Mrs Toddy’s Tonic: Northern beaches mum Sophie Todd re-creates ancient health tonic

A Sydney mum who suffered from debilitating period pain, stumbled across a cure in Indonesia that was used by royals 1200 years ago. She’s now selling it in Australian supermarkets.

A northern beaches mum who discovered secret recipes for health tonics used by Indonesian royalty 1200 years ago, has bottled it and turned it into a thriving new business.

Sophie Todd, 45, from Curl Curl, on Sydney’s northern beaches, is producing around 3500 of the bottles a month which are being sold as a plant-based health beverage at hundreds of supermarkets across Australia.

She is expecting to ramp up production next year and wants to expand into the overseas market.

Mrs Todd said she came across the idea while travelling around Indonesia on a 12-month sabbatical with her young family.

Mrs Toddy

She had suffered debilitating period and back symptoms for years, which included shooting pains down her right leg and into her foot.

“When I was very young I would vomit and pass out with the pain,” she said.

During her overseas adventure, she was offered a traditional remedy called Jamu, a mix of herbs and botanicals used by the local Balinese, which actually worked far better than any of the traditional over-the counter painkillers she used to pop.

Now that she drinks the mix of herbs regularly she no longer suffers any pain at all during her monthly cycle.

Sophie Todd, 45, of Curl Curl, with daughter Summer in Indonesia. Mrs Todd found a pain-relieving health tonic while travelling and re-created it for the Australian market. Picture: Supplied.

“There are healers walking around Indo with baskets on their backs full of recycled bottles filled with health tonics,” Mrs Todd, a former operations manager, said.

“If people are not feeling well, local people know to go to these ladies to get a tonic.

“These recipes are passed down verbally in families.”

After the amazing results, Mrs Todd did some research and found the formulae for several different tonics used by royalty for various ailments, dating back 1200 years.

When she returned to the northern beaches, Mrs Todd refined the recipes so they were sugar-free and started making and bottling the tonics in her kitchen for friends.

Mrs Toddy

As word-of-mouth spread, she up-scaled and began selling them at Warriewood markets, before pitching the products to supermarkets.

They sell under the name ‘Mrs Toddy’s Tonic’.

The four tonics are called ‘Recovery’, an anti-inflammatory, which Mrs Todd uses for period pain, ‘Immunity’, a flu-fighting forumla, ‘Glow’, to soothe and settle upset stomachs and aid skin, and ‘Chill Out’, to assist with reducing anxiety and increasing relaxation.

The range, which sells for $5 a bottle, contains ingredients such as turmeric, clove, ginger, lemongrass, chamomile, juniper berry, hibiscus, lemon myrtle and collagen.

Mrs Todd opened a major brewing and bottling facility in Mona Vale in July, to cope with the demand. She has a 6000ltr pot in which the tonics are infused, in the traditional Balinese way.

The ingredients including turmeric and ginger are sourced from local farms.

Mrs Todd said that year travelling around Indonesia had changed her life, not only is she now pain free, but she has swapped her corporate life to concentrate on her new business.

“I will be forever grateful,” she said. “It was life changing.”