Foodies Natal Stajcic, 29, and Chi-San Wan, 29, founded their almond milk company The Pressery in spring 2014. It was born from a love of wholefoods and an interest in health, it is now stocked in several leading UK organic grocery outlets and is made by hand in small batches in East London.
We met…
About eight years ago through mutual friends at a party, we both had a massive appreciation for food and drink!
The idea came about…
When we became more and more interested in the benefits of eating better, healing yourself with wholefoods but never compromising on quality and taste. We also realized that the ‘natural’ foods out there on the shop shelves were hardly natural, and mostly full of ingredients that you cannot pronounce, never mind your body recognising and digesting it properly. We were making our own almond milk at home, and wondered why no-one was selling raw and organic almond milk in London, so set about to be the first. We discovered very quickly why there wasn’t anyone doing it, because it’s bloody hard work! But we love it, and love that we are bringing a pure product on to the market, unlike all the other versions out there.
We are passionate about…
Changing people’s relationship with food from obsessive calorie counting, to eating fresh, local, seasonal produce that is actually good for you. Nothing processed or refined, just real food. We’re not vegans, we don’t like to be labeled or have restrictions.
Healthies: Cacao Almond Drink from The Pressery
Our working philosophy is…
Do what you love, do something different, don’t beat yourself up about things too much. Work hard and don’t forget to do some yoga!
We work well together because…
We’re the same, but different. We have different skill sets, so naturally compliment each other.
Our biggest challenge so far…
It is all a challenge as every step is new to us. We feel like we knock down a huge brick wall to find another one right behind it. But it’s exciting as we are learning so much every step of the way.
When faced with obstacles we…
Panic for a second and then put them into perspective and just knuckle down and deal with them.
Our top business resource is…
Reaching out to people doing similar stuff to ourselves. Since starting the business we have made friends with likeminded people. Sitting down with them for a tea and a chat can be the most useful resource as a lot of the time they have dealt with similar issues and people seem to be very open and generous with knowledge fortunately.
We were lucky because…
We trusted our gut feeling and pushed the launch through and for us the timing of launch was so perfect as it seemed like London was turning on to a healthier mindset.
The biggest lesson we’ve learnt…
Is to pace ourselves. We have big ambitions but have learnt to focus on one thing at a time and doing it well. Not spreading ourselves too thinly.
Our favourite quote is…
We like to live by Michael Pollan’s food rules: Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants. You can’t go wrong.
Thepressery.co.uk | @thepressery
