Stefan:
Michelle Bristow has spent much of her career confronting the consequences of poor nutrition from different sides of the healthcare system.
After studying dietetics at Stellenbosch University, she began her career in the United Kingdom. She later returned to South Africa to lead the dietetics department at Inkosi Albert Luthuli Central Hospital before moving into the pharmaceutical and fast-moving consumer goods sectors.
Each transition deepened her understanding of malnutrition, product development, consumer marketing and the mechanics of bringing a product to market.
In 2017, those lessons converged in GENESIS Nutritional Products. Bristow built the company around a difficult question: could a nutritionally balanced meal reach the people who need it most while sustaining the business responsible for producing it?
Stefan le Roux sat down with Michelle to discuss the long-term cost of hunger and the business decisions that keep GENESIS affordable.
The Good Business Journal: Where did your interest in nutrition begin, and how did your career prepare you to start GENESIS?
Michelle:
I grew up in Paarl and studied a BSc in Dietetics at Stellenbosch University. My first job took me to Oxford, where I worked as a junior clinical dietitian under incredible dietitians, professors and doctors.
Those first five years shaped my clinical knowledge. Doctors, physiotherapists, occupational therapists, dietitians and pharmacists all joined ward rounds, so you became part of a multidisciplinary medical team.
I then returned to South Africa and was headhunted to work at Inkosi Albert Luthuli Central Hospital when it had just opened. It was a highly specialised hospital and I managed the dietetics department. Working across intensive care, paediatric intensive care and neonatal intensive care gave me an extraordinary opportunity to specialise in clinical nutrition.
After six or seven years, I felt I had reached the ceiling of what I could do there. I joined a pharmaceutical company specialising in clinical nutrition and moved into key accounts and the commercial side of the business. From there, I entered the fast-moving consumer goods sector, which gave me experience in retail, consumer health and wellness.
Eventually, I realised I had accumulated clinical knowledge, pharmaceutical and medical nutrition experience, and an understanding of retail. I decided to use that knowledge to start my own business. Those career moves taught me how products are developed, how a business operates, and how to launch something into the market.
Stefan: What did you encounter in clinical practice that convinced you a product such as GENESIS was needed?
Michelle:
I saw severe malnutrition during my clinical training. When I moved into paediatrics, whether it was oncology, infectious disease or gastroenterology, malnutrition was frequently part of the picture.
Children who are malnourished struggle to learn. They become ill more often and miss school, affecting their prospects of completing their education and entering the job market. The consequences extend far beyond the immediate discomfort of hunger.
I saw malnutrition caused by hunger, poverty and a lack of access to good food, as well as disease-induced malnutrition. At the same time, I saw how confusing the marketing around healthy food had become. Even people with degrees in nutrition can find themselves sorting through conflicting claims.
GENESIS brought those two problems together. I wanted to take established nutritional principles, remove the guesswork and make them available in a product that could help address hunger without becoming unaffordable.
Stefan: What are the basic nutritional principles that informed the product?
Michelle:
The body needs three main macronutrient groups: carbohydrates, protein and fat.
It needs carbohydrates, but the healthier choices are high-fibre and less processed. Wholegrain foods provide energy more gradually, while highly processed foods are digested quickly and can cause blood sugar levels to rise rapidly. We need sustained energy that keeps us fuller for longer.
Protein is vital for growth and the immune system. It can come from meat, chicken, fish and eggs, as well as beans and other plant sources. Fat is also essential for cells, the brain, skin, hormones and the absorption of certain vitamins.
We designed GENESIS with low-GI, high-fibre carbohydrates, protein and healthy fats in a balanced ratio, together with the necessary vitamins, minerals, fibre and omega-3. The consumer only needs to add water.
Stefan: How did you make that nutritional profile affordable?
Michelle:
There is a perception that choosing healthy food must be expensive, but it does not need to be. Industry has become very good at taking products that are perceived as healthy, marketing them as healthy and attaching a large price tag.
Healthy eating is often built around basic foods. Fruit, vegetables, milk, beans and lentils need not be expensive. Meat can be, but beans and lentils provide protein and fibre at a much lower cost. People need help selecting whole foods instead of relying on heavily processed products marketed as healthy.
Within GENESIS, we made three major business decisions to keep costs down. First, we maintain a very lean overhead structure. We do not have an enormous office or the costs that come with a large corporate operation.
