HIT THE HEALTH JACKPOT
In 2013 Brisbane-based friends and gym owners Sam Carson and Ben Day had an idea for an Acai Berry bar. Five years later their brand, Acai Brothers, has 22 stores nationwide with plans to expand overseas. Find out how a passion for health and wellbeing helped turn a harebrained idea into hard currency
Betting on Acai Berries
Sam: Benny and I used to compete against each other in track and field at school but we never really hung out. In 2013, we started to get to know each other a bit more and realised we had a lot in common – a love of business, helping people, health and wellness, lifestyle and mindset. On New Years Eve that year we were at a cafe and they served acai. I said, “What is this?” Benny was like, “Mate, look, it’s a berry that’s pretty well known in the US at the moment. These berry bars are popping up all over the place”. At that moment it was like the universe stopped for a second and we looked at each other and said, “We could do something like this”. As it was New Year’s we started drinking and with every tequila shot we thought more and more about the idea. It was at that point that we said, ‘Let’s do it’. But an idea is just an idea. It wasn’t until April that we said, “Lets execute our first store”.
The first store opened October 2nd, 2014. To be honest, we had no idea what we were getting ourselves into. We knew nothing about the hospitality industry, nothing about how to make what we wanted or the recipes we needed. So, we went looking for raw food chefs to talk about the ingredients and help us with the menu. We started cold-calling different restaurants to see what blenders they used. We had to find acai suppliers. It was a mad six months of
