Meet Thomas Robson-Kanu, Professional Athlete and Founder at The Turmeric Co.

The Turmeric Co. offers great-tasting and potent vegan turmeric shots: Raw Turmeric Original, Raw Turmeric & Ginger and Raw Turmeric & Beetroot.

A range of great-tasting blends in a shot format, The Turmeric Co. provides a convenient solution for people using turmeric as a regular part of their nutrition; no powders, and no low-quality filler ingredients such as apple juice or water.

Turmeric contains the active ingredient curcumin, scientifically proven to have anti-inflammatory, antioxidant and anti-depressant properties, as well as helping with weight management and improving skin conditions.

The Turmeric Co. is the UK’s leading producer of naturally produced turmeric shots, which are used by professional football clubs including Swansea City and Rotherham United, Super League side Salford Red Devils as well as elite rugby union teams such as Leicester Tigers and Sale Sharks and even British Gymnastics, to enhance their recovery and holistic health.
 
 

 

How did you come up with the idea for the company?

 
As a professional athlete, I have made every effort to take good care of my health. However, that doesn’t mean I haven’t had to overcome challenges or been forced to adapt my diet and training regime along the way. At the age of 17, as an Arsenal schoolboy, injury came close to derailing my dream of becoming a top-level footballer.

That’s when my father and I began researching alternate forms of nutrition.

Our investigation led us to several powerful ingredients that would help reduce and repair the inflammation in my knees and I would later figure out were key to improving my performance. Turmeric was at the top of my list of essential foods that would inject life back into my passion for football and eventually give me the sustenance to continue pursuing my dream.

That was roughly two decades before my father and I set up The Turmeric Co., from his home in west London. Since then, I was quick to adopt turmeric into my diet having learnt of its benefits to the immune system and my general fitness. It has been a huge driver behind my desire to build The Turmeric Co. community – a vegan, plant-based recovery shot that puts people and the planet first.
 

How has the company evolved during the pandemic?

 
The world is changing. If we weren’t seeing these trends before the beginning of the pandemic, then Covid-19 has certainly had a dramatic effect on our personal choices over the past 18 months, including the way we think about the food we eat, the products we buy, and how our individual activities impact the planet.

I firmly believe more emerging start-ups like The Turmeric Co. have an opportunity to thrive and survive in this space.
 

What can we hope to see from The Turmeric Co. in the future?

 
My one true hope for The Turmeric Co. as we continue to grow in the coming months and years is to provide genuine value to the health and wellbeing of our customers, while also moving the dial around the way companies carry out business in light of global issues such as the climate crisis and empower people to look at their place in the world.

While we don’t treat our customers as consumers per se, it is important to treat the general public with the same level of respect as we would offer our client athletes and teams.

Furthermore, it appears that the pandemic has led many of our competitors to start thinking about the bigger picture in much the same way that we do at The Turmeric Co. and to promote good health and sustainable living among its followers.

As we continue to grow our portfolio of client athletes and sporting teams here in the UK, the conversation around brand advocacy is changing in the boardroom too. If I look back over our journey throughout the pandemic, we have signed up to several professional football teams showing the same vision.