Small Business Q&A: William Rochford from BR Foods

For this week’s Q&A, Kehlan talks with the chief executive of BR Foods and the True Life range of healthfoods, William Rochford. BR Foods has a long relationship with household brands, while True Life is a new venture which rose from a real-life experience.

So what is BR Foods?

BR Foods was started 31years ago and we started from my brother’s garage and a hiace van that I can still remember the reg number of. We both founded the company and while it’s

been tough, it’s also been a great experience. From those humble beginnings we now represent some major names in the food market in Ireland. Pataks Sauces, Jamie Oliver Foods, Monnini

Olive Oil, Kuhne and Blue Dragon are among our customers. So we’ve come a long way.

You’ve recently moved into creating healthfoods with a new venture?

Yes that’s right. True Life Healthfoods is a new venture which has its beginnings with my own particular experience. I have type 2 diabetes and naturally I had to take pills to allay the

diabetes. But I was uncomfortable with taking the pills and along with a rethink of my own diet I wanted to find natural or organic products that could aid me.

So after a little research I stumbled upon something called beta-glucan.

So the first range of products we released are called Heart Up. They are barley-based products which contain this beta-glucan.

The EU Food Safety Authority has said that beta-glucan helps with lowering cholesterol and reduces blood sugars for diabetics. So you take this and simply add it to your cereal in the morning or other foods by just sprinkling three grammes into your breakfast. I’ve been my own guinea pig with this and know that it works.

If you mentioned beta- glucan to people 10 years ago you would have been met with some puzzled faces, what’s changed?

Well Ireland has had a radical change in its thinking on health and what people consider to be health food. We’ve also begun to change our mindsets when it comes to eating. Fresh food is a must now in people’s diets and good natural products with proven health benefits are becoming less

niche and more mainstream. Take our product for example. Lots of people suffer from cholesterol

problems and diabetes etc. So our product would have a definite benefit for them and so our market isn’t just in Ireland, it’s global. We’ve had enquiries as far afield as Libya. So people know that

natural products exist which can aid in the relief of health problems. So for us over the next year we’re just concentrating on making Heart Up a success and making sure that we’ve developed this product to a certain level before we think about another range of products. There is so much potential with this and what’s more it’s an Irish company making this in Navan, offices in Dublin and over 40 employees.

truelifehealthfoods.com