Second, we do not own our factories. We outsource production and use manufacturing capacity only when needed, avoiding the permanent cost of owning and operating the facility.
Third, we do not spend heavily on conventional marketing. We do not have brand ambassadors or large television and radio campaigns. Marketing can become a significant part of a product’s cost, so limiting that expenditure helps us protect the price.
Stefan: Without that level of advertising, how have you taken GENESIS to market?
Michelle:
Much of it has been word of mouth. We do some digital marketing, but we also speak directly to businesses, end users and health professionals. I present to dietitians and other people in the medical community, and we approach corporate South Africa.
We also attend races, fun walks and mountain-biking events. People can taste the product, see it in goodie bags and ask us questions. Being present at those events, together with my work among health professionals, has been one of our strongest routes to market.
Our business is currently weighted towards business-to-business sales, partly because I still do much of the selling. It is also where we can achieve the greatest impact. If a corporate partner directs part of its social investment towards nutrition, we can help feed hundreds of thousands of people. Individual household purchases matter, but a single corporate relationship can reach people at a very different scale.
We ultimately need to strengthen direct-to-consumer sales, but my instinct has been to begin where we can make the biggest difference.
Stefan: How does the product change across household, large-scale feeding and emergency settings?
Michelle:
It is one product in different packaging formats. A one-kilogram bag works for a household, while our 10 and 25-kilogram bags are intended for schools, crèches, orphanages and other organisations feeding hundreds of people. At that scale, a serving can cost under R3.
We also have a dual pouch with purified water on one side and powder on the other. You break the seal, shake the pack and consume it directly from the packaging. It costs more because of the packaging, but it is designed for circumstances where convenience and access to clean water are critical.
That can include disaster areas, firefighters working in the mountains, agricultural workers and people working underground in mines. The same formulation can serve different environments through the way it is packaged and distributed.
We also offer six flavours. Rotating them helps organisations serve the product consistently without people tiring of it.
Stefan: GENESIS has a clear social purpose, but it is still a private company. How do you manage that balance?
Michelle:
That is one of our most difficult messages. People sometimes approach us directly because they need food, and I have to explain that GENESIS is a business. They need to find an individual, NGO or company able to fund that food and purchase it from us.
We have an NGO structure alongside the business through which eligible donations and feeding initiatives can be managed, but GENESIS itself is run as a company. Corporate partners expect a credible, responsive entity that operates with the discipline of any other supplier.
Our message is centred on helping to reduce hunger and malnutrition, but we have to operate successfully as a business if we want to feed more people. We cannot run at a permanent loss. At the same time, our lean overhead structure means we do not need to pursue an enormous profit margin at the expense of affordability.
Stefan: What was the financial leap from an established career into entrepreneurship like?
Michelle:
Moving from a corporate salary to paying yourself is difficult. My advice is to start the business while you are still employed and work on it outside your normal hours.
I had been building the business for two years before I left my job. It was generating perhaps a third of my salary by then. Many people resign and only then begin, but a new venture can take two or three years to work, and most people cannot afford to go without an income for that long.
Build the business while you still have an income stream. Only consider leaving once the venture can cover essentials such as your rent or bond, medical aid and food for your family.
I have started multiple businesses and plenty have not succeeded. I maintained different income streams and sometimes took on consulting work. You have to keep trying without allowing one setback to destroy everything.
Stefan: What continues to drive you, and what gives you confidence in South Africa?
Michelle:
My goal is less hunger. I want fewer people going to bed hungry every night. Everything I do comes back to how many more people we can feed, how many we can keep fuller for longer and how much further we can extend our reach.
I also love the people of South Africa. I have been privileged and fortunate to have certain opportunities come my way, including jobs where I was headhunted. What keeps me humble is knowing that the distance between success and failure can be very small.
When somebody makes a bold decision and it succeeds, people call it brave. If it fails, they call it foolish. I recognise that some of my decisions worked and that other people have not had the same luck. The question I keep asking is how I can make things a little easier for them.
Stefan:
Michelle Bristow’s story brings together the care of a clinician and the pragmatism of an entrepreneur. Her experience taught her how deeply hunger can shape a life; building GENESIS has required her to think just as seriously about cost, scale and sustainability. The lesson is a practical one: purpose needs a model capable of sustaining it.
For Michelle, that means using what she knows, recognising the role good fortune has played in her own journey, and asking how far that knowledge and opportunity can be extended to somebody else.
