A Bitter Vine Bearing Fruit

A family tragedy spurred Adeshola Ladoja to pursue his dreams and get his hands dirty making juice.

- Peace Hyde

A colorful display of Simply Green Juices’ latest products, arranged neatly in the fridge, is hard to miss at the company’s store in Victoria Island, Lagos.

As the May sun streams through the balcony, a gleaming display of the popular juice – with the names Funky Beet, Pick Me Up, Cleanse Intense, Refresh and Get Naked –sparkle in the light. As a leader in Nigeria’s cold pressed juice market, Simply Green is a story born of tragedy.

“When I lost my brother, I told myself ‘you need to go back and do what you love doing’. I said to myself ‘why do you have to do something just for money, why don’t you do something you enjoy?’ I know a lot about farming so I thought to myself, ‘what is the one thing that you cannot find in Lagos?’” says Adeshola Ladoja, the Chief Executive Officer of Simply Green Juices.

The answer came from Ladoja’s childhood dream of being in the field.

“I always wanted to retire as a farmer on a rocking chair, just chilling. I went to my dad’s farm, which was rundown and had been closed, and I got some seeds and planted them and it started growing after some weeks. I said ‘ok, this is what I would like to do at 50 so why not start now’,” he says.

Ladoja’s journey has taken him on many paths. At the New York Institute of Technology he studied aeronautic engineering after which he worked as a systems integrator with Nortel Networks in New York. Following a four-year stint working with his dad on his farm, Ladoja decided to part ways to cut his teeth in yet another field.