Traditionally watercress soup was the answer to consuming a ‘big hit’ of watercress, providing a significant nutritional boost to your diet. We stand by this, as it’s still one of the most talked about soup recipes, with many celebrities adding personal testimonies to its recognised health-promoting properties.

But, does watercress soup excite Generation Z and Millennials? Possibly not......

We therefore decided to find a solution to this conundrum, something that delivers on convenience, flavour, health and ease of consumption. So, we got busy in the kitchen developing watercress recipes to excite our new, younger target market.

We have to say a huge thanks to Sue Leonard, a specialist in pressed juices who had been using them to treat patients with specific ailments. On a quiet weekday Sue popped in looking for some watercress to use with her existing patients. We jumped at the opportunity and with her encouragement we started to experiment. Her fundamental knowledge and attention to health attributes provided the foundations for a recipe for detox, vitamin boosting, heart support and DNA protection.

As the recipes developed, we thought it was time to take our idea to the masses. We had the ideal test bed of friendly watercress loving aficionados that attend in their thousands our annual watercress festival in Alresford, Hampshire. We had 3 machines running non-stop and served over 2000 smoothies to anyone that wanted to try one and the response was fantastic....

We found they were particularly popular with Millennial sports enthusiasts who were fascinated by the properties responsible for reducing DNA damage caused during excessive exercise and improving VO2 Max performance. As a result of this interest, we sponsored two 2018 sports events; Dorchester Marathon, organised by White Star Running, and Alresford 10k, both raising funds for local Rotary groups. The smoothies went down a storm and and served as a cool, refreshing and, most importantly, healthy, post-run drink.

All summer we have been creating promotional adverts for our social channels and we wanted to develop some very original content, that showed the fun and excitement experienced by the many children we have met and made smoothies with during farm tours and events. Our smoothie combines unlikely ingredients and is bright green which is perhaps what's most appealing to children. They can make it at home and show their parents 'green' is cool!

We wanted to spread the word that watercress smoothies are fun and delicious even further, so as we had strong links with Prince of Wales 1st School in Dorchester, we chose to ignore the old adage of ‘never work with animals and children’ and underwent a photo shoot with a number of pupils, capturing their reaction to our watercress smoothie. There were the obvious hoops to jump through, arranging the permissions and agreeing to a handsome donation to the school refurbishment next year, but the response was fantastic among children ranging from Y1 to Y4.

It was a fun, fun, fun, four hours, organised by Mim, Louis and Tom, with some hilarious outcomes. While a few clearly found the smoothie somewhat challenging and absolutely not to their taste, the majority loved it with the camera recording a range of super smoothie smiles.

We hope that the shots and subsequent video created and edited in house by Louis with support from other members of the TWC team will inspire parents to try the smoothie with their own children for a fast, tasty nutritious snack and to not be afraid of introducing watercress to their diets. Let us know @lovewatercress how you got on trying out the recipe....

Prince of wales smoothie video

But, does watercress soup excite Generation Z and Millennials? Possibly not......