Meet Brendan Vercoe, Founder of The Gut Comfort Company, one of 22 ventures taking part in the Spring26 Cohort of the Sprout Accelerator.
We caught up with Brendan for a quick-fire five questions in five minutes to learn more about The Gut Comfort Company and what the venture hopes to achieve from their time in the Sprout Accelerator.
1. Tell us about The Gut Comfort Company. What are you building?
Gut Comfort turns New Zealand kiwifruit that doesn’t make export grade into a natural, wholefood prebiotic powder for digestive health.
I grew up on a kiwifruit orchard in Te Puke, and my mum always emphasised how good green kiwifruit was for keeping you ‘regular’. Years later, seeing the science catch up with what we had already known for years, while also seeing how much perfectly nutritious kiwifruit was going to stock food or waste, was really the spark for Gut Comfort.
2. What problem are you working to solve?
Constipation is a significant but often overlooked and rarely discussed health problem. Over 100 million Americans experienced constipation symptoms within the past week, yet research found that 40% of patients were dissatisfied with psyllium, the current gold-standard fibre supplement.
What’s exciting for us is that clinical research shows green kiwifruit can provide similar constipation relief to psyllium, but with better gut comfort. The challenge is making that natural, whole-food solution convenient and accessible year-round.
3. How does your solution work?
Gut Comfort is really simple: we take organic whole green kiwifruit that doesn’t meet export specifications, leave the skin on, freeze-dry it and mill it into a powder. It has just one ingredient: 100% organic New Zealand green kiwifruit, with the equivalent of one whole kiwifruit in every serve.
You can add it to a smoothie, yoghurt, cereal or water, making it an easy and convenient way to get the digestive benefits of green kiwifruit every day, all year round.
4. What is the next important milestone for your venture?
Our next big milestone is launching Gut Comfort into the US in the next two to three months. We’ve spent the past year piloting the product in New Zealand and Australia and have been really encouraged by the repeat customers we’re seeing, even in markets where fresh kiwifruit is readily available.
Now we want to test and validate Gut Comfort with US consumers, initially working through dietitians and other digestive health practitioners, and prove we can build a scalable business in a much larger digestive health market.
5. What are you hoping to get out of your time with Sprout?
I’m really keen to use my time with Sprout to build stronger connections across New Zealand’s primary industry and learn from people who have successfully taken New Zealand food and agri innovations to global markets.
I also want to come out of the programme with a really compelling, investable business case for Gut Comfort, validating the US opportunity and getting clear on the right price point, production costs and margins to build a scalable global business.
Find out more: www.gutcomfort.co.nz
Instagram: @gutcomfort
Facebook: @gutcomfort
LinkedIn: @gutcomfort