SuperJam, Sweet Success

Most college-age kids aren't known for their healthy eating habits, but 20-year-old Fraser Doherty already has built an empire on wholesome food – and his wholesome attitude.

He’s a millionaire thanks to selling his SuperJam no-added-sugar preserves to all of the UK’s major supermarket chains (the brand is upmarket Waitrose’s top seller in Scotland) – and he also runs tea parties for the elderly. Since April 2008, the company has sponsored more than 100 events, with up to 500 guests at each, all over England, Scotland and Wales. There's live music, dancing and of course, SuperJam and scones.

All In The Family

He learned both the jam-making skills and the community mindedness from his paternal grandma Susan.

"My Gran always made great jam and marmalade when we [Doherty has a younger brother] were growing up," he told Tonic. "But she would also make jam and take us to visit all of the old folks in her area who were living alone or in care homes. It wasn't so much meals on wheels as scones, cakes and jam on wheels. We'd have to play our musical instruments or tell them stories, so I guess the idea of caring for lonely elderly people was something we were always brought up with."

Before there was jam, there were eggs and bacon.

At age 10, Doherty visited a farm with friends, took home some eggs, kept them warm until they hatched, then sold the chicks. Later he sold bacon door-to-door for a wholesaler, receiving 30p (about 45 cents) for each one.

"I was the top salesboy for Edinburgh," he says. "I was selling hundreds of packets a week and it made me want to start my own business."

At age 14, his grandmother taught him her secret recipe for jam. He went to the local Kwik-Save, plunked down £2 (about $3.25) and came home with a dozen oranges and a bag of sugar (the sugar-free jams would come later). He whipped up a batch of marmalade in his parents' kitchen, filled up six jars, put them in a plastic bucket, and set out to "charm all the old ladies in the village where I lived," he says. "The first six houses that I visited all bought a jar of marmalade from me so I suppose it was clear that it was a good idea from the outset.

He moved on to a batch of 12 jars, then 24, and then on up, making thousands of jars a month. He outgrew selling the sticky stuff door-to-door, so set up a web site for his company, then called simply Doherty's Preserves.

Thinking Outside The Jar

The business really got a shot of sugar after Doherty spent months devising a recipe that didn't use any. He'd read that the jam market had been in decline for decades because people thought of jam as "sugary and unhealthy," he recalls. So he set out to make a tasty toast-topper without the white stuff. (His jam sessions occasionally had hilariously disastrous results: "Don't try bananas," he says dryly.)

In 2006 – at age 17 – he launched his no-sugar-added jam in a company he renamed SuperJam, a nod to the preserves' superfruit ingredients, such as blueberries and cranberries. Soon Waitrose came calling (a spokesman says Doherty "completely reinvented jam"), followed by eight other UK supermarket chains.

Doherty's company – now in a factory, as opposed to his parents' kitchen – currently sells some 500,000 jars a year, taking 10 percent of the UK’s jam market. The young entrepeneur says he still gets excited seeing the fruits of his labor on supermarket shelves: "It's like being a musician and hearing your song on the radio," he says.

Doherty dropped out of college after only a year to focus on jamming full-time, but he still managed to find time to organize and attend tea parties throughout the UK -– something he still does. He sweet-talked Waitrose into donating the tea and cakes, while British department store John Lewis pitched in with teapots, cake stands and tablecloths. On his web site, Doherty runs a weekly tea cosy competition, sending a case of SuperJam to the winning knitter.

Just For The Fun Of It

It is a bit of an, erm, jam fitting everything in, he admits.

"What motivates me isn’t necessarily money," he says. "I feel like the tea parties are really worth my time – it’s fun, and I get this amazing feedback that feels really good. Sometimes people cry at the end of the parties because it is simply the most fun they've had in a long while. One guy even said that it made him feel like a person again. It feels pretty good to have that level of impact on people from something as simple as a tea party.

He also finds time to worry about the company's environmental impact, buying fruit "as close to home as possible," he says. (Cranberries aren't grown in the UK, so he sources those from North America.) One of the reasons he looks forward to growing the company is because greater size gives him a greater say in how the packaging is made.

One of his heroes: Body Shop founder Anita Roddick, who died in 2007.

"When she was alive she proved you could make a successful business and keep it ethical," he says. "The fact that she gave all her money to charity says everything about her. I'd like to run my business that way."

Long may SuperJam bear fruit.

Top photo courtesy of Fraser Doherty's SuperJam.

Bottom photo courtesy of stock.xchng.