But now it’s all paying off.
The eager entrepreneurs are pioneers in vegan ready-made meals, and they are struggling to keep up with the demand.
Their company Berkano Foods Ltd is the first of its kind, now employs six staff, and has meals in 32 supermarkets nationwide.
They also supply a door-to-door residential service, using courier delivery.
Said Mr Harlow: “We’re at our peak at what we can produce with our staff, doing everything by hand, hence why we can’t produce mass numbers right now. We can’t go into any more supermarkets. They want us to supply them straight into distribution but we can’t simply produce enough.”
Ninety per cent of their ingredients are from New Zealand-based suppliers.
The couple come from humble beginnings.
“We put all of our cards on the table,” Mr Harlow said, when deciding to go into business with only their savings and no investors.
“At the start when we first formed this company, our family, our friends, everyone, had no idea and couldn’t comprehend what we were doing,” he said.
“They thought we would go bankrupt in a couple of months. But, we pushed on and proved everyone wrong.”
Five banks declined to give them loans due to their age and experience.
“We’re currently working 90 to 100 hour weeks. We haven’t had a day off this year,” Mr Harlow said.
After waiting seven months to gain their food licence, the couple had little money left and decided to move into the storage unit to save costs.
They started a PledgeMe page to crowd-fund the rest of the money needed and started operating in April 2017. From there, they launched the delivery service, gauging what the demand was and what customers liked before approaching supermarkets.
They launched in-store at St Martins New World in July. The entire stock sold out in two days.
Now, they’ve landed their first investor, which has allowed them to expand into another location, where production will take place.
In 2016, Miss Bryan was halfway through her engineering degree when she realised “in her heart” she was destined for something else.
“I was passing my course, but I wasn’t happy. Then I met Nick and we became vegan. We saw a massive gap in the market and thought, ‘why don’t we do something about it?’’’
The couple researched the vegan market in Europe and found that ready-made vegan meals were becoming hugely popular overseas.
Their goal is to become “the plant-based version of Watties” with hopes to hit $1 million in turnover this year and $1 million in profit by the end of next year.
Some meals include mock chicken, made from pea protein.
Meals include Thai ‘chicken’ green curry, butter ‘chicken’, rigatoni bolognese and golden peanut satay tofu.
