George Hughes-Davies seems slightly baffled at how he's managed to grow his juice company, Daily Dose.

What started in his mum's kitchen in 2015 has grown into the biggest cold-pressed juice company in the UK, supplying drinks to Waitrose and Gail's. 

But he maintains that the company, which has 74 staff, is still 'not that big'. 

The cold-pressed juice category is small. Unlike bigger brands, no heat treatment is used and the process is more similar to how you might make a juice at home.

Hughes-Davies has not made it easy for himself, either. The process is labour and capital-intensive. What's more, Daily Dose sources and manufactures everything in the UK - the only juice company to do so - and uses wonky fruit and veg to do it. 

He hopes that changing tastes, namely the increased desire to know where our food and drink is made, will mean Daily Dose becomes as synonymous with juice as household names such as Innocent or Tropicana. 

The brand has grown 75 per cent in the last year alone, suggesting his enthusiasm might be well-placed.

'A jacuzzi for fruits'  

A factory in the industrial heartland of Corby in Northamptonshire, made strategic sense for Daily Dose. When they moved last year, there wasn't too much work to do.

The factory was previously home to Orchard Foods, which worked with M&S and collapsed last year. It meant that refrigeration, drainage and other crucial parts were already in place.

When I visit on a sunny day in February, the smell of fruit from the factory floor is almost overwhelming.

The 30-something entrepreneur is a bundle of energy when we meet and is keen to show me every part of the manufacturing process. I don a fetching hairnet, hi-vis jacket and work boots to see where the magic happens.

The fruits are first soaked in water, which Hughes-Davies describes as a 'jacuzzi for fruits,' before they're taken to the belt press to be steamrolled. Daily Dose gets through 50 tonnes of fruit every day that would have otherwise been discarded for cosmetic reasons.

Other than scale, the process seems to have changed very little as the company has grown. Hughes-Davies is very much at the helm, they sell largely the same flavours and cafes remain an important customer base. 

What has changed is the use of two high-pressure processing (HPP) machines, his pride and joy. Hughes-Davies explains, at a rapid pace, that they prolong shelf life without using any heat. It's the same process used by other challenger brands like Moju and Mockingbird.

His enthusiasm is infectious but I question how much UK consumers care about niche juicing processes, especially if it means their juice is going to be more expensive.

He says that 'as more and more people learn how their food is made, what the process is behind the product, they're more interested in buying those premium products and there'll be more price parity.'

Daily Dose's 750ml bottles sold in Waitrose are the same price as Innocent, and Hughes-Davies believes it is 'a far superior product'.

Discounting will play a significant role as they try to convince customers to pay full price later down the line, but it's a gamble. And while scaling will help bring the price down, there are unstoppable forces that mean it's harder to compete with established brands.

A tax quirk means fruit and vegetables are exempt from VAT, but juices have to pay the standard 20 per cent.

To add insult to injury, juice shots are also exempt from VAT despite having similar ingredients. It is possibly one of the reasons why Daily Dose launched their own shot range, which is now the company's best-selling product online.

From US road trip to his own factory

Hughes-Davies has always had an interest in food and drink, working as the food editor of Nottingham University's magazine while he studied for his politics degree.

But it wasn't until a post-graduation road trip across the US that he came up with the idea for a cold-pressed juice brand.

In 2015, the category was largely limited to Los Angeles pilates types, and the likes of Innocent and Tropicana had a hold over the UK market meaning there was very little innovation. 

Crucially, none of the juice brands were sourcing and manufacturing juice in this country.

When he arrived home, he bought a small juicer from Ebay and told his mum he'd be taking over the kitchen for the next year.

After four months, his mum kicked him out into the driveway and Hughes-Davies converted a doughnut van into a small mobile juice kitchen, before moving into an office in West Norwood, south London.

His office neighbours - two designers - weren't happy with the noise from the juicing machine, but he had landed his first customers selling to local cafes and he was able to hire an employee.

A Crowdcube fundraising round helped raise £125,000 to buy a second juicer and move Daily Dose into a converted railway arch in Battersea. 

While still at a small scale - Hughes-Davies' dad helped bottle juices on the weekends - Daily Dose took on Gail's as a customer after a buyer tried one of the juices in a Peckham cafe.

A pop-up in a local gym eventually led to £950,000 from an investor which helped Daily Dose move into a factory in St Neot's, Cambridgeshire. They could start processing and bottling juice on-site but not before the bank granted them a £1 million loan for a high-pressure processing machine.

After some back and forth, they secured the funds and moved into the site the day the first covid lockdown was announced.

It was a baptism of fire for Hughes-Davies and his team, who were forced to pivot into selling fresh products from suppliers for six months.

By 2023, venture capital funds had started to notice Daily Dose and a £5 million cash injection prompted the move to Corby. Lots of employees came along, including married couples and even siblings, and they now have 74 full-time employees.

The owner shows contempt for big-name juice brands, some of which started small but have since sold out to multinational drinks giants. 

'They've been able to keep other players out but they've stripped so much value out of those products,' he says.

'The only way they've been able to keep supermarkets happy is increasing the price and increasing the value of the category… we're much better quality.'

He proudly says that Daily Dose's 'Rouge' juice is now the bestselling juice in Waitrose, ahead of both brands' blends.

Farming and tax upheaval poses a challenge  

Away from the juice industry, Hughes-Davies directs his ire at the government. 

'If we had a more business-friendly government then it would be easier to do business in the UK and I think it would encourage more people to do business in the UK.'

National Insurance Contributions, business rates and electricity levies are all headwinds Daily Dose is facing.

I ask whether there are issues on the supplier side, as changes to farming and inheritance tax could force many to shut up shop.

Daily Dose's softly spoken chief operating officer Ollie Watts, who is also a farmer, chimes in - he is very much the sensible agronomist Charlie in Clarkson's Farm to Hughes-Davies' more optimistic Clarkson.

He says there 'could be a retraction in the volume that's available to us because growers might not want to take on as much of a risk as they previously did.'

'In simple terms, the amount of apples grown in the UK could decrease over the next five years by 20 per cent because farmers may look to do other things with their future if they're going to be taxed so heavily, Watkins adds'

It's a startling realisation that even fast-growing small companies like Daily Dose are facing difficult headwinds - especially when they're looking to do the right thing and revive the UK economy.