With some well-timed funding from SWIG Finance, husband-and-wife entrepreneurs Simon and Helena Hills have taken TrueStart Coffee from their garden shed to a supermarket shelf near you.
When Simon and Helena launched TrueStart Barista Grade Instant Coffees in Bristol in 2015, their mission was “to make the world healthier and happier, one cup at a time”. But TrueStart shows no signs of stopping, entering 2026 with the announcement that JamJar Investments – run by the founders of innocent smoothies – and DLF Venture had paired with TrueStart in a multi-million-pound investment deal.
It’s all a far cry from when budding triathletes Simon and Helena set out to create top-quality coffee with a stable caffeine hit and no crash. Initial marketing strategy was simply to hand it out to shivering athletes at sporting events. Having initially employed Simon’s mum as bookkeeper when starting out, TrueStart now has “a rocketship team” of 12, helped along the way by a cash injection of £158,000 from SWIG Finance in 2024.
Things stepped up several notches in 2025. TrueStart’s tenth anniversary year began with a concerted effort to conquer the nation’s supermarkets. Having launched in the Co-op in 2022, they set their sights on Ocado, Costco, Morrisons and Asda, and now have more than 5,000 supermarket distribution points across the UK.
TrueStart’s coffee range spans instant, ground, beans, bags and cold-brew. A ground-breaking Lightly Caffeinated product, launched as instant format in 2023, was bolstered by beans and coffee bags in June 2025, and supported by a 400,000-reach influencer campaign.
Identified as the 24th fastest-growing, profitable independent business across all sectors, the company was one of a handful to be selected by ITV Ignite for media investment, enabling national reach at a reduced cost. This resulted in TrueStart’s first ever TV ad, to be shown in commercial breaks during breakfast programming.
In November, TrueStart was ranked among the top coffee brands by Ethical Consumer, thanks to factors including B Corp certification and a carbon negative approach.
Simon pays glowing tribute to the role SWIG Finance has played in enabling business to upscale. “SWIG helped us immensely, in a word. When we were about to launch into Asda and Costco, we needed money to buy stock and make the most of these huge opportunities. We drew a blank with the traditional banks at the time. In contrast, Nic came to see us in our garden shed and said, ‘This is the kind of business SWIG Finance likes to help.’”
“It’s a funny thing when you’re trying to scale up – you can see the opportunities, but you’re constrained by finances. We needed to be able to just go for it, and we’ve multiplied the business eightfold thanks to the cash injection we received from SWIG Finance, which was absolutely the right partner for us.”
That can be summed up in one word: MORE. That’s more retail, more team members and more product sampling. “It’s really exciting, and rather surreal,” Simon admits. Find out more at www.truestartcoffee.com.
