The Unexpected Journey to Vince Instant Meals

When I started Vince, my focus was simple: help busy families get more vegetables into everyday meals.

What I didn't expect was where Vince would end up.

Over the years, customers started sharing photos and stories of taking Vince on tramping trips, camping holidays and road trips. They loved that it was lightweight, shelf stable and only needed boiling water to prepare.

There was just one catch.

Many people were packing extra ingredients like instant mash, rice or pasta to turn Vince into a complete meal.

The more I heard these stories, the more I realised something. Vince wasn't just helping people at home. It was helping people eat well wherever they happened to be.

That's where the idea for Vince Instant Meals began.

Like most things, it sounded much simpler than it turned out to be.

Developing a complete instant meal that still felt like Vince took time. There were recipes to test, ingredients to source, manufacturing trials to run and plenty of tweaks along the way. All while continuing to grow our meal base range.

One of the highlights of the journey was our PledgeMe campaign. The support we received gave us the confidence to produce our first full batch of instant meals and showed us there was genuine excitement for what we were creating.

This week marked another milestone.

After months of working with our designer, I finally sent the artwork for our new instant meal bags off to print.

It might seem like a small step, but for a small business it represents countless decisions, refinements and hours of work behind the scenes.

The meals themselves haven't changed. They're still the same comforting, vegetable-packed meals we've been developing and refining. They'll just be arriving in packaging that better reflects what we've worked so hard to create.

The printed bags are now being produced and we can't wait to see them arrive back in New Zealand.

Thank you to everyone who has supported Vince along the way, whether you've purchased a meal, backed our PledgeMe campaign, shared feedback or simply followed our journey.

Sometimes the best ideas come from paying attention to how people are already using your product.

And Vince Instant Meals are a perfect example of that.