The big shots: how Moju built a £100m category

Before Moju’s shots lined supermarket shelves, Rich Goldsmith and Charlie Leet-Cook would spend their weekends in a lock-up in Staines, hand-making juices inspired by those they had discovered on a surfing trip to Bali. The two university friends frequently worked through the night, sharing the cost of renting the unit with a local pie-maker.

“It was pies by day, juice and shots by night,” recounts Goldsmith. “Charlie had just quit his job and I was still working, going in on a Monday with turmeric and beetroot-stained hands.”

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These days, Goldsmith and Leet-Cook have less need to get their hands dirty, with Moju firmly established as the leading brand in a breakout category now worth more than £100m in grocery. The brand’s juice shots, made with whole ‘superfood’ ingredients, have surged in popularity as shoppers prioritise their wellbeing and eschew larger-format juices over concerns about sugar. Over the past year, retail sales have climbed by a quarter to nearly £38m [NIQ 52 w/e 5 September 2026].

Despite its recent growth spurt, Moju initially took time to gain traction, its founders admit. Early versions of the product were essentially cold-pressed juices, sold mostly in independent coffee shops and delis. “We wanted to build in premium indies, health stores and speciality coffee shops,” says Leet-Cook.

Shots were introduced in 2016, but only became the brand’s sole focus in 2019. “A big part of the business was still in traditional-sized juices, so we were making the call to sacrifice a lot of that revenue,” says Leet-Cook. “But as soon as we launched shots we just saw that there was traction.”

Lower in sugar, punchier in flavour and more convenient to consume, shots were a “clearer articulation” of the Moju brand, helping position it more overtly in the emerging functional drinks space, Goldsmith believes. That association was reinforced by the introduction of a multi-serve dosing bottle, since redesigned to look like an apothecary-style medicine flask.

The dosing bottle launch was a pivotal moment for the Moju brand, Goldsmith says. “Up until that point, it was single shots mostly consumed on the go,” he says. “It took it from a reactive, impulse purchase to more of a planned at-home one. Then it becomes a habit.”

But with its seven-shot dosing bottle (rsp: £5.95/420ml) costing seven times the price per litre of Sainsbury’sown-label orange juice, Moju has had to work hard to explain to shoppers why – and how – they ought to consume its product. Operating profits took a hit last year after Moju invested in marketing and growing its team. The latest iteration of the brand’s ‘Bring the Boom’ campaign aims to reach 48 million consumers this autumn.

Building awareness of a new category is “very different from having to mass-premiumise a category that already has a very high penetration”, says Goldsmith. “We aren’t saying: ‘You want to consume us because we’re better than the next thing.’ We’re having to explain why people should consume us full stop.”

Despite that challenge, there remains “massive headroom” for growth, he insists, pointing out household penetration of shots remains below 10%, lagging behind both kefir and smoothies. “I don’t think we’ve even touched the sides of the latent potential of ginger and turmeric as ingredients,” he says. “There’s still a lot of education to be done and a lot of room to grow into.”

Into the night

It’s surprising, therefore, that those two ingredients take a back seat for Moju’s latest launch, Sweet Cherry Night Time (see pXX). As well as being its first product designed to be consumed in the evening, the NPD contains no ginger and just 1% turmeric.

Sweet Cherry Night Time was inspired by calming and night-time teas and contains dark sweet & sour cherries, chamomile, passionflower, turmeric and magnesium. Alongside a recently launched Ginger Double Shot and also-new Zingy Ginger Digestion, it forms part of a push to expand the use of Moju products beyond breakfast, according to its founders.

“We definitely see this as part of how we continue to push the envelope with where shots can be useful, and pushing them into different occasions,” says Goldsmith. “We were already seeing people diluting out the product to consume in the evening, but it wasn’t tailored to that night-time, sleep occasion.”

Will shoppers drink juice before bedtime? “We’re not as constrained by the typical codes of the category as an orange juice,” says Goldsmith. “If you’re a juice and smoothie player and you start selling a night-time product it won’t work, because nobody wants to guzzle 300ml of liquid before bed.

“We’re always going to push the boundaries. If you look at everything we’ve done to date and polled consumers they wouldn’t say it was something they wanted at the time. Often people don’t know what they want until you give it to them.”

That bullish approach to innovation contrasts sharply with a more cautious attitude towards international expansion. While many of its challenger fmcg peers have looked overseas for growth, Moju has remained focused on the UK, and the brand is set to exit France a little over a year after dipping its toes in the market via a tie-up with Carrefour.

“France has been challenging, and getting product on to shelves has been pretty tough,” admits Leet-Cook. Goldsmith, meanwhile, says Moju has so far resisted the urge to launch in the US in favour of prioritising opportunities closer to home.

“There’s plenty of growth in the UK and plenty on our doorstep in Europe,” he says. “There’s a big opportunity in the US, but for us, it’s about focus and choice.”

That attitude reflects a broader desire to grow Moju sustainably and profitably for the long term.

“Growth at all costs and growth for growth’s sake isn’t something we’ve ever signed up to,” says Goldsmith. “You’ve got to be mindful of what you’re taking on and why. We talk about wanting to build Moju like we’re going to pass it on to our kids, even though we’re not. And the way to do that is not to bet the farm on things.

“Could we have taken things faster? Maybe if we’d poured more fuel on the fire. But I’d say we’ve gone pretty quick, considering everything we’ve done.”