retail acai – said to be one of the most powerful superfoods on the planet – and Brooks has implied that this channel is set to be “super-charged” in 2018.

The next year will see Brooks sign up more stockists and grow the network of cafes and restaurants buying Boa Vida Açai.

Importantly for Brooks, Boa Vida will continue to do good work to help the Amazon and the isolated communities that depend on it. To do this, Brooks will look to make more annual trips to the Amazon to “foster and nurture relationships with members of the local communities and of the açai supply chain.”