The Story of WONDR

Early 2021

I was playing soccer in the League of Ireland, and my focus was on a career in professional soccer. However, during the lockdown, I was out injured, and began to re-evaluate what I wanted. I had a growing interest in the area of business, and started to explore the possibility of starting my own business.

I started to think about what I was interested in. As someone with a sweet tooth, but also someone who’s passionate about health and nutrition, I was frustrated that there were no suitable healthier alternatives to high sugar sweets. So, the journey towards developing healthier jellies began...

Aug 2021

Became a certified nutrionist.

Oct 2021

Ordered gummy bear moulds on Amazon, and started experimenting in my kitchen.

May 2022

Graduated from University.

Jun 2022

1st Business Award: Enterprise Ireland Student Entrepreneur Awards Finalist

July 2022

Started work as a food technologist. I knew exactly what I wanted my products to be form a nutritional perspective, however, I realised that I needed help to make this come to life in a technical food formulation. We rented a small commercial kitchen with limited equipment, and got to work.

The 1st samples we ever produced in the kitchen. The less said about some of those early samples, the better...

October 2022 - After dozens of failed trials

Oct 2022

The messy middle. After dozens of failed trials, we started to question whether or not we could actually make jellies that tasted just as good as high-sugar jellies, whilst also being high-protein, low-sugar, and lower calorie. By this stage, I’d pretty much invested all of my savings into trying to get this off the ground, so this was definitely a challenging period.

January 2023 - If at first you don’t succeed 1

Jan 2023

If at first you don't succeed...We finally had a breakthrough. It wasn’t perfect, but we finally had a working prototype that tasted decent, had the right texture, whilst being high-protein, low-sugar, and lower calorie. There was still plenty of work to do though...

February 2023 - We continued working on the formulation to perfect the products

Feb 2023

Finessing the formulation. We continued working on the formulation to perfect the products. Some too bland, some too sticky, some too sour, some too hard... but we were getting close.Item Text

April 2023 - After a lot of hours and dozens more trials

Apr 2023

Perfecting the formulation. After a lot of hours and dozens more trials, we finally perfected our formulation. There was still some work to do before launching to market, like completing nutritional testing and finalising our packaging, but we finally cracked the formulation. This was a huge milestone...

Feb 2024

1st full production run.

Apr 2024

We officially launched into stores and online.