Introduce your brand, its mission, and its focus on sustainability

Vitaminis is a clean-label functional food and beverage brand. These tasty, nutritional juice shots aid in immune support and gut health with no added sugar or mystery ingredients, no strong flavors, and no refrigeration required. 

40% of people can’t swallow pills, and while 75% of people take a supplement, only 1 in 5 find that enjoyable.  Vitaminis fills the gap in this market, fueled by growth in shots (49% last year), offering the alternate and more experiential clean label formats that Gen Z and Millennial shoppers are looking for.

Founder Leslie Danford launched Vitaminis to combine her personal passion for holistic wellness with her beverage industry experience. Our long-term vision is to offer a full portfolio of tasty bites and sips that deliver powerful nutritional value.  We are certified women-owned.  Vitaminis: Drink Your Vitamins.

Immune Support juice shots have as much Zinc as 4 avocados and as much Magnesium as 5 cups of spinach, while Gut Health juice shots have as much fiber as 1 cup of broccoli and as many probiotics as 2 cups of yogurt in delicious fruit juice. 

Unlike other juice shots, they have no strong flavors like ginger and turmeric, and they are easier to swallow and digest than pills and gummies. They are non-GMO, 100% vegan, and allergen-friendly. At 2.5 ounces and with no refrigeration required, it’s portable and can be taken anywhere, mixed in a smoothie, or popped into a lunch box.

Leslie Danford is the Founder of Vitaminis, a clean-label functional food and beverage brand. 

She always believed that Food is Medicine, and that proper nutrition will guard against ailments.  During the pandemic, she was challenged to meet her own and her family’s nutritional needs. When it comes to supplements, she has never liked pills – they make her nauseous and are just plain boring – and her dentist had been warning her away from gummy vitamins.  

So many people know they should start adding nutrients to their diets, but they are uninspired by the options or don’t know where to start.  She knew there had to be a better way.  Hence Vitaminis!

In 2020, she combined her personal interests with her formal business training and experience in the beverage industry to launch Vitaminis. Previously she worked in beverages and consumer products at large corporations. She earned her MBA from Harvard University and her BA from the University of Chicago.

How Are Vitaminis Products Made Using Sustainable Materials and Processes?

Our products begin with inherently low‑impact, plant‑based ingredients–lentils, grains, and fresh produce–that generate far fewer greenhouse‑gas emissions and demand dramatically less water than animal‑derived alternatives. 

For example, producing a pound of lentils emits up to forty times less CO₂ than beef, and tofu requires just 302 gallons of water per pound versus 1,800 gallons for beef. We then concentrate high levels of vitamins, minerals, fiber, and probiotics into compact 2.5‑ounce servings, slashing overall land use, water consumption, storage losses, and transportation needs. Rather than expanding farmland or risking deforestation, we fortify staple crops–rice, wheat, and juices–with targeted micronutrients to meet dietary needs on existing acreage. 

And every ingredient comes from regenerative farms that practice crop rotation, nitrogen‑fixing legumes, minimal tillage, and natural pest control, building soil health, conserving resources, and protecting biodiversity at every step.

What Inspired the Creation of Vitaminis and Its Unique Sustainable Approach?

From the very beginning, my journey toward creating sustainable products has been deeply personal. Growing up, my scientist father treated every meal as a precise formula—calculating protein, vitamins, carbohydrates—so I learned early on to view nutrition through a lens of both science and care. Years later, a candid conversation with a senior partner helped me realize that my passion belonged not in consulting but in building something entirely my own. Combining that entrepreneurial spark with a decade of beverage‑industry experience, I founded Vitaminis with a clear mission: to deliver powerful, plant‑based nutrition in a way that honors people and planet alike.

Perhaps our most unique innovation is a proprietary stabilization process that locks in nutrients and flavor without any refrigeration, so every 2.5‑ounce shot retains its potency for up to nine months at room temperature, slashing the carbon footprint of cold‑chain logistics. 

By concentrating vitamins, minerals, fiber, and probiotics into a single, delicious juice shot, we drastically reduce raw‑ingredient use and packaging waste compared to pills, gummies, or larger beverages. 

At every step, my goal remains the same: to prove that clean‑label nutrition and environmental stewardship can go hand in hand, empowering people to drink their vitamins while leaving the lightest possible footprint on the planet.