Don't get caught out drinking a can of Cola anywhere near TootyFruity, the new smoothie and fresh fruitjuice bar in Basildon's Eastgate mall.

One slurp and you are likely to be pounced on by a member of the Slevin family, determined to press home the virtuous drinking message.

"We are a commercial business, but we are also on a mission to turn Basildon more healthy," said owner Andrew Slevin, 41.

Andrew and his wife Kelly have proved pretty persuasive. "We've had cases where people have got the message and chucked their can of Coke half way through drinking it," said Andrew.

South Essex's first dedicated smoothie bar uses freshly purchased fruit mixed with low fat yoghurt.

With these two basic ingredients and a battery of grinding and squeezing gadgets, it creates different varieties of this increasingly popular health drink.

The TootyFruity concept is devised by the Slevins to look as appealing as possible and draw people in. "The orange juicer is a big attraction in its own right," said Andrew. "It can get through 60 oranges a minute. People are fascinated by it and the other gadgets. They come in to watch, they try a sample, and they're hooked."

The TootyFruity idea came to Andrew and Kelly after they bought a smoothie-maker for their home. "We'd been thinking of running our own business for a while, but we wanted to do something out of the ordinary, not, say, open a mobile phone shop. Then we realised we had hit on the ideal product," said Andrew, formerly an electrical engineer.

The Slevin family practice what they preach. In Andrew's case, he has never eaten or drunk anything unhealthy. "You could say that my mum and dad were pioneers in healthy eating, long before it became fashionable," Andrew said. "I was brought up on it since birth."

TootyFruity's eco credentials also involve buying raw materials from small, local suppliers. "We won't use the big supermarkets. We go to a fruit stall in Basildon market and an old style greengrocer in Billericay," Andrew said.