Meet the ex-Goldman employee turned juicing evangelist

How much do you know about juicing? Can you differentiate between cold-pressed juices and hot-pressed juices? Do you like your juices watery? Or are you a bit more discerning? Jo Symes, ex-Goldman Sachs, now of Bobos Juicery is about as discerning as it gets.

"I spent around a year researching juices before Bobos went live," Symes says. "I looked at a lot of the products on offer in LA and New York and tried to adapt the flavours that were popular there for the UK market. I imported a Norwalk juicing machine and consulted a qualified doctor on the nutritional value of the juice recipes - we try not to bulk them out with water, celery or cucumber."

Symes' juicing vocation is many miles from her former incarnation on the admin desk of Goldman's equities floor. She worked for the firm in London for seven years between 1995 and 2002. At that time, she says the lifestyle at Goldman was far from healthy: a chocolate trolley came around every day at 4pm, everyone ate "sandwiches and biscuits and drank Coke, and a trader on the Japanese desk lost all his hair prematurely due to all the stress".

While alopecia is still a fact of life, we suspect that [efc_twitter text="eating habits at Goldman have dramatically improved since 2002."] In 2012, Goldman staff were reported to be battling over egg white omelettes. Either way, Symes is making her former employer - and banks generally, a major target for her £4.99 juices. "We're not offering a cheap product, but it's very high quality. We're running an event with Barclays Wealth in February and are pushing to get the juices stocked in banks' canteens," she tells us.

Symes isn't a propagandist for 'juice purges'. Instead of drinking nothing but liquid kale for three days, she advocates a more measured approach to juice consumption. "Take a couple of steps at a time," she says. "People are often too ambitious about changing their habits overnight - it's about having a juice in the middle of the afternoon to keep you going, rather than having nothing but juice for a few days."

Nonetheless, Symes suggests some bankers seem to be starting the new year with typically bullish aspirations.[efc_twitter text=" "We're delivering whole boxes of juice to people in the City. Our most popular flavour is kale and cucumber.""]