Solving a major health problem

AS A child, Janet Rankine-Henry was certain of two career paths: she would be a medical doctor, and she would also be a business owner. She always had a strong desire to help people get or stay healthy, and she grew up watching her parents run successful businesses. However, life doesn’t always go according to plan, and detours are sometimes necessary.

Rankine-Henry wasn’t accepted for The University of the West Indies, Mona’s medical sciences programme, but she did secure a place in natural sciences. At the same time, she was also accepted into the University of Technology, Jamaica’s (UTech) medical technology and dietetics and nutrition programmes, so she had to make a choice. In the end, having witnessed the frustrations faced by some of her friends after graduating with a natural science degree and not being able to transition to the medical field, she opted for the dietetics programme at UTech and hasn’t looked back.

While Rankine-Henry’s dream of becoming a doctor did not materialise, she is still actively involved in the field of healthcare. With approximately 15 years of experience under her belt, she is a respected leader in the field of dietetics and nutrition in Jamaica. Seven years ago, she officially made the leap into entrepreneurship with the launch of Complete Nutrition Care (CNC) Diet Centre, an award-winning, Portmore-based wellness company that seeks to help Jamaicans combat the widespread problem of non-communicable diseases by cultivating a wholesome, healthy lifestyle through customised meal packages, diet counselling, and suggested exercise regimes to improve their quality of life. The business provides support in three phases: initial consultation, the provision of pre-packaged meals, and follow-up visits.

Before starting CNC in 2013, Rankine-Henry – who also holds a master’s degree in public health from the UWI, Mona – enjoyed a successful career as a nutrition consultant.

She had always had a vision for a full-service business, where she would do consultations and provide healthy, balanced, well-portioned meals. So after some encouragement from her family, friends, and colleagues, she decided to make the leap. “I started small, with just my family members. I have a niece and nephew and other persons in my family who were overweight, and I prepared meals for them. Within a week, other persons heard about what I was doing, and then my friends started saying, ‘If you’re doing it for them, you have to do it for us.’ It just started spreading and spreading. There was no one in Jamaica who was doing this comprehensive meal planning, giving people breakfast, lunch, dinner, snacks, everything. Soon after, we couldn’t keep the business in the house anymore. We started out with just the hand-held vacuum-sealing machines. Every space that had a countertop had food everywhere,” she recalled.

Her father, who is a pastor, gave her permission to use an empty building the church owned, which was located next door, as the base for her growing business. “He said, why don’t you start a lunch thing in the day and provide people in the community with food, and then you can do your thing in the evenings? So we started with that,” said Rankine-Henry. “They were also planning to open a school upstairs with the Ministry of Education, and they had asked me to provide healthy meals for the children. The school didn’t work out and after a while, preparing food for the community wasn’t sustainable, so we just focused on producing our cold, prepared meals.”

RESULTS SPEAK FOR THEMSELVES

“We were giving persons not just the convenience of the meals, but also the results, because we prepare the food with no oils, very low sodium, all-natural seasonings, and we did it volumetrically. So, if it is that you are supposed to get a 1,200-kilocalorie diet, your meals were customised for you,” she explained. That was the genesis of Meta-Balance 360, CNC’s vacuum-sealed, low-calorie, properly portioned, pre-packaged meals. Today, Meta-Balance 360 meals are delivered frozen to clients on a weekly basis on either a five-day or seven-day plan. CNC’s portion-control approach is designed to help clients control hunger and promote fullness, while managing calories in order to lose weight.

It wasn’t long before the company began to gain traction across a wider cross section of Jamaica. However, in order to meet the growing demand, CNC had to expand, which required serious financial investment. Up to that point, Rankine-Henry had largely funded the burgeoning business out of her own pockets, even selling her car to pump in money to buy equipment and inventory. Her family also pitched in to help, and unlike many entrepreneurs, she didn’t have much difficulty accessing business loans. CNC received a major boost in 2015 when the business was awarded a Development Bank of Jamaica IGNITE Grant, worth J$4 million, that strengthened the company’s production and distribution capabilities through the acquisition of specialised equipment. That helped them move from packaging the food in vacuum-sealed bags to vacuum- sealed trays in boxes.

As the business continued to grow, it began to attract a lot of attention, from awards (Scotiabank Vision Achiever and NCB Innovation awards in 2017) to interest in buying it. At the same time, she was also presented with the opportunity to pitch for investment from FirstAngelsJA (FAJ), Jamaica’s first network of angel investors⁠ – an opportunity she hadn’t thought about and was also reluctant to pursue. She listened to a presentation on how to value your company done by someone from the network, representing PanJam Investment Limited, and reached out to him afterwards.

Decision made, Rankine-Henry fine-tuned her pitch with guidance from FAJ co-founder and manager, Sandra Glasgow.

Ultimately, what attracted the Angels to CNC was the fact that Rankine-Henry is tackling a major global health problem.

The Angels responded positively to Janet’s pitch, and even though CNC didn’t receive the total amount of investment she pitched for, the financial injection was a well-needed boost.

She is hopeful about working through the rough patch and being able to meet her obligations to the Angels, while keeping the business growing. “The business itself has great potential. We were awarded several times, and we wouldn’t have been awarded if the business never made sense. We do have a little bump in the road right now that we have to smooth out and fix so we can drive across,” she said. “The prospects are endless. Where we see the company growing is endless. The product that we have is a good product, it’s a good brand. We need fine-tuning and we need to work out the kinks, but it will get better.”