What do you do when you’ve just started a business, and then a pandemic sweeps in?
For the founder of Nuffsed, Rachel Tulloch, the answer was a complete reorientation.
At the start of the year she was looking forward to building and growing as a small business, having been accepted into the Seedlab Tasmania accelerator program.
“It all started well, and then what happens…a pandemic…you just couldn’t make it up!” she recounts. “The ‘buzz’ words started, everyone was talking pivot, pivot, pivot. Nuffsed foods was just too new to pivot, or so I thought.”
Her major problem was that the majority of sales had come through markets, which were now all closed.
“As it turns out, it was one of the best things that could have happened,” Tulloch reflects. She learnt all about branding, how to streamline products and improve the business, and all about nutritional values within her products.
The end result was that Nuffsed morphed into Seedsations.
“Nuffsed was originally chocolate products and watermelon seed products too, but it focused more on the chocolate side of things – it was a messy mismatch of products,” she says.
Tulloch and her husband, a dental surgeon, first moved to Tasmania in April 2019, seeing the island as the ‘food capital’ of Australia. After a spell in Devonport they relocated to Hobart and are loving life here, following a few years of living overseas in Vietnam and the UK.
“I decided when we came home to Australia that my love of food should be the focus on my new adventure in life, and that it was time (a little late, but got to start sometime!) to build a business for myself,” she says. “When I started the business mid July last year, I wasn’t focused on what products to do…I started with chocolates, hummus and more.”
Rachel Tulloch.
Tulloch then discovered watermelon seeds, and their high nutritional value. “More to the point, I discovered they are really yummy!” She started experimenting with them and finally landed on a focus for the business: watermelon seed bars.
Seedsations is the only manufacturer of watermelon seed bars worldwide.
They now offer four flavours of watermelon seed bars, “which are plant based and have no nasties.” Customer feedback according to Tulloch has been overwhelmingly positive and they are looking to further increase the range as time goes on.
“July 2020, as weird as it might be to launch a new brand in the midst of a pandemic, was our official launch of Seedsations.
Yes, I thrive on a challenge, and a pandemic is not going to get in the way!”
Their range of innovative bars – original, apple pie, banana and cinnamon, and pumpkin spice – are now finalists in the Startup of the Year category of the 2020 Food & Beverage Industry Awards. Judging has taken place, but winners are not scheduled to be announced until September.
“We are a very small startup here in Tasmania, but with global ambitions, and with the help of Seedlab Tasmania we know we can achieve this goal in the long term,” says Rachel. “Our mission is to have global domination in the bars market over the next 5 years!”
