Two homeless people are starting up a new social enterprise, creating and selling healthy fresh-made juices to local businesses.

Mark Mutlow and Grant Jones, currently residents with Threshold Housing Link, are already supplying three varieties of fruit juice to early adopters among Swindon’s Businesses Against Homelessness. The project is proving so successful, they hope to expand into a shop at the Brunel Centre.

It started at Culvery Court, Threshold’s emergency hostel for homeless men. Threshold funding, along with donations of fruit and vegetables donated by local shops, were used to make healthy juices for residents each morning, to make sure they had a nutritious start to the day. Now Mark is hoping to develop the juicing operation into a business – called Fresh Health and Wellness Juices.

“I want to share this fantastic project with all of Swindon,” Mark said. “Place your workplace orders with me. We juice daily for the residents, but we have at the moment three products: Power On Mondays, which are the prefect way to kick-start your working week, with delicious apples, spinach, baby spinach, cucumber, mint and lime.

“We have Recharge Wednesdays, a body cleanse and a powerful mid-week boost, which has organic beetroot, apples, lemon and warming ginger, and then our final product is Feel Fantastic Fridays. It’s a great energiser as we begin to flag at the end of the working week, and this has carrots which are king of mineral content, apple, sweet potato also packed with micro-nutrients, zesty lemon and warming ginger.”

Mark, 44, from Swindon, became homeless after a marriage breakdown seven years ago. He lost his job and his home, and moved all around the country sleeping rough as he didn’t want his children to see how he was living. Eventually he came back to Swindon and slept outside the hostel at Culvery Court.

“I kept knocking on the door, asking if there were any rooms. Five weeks later, I got in,” he said. Mark has now moved out of Culvery Court and is progressing to finding a permanent place to live – and says that good nutrition played a part in his recovery.

“We have seen directly that a well-nourished body and brain seems to be better able to withstand ongoing stress and better able to recover from life’s traumas,” he said.

Mark and Grant are researching and proceeding through the processes – such as food hygiene certification - they need to go through to set up an outlet for the juices in the Brunel shopping centre.

The work he is doing is voluntary at the moment, but he hopes it could turn into a paying job.

Michael Keenan, business development and social impact manager at Threshold, said: “Health & Wellness Juices provides so many benefits for our residents, firstly to become actively involved in their own health and wellness, and then as interest develops and health improves, to embark on a positive progression pathway commercially.

“The project aims are consistent with so many branches of Threshold’s core work which are concerned with promoting physical health and wellness, supporting a basic understanding of nutrition as fundamental to detox and good health.”

Local customers for the juices currently include The Core, the Brunel Centre, Primary Homes and Lettings and Fillerz.

Simply Local in Morden have donated fruit and vegetables twice a week.

“It’s brilliant to be able to support such a feel great initiative,” Michael said. “Service users are already actively engaged in sales, promotion and marketing in order to collect orders from businesses for their product, promoting their own made brand of freshly squeezed goodness in a bottle.”

Mark is keen to hear from more workplaces who would like to try the Health and Wellness Juices, which cost £4 for a 500ml bottle.

He said: “Please call me directly on 07833914998 to place your orders and stock your fridges. Juiced fresh daily.”