Water Poverty and Avocados: A start-up solution - Michelle Anderson

Criminology graduate Michelle Anderson is working on a start-up project called Favocado which seeks to address water poverty caused by the production of avocados.

Avocados are water intensive fruits which are normally grown in very dry climates such as Chile and other neighbouring South American countries. Favocado seeks to create an alternative product (quite literally a fake avacado) to aid the environmental impact and reduce the fruit carbon footprint. 

This project was recently awarded university funding through the B-Enterprising Ideas Fund. Michelle has been working through a phase of testing in her final year at UoB and we caught up with her to learn about the progress.

Michelle: Our initial plan was to use the funding and directly purchase ingredients we needed to make our product and sell it. However, we soon realised that this not only conflicted with our message and branding as a business, but added no
substance to our name; we were just blending into the saturated market of new start-up businesses. Instead we decided to embark on a long term journey which required much more effort and dedication by deciding to grow all of our produce ourselves to truly put our meaning into practice.

Favocado took over an allotment space and created different home grown ingredients to create their finished product.

By having the external element of an investor who believes in our idea gave us not only confidence but dedication to make our business succeed. We have taken on such a big task by growing everything ourselves but we felt a duty to do this as we wanted to make the investment risk free.

It also gave us the financial boost that we needed as two students who wouldn’t have had the money to take the business off the ground. Ultimately, it gave us an opportunity to run with our idea that we would not have otherwise been able to pursue. 

Looking ahead.....

With the summer season of market stalls, food fayres and car boot sales upon us, we have started the launch of our Favocado product. We are projected to raise £1,000 and we plan to register the business and apply for food and safety certificates so we can trade with other sutainable businesses for reliable income.

Watch this space...

With thanks to Michelle Anderson
Added by Bob Lee